About the Author
Fyodor Tertitskiy
Fyodor Tertitskiy is a lecturer at Seoul’s Korea University. He is the author of "Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung" and several other books on North Korean history and military.
Get behind the headlines
Evergreen How North Korea became Kim Il Sung’s KoreaA Soviet officer had much to do with the critical early decisions in the nation's history ![]() On August 8, 1945, when the Soviet Union attacked Imperial Japan, Kim Il Sung was still a nobody. He, a mere captain of the Red Army hardly dreamed about leading a country. But 1945 was a truly momentous year for East Asia, when things changed so rapidly as they never had before. Japan was already crippled by the Americans, and the atomic bombardments, plus the fact that the USSR had joined the war, forced Tokyo to accept the inevitable. COLONEL GENERAL SHTYKOV AND HIS NORTH KOREA © Korea Risk Group. All rights reserved. |