Reminiscences of the Anti-Japanese Guerillas

Reminiscences of the Anti-Japanese Guerillas

Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl	항일 빨찌산 참가자들 의 회상기
McCune–Reischauer	Hangil ppaltchisan ch'amgajadŭl ŭi hoesanggi
Cover page of the English edition (1968)
Country	North Korea
Language	Korean
Subject	Korean resistance movements, 1905-1945 - Personal narratives Guerrillas - China - Manchuria
Genre	Memoirs
Published	May 1959 (May 1959) (Korean ed.) 1968 (1968) (English ed.)
Publisher	Pyongyang: Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House (Korean ed.) Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House (English ed.)
Media type	Print in multiple volumes
Pages	227 p.; vol. 1 (Korean ed.) 153 p. (English ed.)
Awards	People's Prize (2012)
OCLC	1097890
Dewey Decimal	951.9/03
LC Class	DS917 .R397

Reminiscences of the Anti-Japanese Guerillas is a collection of memoirs of North Korean guerillas fighting during the 1930s and 1940s in Manchuria against the Japanese. It was used as a textbook for indoctrination until it was effectively replaced by another piece of guerilla literature, Kim Il-sung's autobiography With the Century, in the 1990s. The memoirs were written in order to portray Kim Il-sung as a national liberator, and to strengthen his cult of personality. However, the memoirs are still used as a textbook in ideological workplace study sessions, as well as in other forms of indoctrination. Many of the memoirs have been adapted as movies by the North Korean film industry.

The Party History Institute was founded in 1958, and its collection of memoirs, Reminiscences of the Anti-Japanese Guerillas, was published in 1959, when Kim Il-sung's cult of personality was being strengthened after the August Faction Incident. These initiatives were part of the efforts to create and promote Kim Il-sung's activities during World War II as an anti-Japanese myth. High-ranking defector Hwang Jang-yop dated the beginning of the personality cult at the end of the 1960s, when various guerillas disappeared from North Korean partisan literature. Until the 1960s, guerillas like Eul Ji Mun Deok, Kang Gam-chan and Lee Sun-shin were common in North Korean partisan literature. Others like Ahn Chang-ho and Shin Chae-ho were discredited.