The North Korean government describes Comrade Kim Il Sung as a precocious revolutionary and visionary "philosopher-king" who saved Korea from "imperialist plunderers" and forged a new nation based on his "juche" -- self-reliance -- ideology.

According to historians unaffiliated with the North Korean government, Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, 1912 near Pyongyang, the eldest of three sons in a lower-middle class family. Born Kim Sng-ju, Kim grew up steeped in Korea's growing nationalist and communist resistance movements. His father, who worked as an herb pharmacist, reportedly started the Korean National Association in 1917 as part of the Korean resistance movement against the Japanese.

When Kim was seven, the family moved to eastern Manchuria to escape the Japanese, who occupied Korea at that time and were brutally cracking down on resistance groups.

As a teenager, Kim attended Yuwen Middle School in Manchuria, where he learned the Mandarin language and Chinese culture. In 1926, when Kim was 14, his father died suddenly at the age of 32. Kim's father left his mark on the boy, instilling in him a strong sense of Korean nationalism and independence.

Continuing in his father's footsteps, Kim joined the South Manchurian Communist Youth Association. He was arrested in 1929 for participating in a "subversive" communist student group.

Brief prison time did not dampen Kim's interest in political activism. Shortly after his release from jail, Kim joined a Chinese guerrilla group known as the Korean Independence Amy.

When his mother died in 1932, Kim, along with his two younger brothers, was left parentless. While little outside information is known about Kim's siblings, Kim's autobiography states that his brother, Kim Chul Ju, also a guerrilla fighter, was killed in action against the Japanese soon after their mother's death and his youngest brother, Kim Young Ju, was tortured to death by the Japanese.

While Kim was not close with his brothers, their deaths appeared to deepen his ties with Korean guerrilla groups who were receiving training from Chinese communist forces to fight against the Japanese. During this time, Kim emerged as a prominent Korean leader with strong connections to the Chinese and Soviet Communist Parties.

By the mid-1930s, he renamed himself Kim Il Sung in honor of his uncle, who had disappeared after taking part in the 1919 independence uprising. He would use his new name to cultivate his image as Korea's national founder.

During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Kim trained with Chinese communist revolutionary forces and commandeered a group of 300 Korean guerrillas (a unit of the Chinese Route Army) to launch surprise attacks on Japanese outposts near the Manchurian border, according to North Korean historical accounts.

Kim's daring and successful raids on the Japanese prompted colonialist authorities to label him a major threat to their rule and they organized a special counterinsurgency task force to hunt him down.

Japanese press accounts from this period suggest Kim belonged to a group of some 40 "red bandits", rather than 300, who attacked and looted villages. Japanese newspapers portrayed Kim as a bandit "preying upon poor Korean farmers" as part of Japan's efforts to undermine the Korean nationalist movement.

Russian reports indicate that both the Soviets and Chinese supplied Kim's brigade with weapons on a monthly basis, though Kim maintained his unit stole arms and military supplies from raids on Japanese army posts.

In 1937, Kim's "bandits" scored a major victory against Japanese forces stationed in Ponchonbo. North and South Koreans alike now celebrate the battle at Ponchonbo as a benchmark for Korean liberation from colonial Japan by both North and South Koreans.

As the Japanese took increasingly brutal measures to crush these independence fighters, Kim and other guerrillas fled north to the Soviet Union during 1940 and 1941. Kim and his comrades stayed in Khabarovsk until Japan's surrender to the Allied Forces in 1945, when Korea was granted independence.

During Kim's five-year stay in the Soviet Union, he trained with Soviet and Chinese military specialists and married Kim Chong-suk, the eldest daughter of a poor farmer from Manchuria and a "fellow partisan." The couple had two sons, Kim Jong Il and Kim P'yong Il, and one daughter, Kim Kyong Hui, whose whereabouts are unknown. Kim P'Yong Il reportedly died in 1944.

When Kim and his family arrived in Pyongyang in 1945, he became a central player in the post-war Korean government. Though only 33 years old, Kim possessed extensive knowledge, familiarity, and experience with powerful Soviet and Chinese leaders from his years training with the Chinese and Soviet armies. Kim's connections and Marxist ideology helped position him to advance as North Korea's new post-war leader.

In 1948, newly installed as the president of the newly created Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim initiated a series of popular communist reforms, such as nationalizing the land formerly owned by Japanese colonists, creating an eight-hour work day, ordered the "equality between sexes," and enacted a new election code.

Kim created the North Korean People's Army, giving the best positions to his former guerrillas from Manchuria. The North Korean People's Army and defense industry became central to North Korean post-war development as Kim Il Sung sought to reunite the peninsula and oust the U.S.-backed southern government.

The leader successfully persuaded the Soviets to give substantial financial and military assistance for defending the North from purported aggression from U.S. troops stationed in the South.

He also repeatedly lobbied Soviet leader Josef Stalin for support in an armed invasion of South Korea. Stalin apparently warmed to the idea after the United States began withdrawing troops in the summer of 1949 as part of its post-war scaling back.

Finally in June 1950, Stalin approved the effort and North Korean forces streamed over the border along the 38th parallel. Early in the fighting, the NKPA overwhelmed the much smaller and out-gunned South. But the United Nations intervened, authorizing a U.S.-led force to repel the assault in July 1950.

It appeared Kim's daring and military bravado had overstepped its bounds as the U.N. force, lead by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, forced the NKPA back across the border. It was only with a massive Chinese military intervention, sparked by the U.S. force's approach of North Korea's border with China in November 1950, that Kim Il Sung escaped total defeat. The war dragged on until 1953 with Chinese and Americans forces conducting the bulk of the fighting until both sides acknowledged the stalemate and declared an armistice.

After the Korean War, Kim Il Sung made several official visits to Moscow and Beijing to solicit loans and aid to rebuild his country that had been devastated by the war.

During this time, Kim also introduced his "juche" ideology, a communist philosophy incorporating a national sense of revolutionary independence, communism and self-reliance. The juche ideology specifically endorsed North Korea's contemporary policies -- an isolationist foreign policy, a self-sufficient economy and a growing desire to be self-reliant in its defense.

While Kim's ideology was in line with Soviet Marxist-Lenin thought, juche also incorporated a neo-Confucianism widely subscribed to throughout the Korean peninsula.

In the late 1960s, Kim attracted the disapproval of China's Red Guard, Chairman Mao's militant student vanguard of the Communist Party. They accused Soviet and North Korean leaders of corrupting Marxist-Leninist ideology, and China sought to undermine Kim's influence, decrying him as a "fat revisionist." His Chinese detractors also attacked Kim's opulent lifestyle, his penchant for designer suits and lavish parties.

Kim revitalized his political base at home by funneling large amounts of Soviet aid to expand and modernize the North Korean military and promoting his former guerrilla comrades to choice government positions.

Throughout his reign, Kim Il Sung ruthlessly purged political opponents from his government and the military, blaming them for any setbacks or defeats, according to Hwang Jang-yop, Kim's former political adviser and the highest level official to defect from the country.

Kim continued to create a cult-like following throughout his life -- even North Korean defectors recalled Kim's charisma, magnanimity and broadmindedness. The self-styled "Great Leader" came to symbolize and personify the North Korean state.

Like most information from North Korea, reports of the Great Leader's death are contradictory. North Korean officials told a South Korean reporter he died of a heart attack while in his office preparing to sign a reunification treaty in 1994, however other media reports have suggested heat stroke.

In Sept. 1998, Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong Il, named his father "Eternal Leader," saying he would retain the position of president for eternity, despite his death.

Idolization of Kim Il Sung continues to this day. North Koreans make regular pilgrimages to the innumerable memorials and statues across the country, including a 65-foot bronze statue on Mansudae Hill in Pyongyang, known as the Grand Monument.

North Koreans commemorate Kim's death each year on July 8, and the Eternal Leader's glass sarcophagus is considered one of the holiest places in the country.

-- Compiled by Liz Harper for the Online NewsHour