Sorry, I meant an Anti-Japanese War hero, obviously he was a public figure during the Korean War.
Of course, I think the only basis is that “Kim Il-Sung” is a nom-de-guerre that many Korean guerillas used (his birth name was Kim Song-Ju) and as guerillas using false names, there was some level of secrecy and transience against a genocidal foe that makes attribution more difficult, but fundamentally you’re right that that doesn’t mean no other veterans knew him during the war (many did), nor do I think there was ever anyone with the DPRK who claimed he was a pretender in that manner, it was just the pet project of a South Korean conspiracy theorist that for a period was taught as fact but later abandoned.
Sorry, I meant an Anti-Japanese War hero, obviously he was a public figure during the Korean War.
Of course, I think the only basis is that “Kim Il-Sung” is a nom-de-guerre that many Korean guerillas used (his birth name was Kim Song-Ju) and as guerillas using false names, there was some level of secrecy and transience against a genocidal foe that makes attribution more difficult, but fundamentally you’re right that that doesn’t mean no other veterans knew him during the war (many did), nor do I think there was ever anyone with the DPRK who claimed he was a pretender in that manner, it was just the pet project of a South Korean conspiracy theorist that for a period was taught as fact but later abandoned.