Elixir of Life

When a Korean People’s Revolutionary Army (KPRA) unit left Nanhutou in China for Mt Paektu in Korea under the command of General Kim Il Sung, it planned to make a major stopover in Mihunzhen on the Mudanling Mountain Range, where there was a secret rear base of the Independent 1st Division of the KPRA.

On the way to Mihunzhen the unit happened to meet some soldiers of the 1st Company of the 1st Regiment of the division. 

The soldiers tried to dissuade the unit from going to Mihunzhen, saying that it was rife with typhoid fever.

Everyone knew well through their life experience in guerrilla zones how dangerous and horrible typhoid fever was. 

They added that even company commander Choe Hyon had been ill with typhoid fever for several weeks. But Kim Il Sung headed for the secret camp, saying that when the steel-like soldier was suffering from the disease, it was all the more necessary for him to go and see him.

As soon as he got to the secret camp, he immediately went to the barracks which housed over 50 fever patients including Choe Hyon.

Choe Hyon, reduced to a bag of bones by then, crept out and cried to Kim Il Sung that he should not come in, but Kim Il Sung went up to Choe and took his hands he had withdrawn under a blanket. 

Seeing this, all the patients broke into tears.

The power of Kim Il Sung’s warm comradeship became an elixir of life and saved the patients from jaws of death.