Dances, flowers and celebrations across North Korea marked the birthday of the nation's founder on Wednesday. Kim Il-sung was the nation's first leader and is considered North Korea's "eternal president." Kim was born in 1912 and died in 1994 -- he would have turned 103 today.
As a young man, Kim fled to China to avoid Japanese forces in Korea and learned Chinese. He returned to fight those same Japanese troops, and went on to lead his new country.
Though Kim came to be known as "Great Leader" inside North Korea, he is credited for militarizing the nation and shutting off contact with much of the outside world.
“There was no socialism, but only a monarchy in North Korea,” Kim Young Hwan, a South Korean activist, said at a lecture in Seoul last week, according to Bloomberg. “It still is, with all resources funneled into keeping his grandson Kim Jong-un in power.”
North Korea is now one of the poorest, most isolated countries on the planet.
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