Kim Il Sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was the leader of North Korea for 46 years, from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994.
According to North Korean sources, the works of Kim Il Sung amount to approximately 10,800 speeches, reports, books, treatises and other types of works. , about 60 of them are considered to be particularly important by outside observers.
Kim Il Sung's works are published and republished in countless collections. These include the 100-volume Complete Works of Kim Il-sung (chŏnjip(전집)), the 50-volume Collected Works (chŏjakchip(저작집)) and the 15-volume Selected Works (sŏnjip(선집)). In North Korea, his works are published by the Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House, but front organizations in Japan publish unofficial Korean-language editions as well. North Korean sources say that publishing houses in 110 countries have published works of Kim Il Sung in translations in some 60 languages.
The earliest work in the Enlarged Edition of Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung's Works is from October 1926. By the time of Kim's death, the collections had ballooned to unpractical sizes with even the Selected Works "too long and costly to be used in group study, the only kind the regime felt safe in encouraging" and the Collected Works "unfit to any propaganda purpose except to lead awed schoolchildren past". With more electricity and leisure time, too, such enormous collections were no longer popular.
All writings from before the time Kim returned to North Korea (19 September 1945) are considered to be unhistorical. There is no historical record of them from the purported time period and they only began to appear in the 1970s. It is evident from both their contents written to support later viewpoints in North Korean politics, and the style of writing characteristic to Kim in his later years, that they have been written much later, specifically in the late 1960s to early 1970s. For instance, On Organizing and Waging Armed Struggle Against Japanese Imperialism, dated to December 1931, discusses little-known labor strikes in Korea far away from Kim's whereabouts in Manchuria that a young and uneducated guerrilla wouldn't have likely known about due to Japanese censorship. Another particularly egregious example dated 1 June 1937, called Proclamation, stipulates that the Japanese are forcibly drafting Koreans to invade China and ultimately join WWII, when these did not take place until July 1937 and December 1941, respectively. They do, however, bear resemblance to his written style. This is also true of his later works, with only a handful of pieces that appear to have been ghostwritten for him. Suh Dae-sook attributes the lack of a ghostwriter to an identifiable writing style that has consistently matured and the fact that few of his subordinates have lasted in North Korean politics for such a long period of time without being subject to purges. Occasionally, Kim is given notes on technical subjects, but both the policies and texts are of his own making.
Many of the later writings, too have gone through edition in subsequent publications to match the political situation, typically by removing references to the roles of the Soviet Union and China in early North Korean politics, and by removing names of purged officials.
The English editions, published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, as Kim Il-sung Works, Kim Il-sung Selected Works, and Kim Il-sung Complete Works have reached volume 50, eight, and seven, respectively. Volume seven of Selected Works was never published in English.
Kim was most prolific when writing about the North Korean economy, but his most impactful works tend to be on the management of the Workers' Party of Korea. He did not write as much on international relations, of the Korean reunification, save for "constant and perfunctory" references in his many speeches. The military of North Korea is also underrepresented in his writings, although many additional works pertaining to it might exist but be restricted. Kim's 1967 speech On the Immediate Tasks in the Direction of the Party's Propaganda Work in the aftermath of the Kapsan Faction Incident, is considered one of his most important ones, but remains likewise restricted.