The celebration of Kim Il Sung's 80th birthday at Kim Il

PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA - 1992/04/01: The celebration of Kim Il Sung's 80th birthday at Kim Il Sung Stadium in Pyongyang. Years of rigorous training by 40,000 students created a strange but colorful performance. Kim Il Sung was the pseudonym for Kim Song Ju. Kim was born in Pyongi near Pyonyang in 1912. Kim and his family emigrated to Manchuria in the 1920's. In 1930 Kim founded the Korean Revolutionary Army, a guerrilla group that fought against the Japanese military. With the support of the Soviet Union and China, he became the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 1948. In the post-Korean War years Kim developed the idea of juche, an ideology of self-reliance blended with Marxism thus creating a distinct "native" Korean communism. In 1994, at the age of 82, Kim Il Sung died. (Photo by Gerhard Joren/LightRocket via Getty Images)