Kaoru Yasui was a professor and doctor of law at Hosei University of Japan and the first director general of the International Institute of the Juche Idea.
In the 1950s he conducted positive social activities against atomic and hydrogen bombs, and for this won the International Lenin Peace Prize and German Peace Prize. In 1965 he established the World Peace Institute and once worked as its director general. He was a famous international affairs expert as he had visited numerous countries and met many noted politicians.
His conversion into a follower of the Juche idea and boundless reverence for President Kim Il Sung was an outcome of his several visits to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the early 1970s on learning the Juche idea and of his meeting with President Kim Il Sung.
Kim Il Sung was well-versed in all fields–politics, philosophy, the economy, literature and so on. And he had knowledge of the international affairs profounder and richer than Kaoru, an expert in that field. His views of all issues were direct and clear.
In a book Yasui wrote:
“Fifty years have passed since I came across Marxism-Leninism, and I learned many lessons from the historical heritage left by the founders of Marxism-Leninism; but in the course of studying it, I always felt something missing. Kimilsungism has given clear answers with encyclopedic aspects, depth and abundance to the questions I was studying.”
The Japanese scholar could not understand how President Kim Il Sung, who was the leader of a country and who was not a professional scholar, could be acquainted with such a wide range of knowledge.
Later while talking with a delegation of Korean social scientists, he learned that from the first days of his revolutionary career Kim Il Sung had learned so much from the people in all walks of life, including workers, peasants, intellectuals and even the elderly and children, regarding them as his teachers.
In the past, people professing themselves to be politicians had much spoken the word people for their political purposes, but none of them had regarded the people as their teacher as President Kim Il Sung did.
Yasui said: President Kim Il Sung regards the people as his teacher and has learned everything from them and so he could author such a great man-centred ideology as the Juche idea and other encyclopedic thoughts and theories; as I have learn this, I can hardly express my admiration. Indeed President Kim Il Sung is the greatest of the great men.
Kim Il Sung as Seen by Kaoru Yasui
