Suh Dae-sook, a pioneering scholar of North Korean studies who wrote one of the most authoritative biographies of founding leader Kim Il Sung, died last week at the age of 90.

Born in Manchuria in 1931, Suh spent his childhood years in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, the same place where Kim Il Sung was fighting his guerilla role against Imperial Japan. 

Suh lived through World War II, the division of Korea, the rise of communism in China and the Korean War — witnessing the events that he would later write about as a historian.

Suh would go on