President Kim Il Sung said in his lifetime that all the great achievements were made by the people, not by him.
He noted that it was the people that made great achievements in the DPRK and all of its assets were the creation of the people, adding what he did was that he only joined the people in their work and the people had inexhaustible strength.
He was born into a peasant family and his family was so poor that they could not afford a clock before Korea's liberation (August 1945).
That is why he emphasized with the people better than anyone else and set out on the road of revolution to make them well off.
This is what every Korean says.
His lifelong motto was "The people are my God".
He used to say that his lifelong wish was to see the people eat cooked rice and meat soup and live in tile-roofed houses.
In Pyongyang there is a fork in Mangyongdae where the road branches into the place of his birth and a factory.
Soon after the country's liberation he went to the factory to meet workers first not calling at his home.
Therefore, the fork became well known to the people.
He went everywhere the people lived.
In the northeastern tip of the country there is a village called Uam-ri which was impossible of access by car.
But the President visited the village to meet the villagers.
His footprints are marked in the farm village at the foot of a mountain over 2,000 meters above sea level, an islet on the West Sea and even a lighthouse.
Since Korea's liberation he had covered a total of over 578,000 Km on his inspection tours to the people until the last moment of his life.
The distance is equivalent to turning around the earth 14 times and half.
Whenever officials asked him to have a rest on his birthday or Sunday, he would say the rest was nothing special, there would be no better rest than looking round factories and farms and he did not have any special rest.
The Korean people recall the days when the President visited their workplaces and villages.
Workers remember that he came to their mess hall to taste cooked rice and soup.
And farmers say with tears in their eyes that on his visit to their farm he waited for them outside early in the morning lest he should awake them.
Since the country's liberation he had had heart-to-heart talks with the people and told the way for them to be better off.
In a mountainous village he said the villagers should make the most of mountains, collect wild fruit and vegetables and medicinal herbs, develop livestock farming, keep bees and promote sericulture on a large scale to pick up "treasures" in mountains.
In a seaside village he told the schoolchildren, who said they wanted to become tractor drivers and lathe operators, that the people could live by conquering nature and they should think about catching fish and become conquerors of the sea who exploit inexhaustible marine resources.
While making constant inspection tours for the people he turned the DPRK, once a backward country with only hoes and sickles handed down by ancestors, into a strong and self-reliant socialist industrial state.
In June Juche 83 (1994), the concluding year of his life, he provided on-the-spot guidance to cooperative farms in Onchon county and Taesong Distirct in Pyongyang in spite of the sweltering weather.
He left his walking stick in his car when meeting the people, saying they would be unhappy at the sight of him walking with stick.
On his way for field guidance by car he often saw to it that windows were kept open. Because he could notice whether rotten fish smelled at fishery stations and see whether fertilizer and chemical factories emitted noxious gases.
When he found that sewage flowed into rivers or river water was muddy he ensured that immediate steps were taken.
Parents care about their children when they leave home for a visit.
On his visit to foreign countries the President always thought of the people who were waiting for him.
On every visit he found out something conductive to the improvement of the people's living standards and told it to officials.
Once on a visit to the Kwangpo Duck Farm he saw workers plucking duck with hands, which lingered in his memory.
Therefore, he learned how to make a plucking machine on a visit to a foreign country and saw to it that the machine was made after returning home.
Since the foundation of the DPRK in 1948 he had been the head of state.
But the Korean people called him "our father", instead of the official title, except on formal occasions.
This shows that their relations were those between father and children.
In every election he was elected president according to the unanimous will of the people.
A European writer said modesty is a right word for a great man, not for an ordinary person.
"Kim Il Sung always regarded himself as an ordinary person and was immensely modest, and herein lay the mystic prestige of the great man."
The President who regarded the people as God and devoted his whole life to them will always be remembered as their father.
