Sino-NK

Kim Il-sung University was so named in honour of the “struggle against Japanese imperialism by the national hero, General Kim Il-sung” in 1946. | Image: David Stanley, Flickr.com.

This marks the first in a new series drawing on materials from Record Group 242 at the US National Archives in College Park, Maryland — a vast repository of captured North Korean, Japanese, and Soviet records from the early Cold War period. These documents, rarely cited and only recently digitized, shed new light on the institutional formation, governance, and political culture of North Korea in its formative years. Each installment will feature a newly translated and contextualized document from the RG242 collection, offering new insights into the origins of the DPRK state. —Steven Denney, Director of Research

After North Korea first opened Kim Il-sung University in October 1946, inspectors soon found corruption and mismanagement to be so severe that their first audit of the institution had been “impossible” to complete at the end of the same year.[i] The inspection report, housed in the RG 242 archive at NARA, offers perhaps the most detailed account to date of the early inner workings of North Korea’s first university.

Kim Il-sung University was first conceived in May of 1946 when Kim and his maternal uncle Kang Yang-uk signed into law a decree on behalf of the Provisional People’s Committee, the then proto-government of the northern section of Soviet-controlled Korea.[ii] Known as ‘Decision 21’, the decree created a preparatory committee made up of nine members, including emerging propagandist Han Sol-ya, among the most prominent early hagiographers for Kim, and Kim Dal-hyun, who would become a member of North Korea’s first parliament and later chairman of the United Democratic Front.

In a subsequent decree less than two months later, also signed by Kim and Kang, the committee determined North Korea’s first higher education establishment would be named Kim Il-sung University in honour of the “struggle against Japanese imperialism by the national hero, General Kim Il-sung”.[iii] In the context of the period, this decision was significant and indicative of the political tides in Pyongyang. Although the document cites Kim as a military general in Hanja characters (將軍), he held no such military rank; the term instead had been first used and perpetuated in the north’s emerging, Soviet-approved press following Kim’s political debut at a rally in Pyongyang in October 1945.

Officially, Kim was not yet Party chairman, a role then still held by Kim Tu-bong. Yet the northern section of Korea, not yet a sovereign state, had already named its first university after Kim, little more than a year following the peninsula’s independence from Japan, and subsequent division into Soviet and US spheres. The Soviets had already selected Kim as leader and, with their Korean counterparts, had begun to construct a cult of personality around the north’s rapidly emerging young leader, a process that included the naming of Kim Il-sung University.

Internally, however, the university faced significant early problems, as revealed in its first audit conducted by the Inspection Committee of the University Business Administration in December, 1946. Financial accounts for the institution’s construction section, which had apparently overseen the purchase of materials to build the university months earlier, were either incomplete or non-existent, and there was no cashbook to record millions of won in spending, according to the report.[iv] As a result, inspectors reported it was “entirely impossible” to determine how money had been spent, but that funds may have gone to “certain persons” among university administrators. Inspectors reported:

The adjustments of accounts were so imperfect that not only was the inspection insignificant, but it was impossible. Therefore, account books were used only as reference material.

In the account books submitted, there were places where mentioned items had been deliberately erased. For example, there were several places where illegal distributions had been recorded in the supply station ledger, and also in the supply section daily necessities ledger.

The inspection report was notably damning of the supplies section of the university, whose role was supposed to be focused on securing and giving goods to students and teachers, including cloth for clothing, and other items. It was found that university administrators had often failed to distribute these goods within the university, and had instead given them “free to people outside of the school”. The accounts showed university admin officials had distributed goods to a barber shop, Korea Hotel, the General Bureau of Electricity, a hatter’s shop, and even a prison.

The inspectors said it was, though, difficult to know whether goods had been delivered to these people, or even received in the first place, and may have been kept by university officials “using false names”. Invoices were deemed to be “illegal” with no signatures, and missing receipts. In some instances, the audit reported outright cases of embezzlement with university officials donating materials to themselves.

That the new regime in Pyongyang should struggle to contain corruption to such a degree, and so early in the process of installing communism in the northern section of the country, represents a damning indictment of its failures. The university inspection was conducted during genuine early optimism in Korea following the end of Japanese rule. Yet, this RG 242 document shows that the staff of Kim Il-sung University were working to enrich themselves and those around them at the expense of the institution and the country.

University personnel were deemed to have been uncooperative, and in some cases openly deceitful, “eager to conceal the facts”, as inspectors noted:

We had a great deal of difficulty in making an accurate investigation because they (university personnel from the supplies department) were either out or absent almost every day in spite of our request for them to stay in their office during the period of inspection.

Senior figures were found to be notably culpable, including the university supplies section chief, Son U-il, the chief of the construction section, Hong Chol-hi, and even the director of the bureau of accounts, Kang Yun-pom.[v]

Reforms to how universities were run in North Korea soon followed. By the end of the 1940s, newly sovereign North Korea began charging small tuition fees for university students, with generous exemptions for those from low-income families and the physically impaired. Tertiary education scholarships were expanded to 80 percent of undergraduates at that time.[vi]

Additional layers of bureaucracy were also applied under the Korean Workers’ Party. Although the new state had increased scholarships for university students, only Party members could gain admission or work at the university, a rule that applied to everyone, down to the campus janitors from 1946.[vii] Applicants for all jobs were required to supply a biography of themselves,[viii] an extended curriculum vitae designed to verify the political history of applicants, and their families.

Whether Kim Il-sung University and its personnel proceeded to address corruption issues remains unclear – there are few other known documents on the university’s internal workings, and North Korea has not released any inspection information. A year before its 80th anniversary, Kim Il-sung University and its inner workings therefore remain otherwise little understood, with this RG 242 file providing a rare snapshot from the end of 1946.

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[i] “Handwritten report on the inspection of Kim Il-sung university,” Item 5, 201233, Box 203, RG 242, National Archives and Records Administration.

[ii] “Organization of the Preparatory Committee for the establishment of a Comprehensive University of North Korea,” Proceedings of the Decree-Law Gazette, May 25, 1946, North Korean Gazette, National Institute of Korean History. https://db.history.go.kr/contemp/gb/level.do?levelId=nkgb_1946_11_15_b0001_00230.

[iii] “North Korea Comprehensive University Establishment Document,” Legislation Gazette – Supplementary Edition No.2, July 8, 1946, North Korean Gazette, National Institute of Korean History. https://db.history.go.kr/contemp/gb/level.do.

[iv] Handwritten report on the inspection of Kim Il-sung university,” RG 242, NARA.

[v] Kang Yun-pom was a childhood acquaintance of Kim Il Sung, mentioned in With the Century, Vol. 1, as part of his early revolutionary circle.

[vi] “College Student Scholarship Award Scope Expansion Decision,” Cabinet Bulletin No. 2, February 1949, North Korean Gazette, National Institute of Korean History. https://db.history.go.kr/contemp/gb/level.do?levelId=nkgb_1949_02_20_a0002_00020.

[vii] Balazs Szalontai, Kim Il-sung in the Khruschev Era: Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953-1964 (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006) p. 18.

[viii] “Regulations on University Entrance Exams,” Cabinet Gazette No. 5, April 1949, North Korean Gazette, National Institute of Korean History. https://db.history.go.kr/contemp/gb/level.do?levelId=nkgb_1949_04_22_a0005_00030.