Today North Korea celebrates Kim Jong Il’s birthday: known as the "Day of the Shining Star." In this article, I will try to briefly outline the history of these holidays as its leaders have changed, and the birthday of the man whose ideas served as a prototype for North Korea: Joseph Stalin.
Stalin’s actual birthday was December 18 (or December 6 in the official Julian calendar of the Russian Empire) although he later changed it to December 21: the anniversary of a 1905 uprising in Moscow. This was the day which was celebrated in the USSR.
Today North Korea celebrates Kim Jong Il’s birthday: known as the "Day of the Shining Star." In this article, I will try to briefly outline the history of these holidays as its leaders have changed, and the birthday of the man whose ideas served as a prototype for North Korea: Joseph Stalin.
Stalin’s actual birthday was December 18 (or December 6 in the official Julian calendar of the Russian Empire) although he later changed it to December 21: the anniversary of a 1905 uprising in Moscow. This was the day which was celebrated in the USSR.
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Fyodor Tertitskiy is a leading researcher at Seoul’s Kookmin University. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Seoul National University and is the author of several books on North Korean history and military in English and Korean.