One day, when President Kim Il Sung was a middle school student, he and his teacher Shang Yue shared their views on the novel Blessing by Lu Xun.
He asked the teacher what he thought of the reason for the heroine’s tragic death from cold.
Shang Yue attributed it to poverty.
The student agreed it is true that poverty compelled her to face such a tragic fate as teacher said, but asked him if it could be the fundamental problem.
At his repeated question, the teacher was sunk in thought for a while.
‘No doubt Shang Lin meets a grievous death on the snow-covered road on New Year’s Eve when others celebrate merrily, while begging for food as she has no money,’ the teacher thought.
Then he asked the student:
“What then is your opinion?”
Kim Il Sung said he thought that the root cause was the exploiter society which causes poverty and treats human beings as less than animals.
He then referred to the miserable plight of hundreds of millions of Korean and Chinese peoples who were being oppressed by a handful of ruling and exploiting classes. He continued:
“I think that in order to radically eliminate such a tragic fate of human, we should reform society fundamentally and make it free from exploitation and oppression.”
The teacher was very surprised as he listened to him who drew a conclusion on the basis of keen scrutiny of social phenomena.
The view that the root cause of all social evils and misfortune lies in the social system itself was a new point none of his many students had ever discovered. Shang Yue looked at Kim Il Sung with great admiration.
