Eternal leaders of North Korea
title given to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il posthumously
The eternal leaders of North Korea or eternal leaders of Korea (officially the eternal leaders of Juche Korea) are honorary titles that are posthumously bestowed upon deceased leaders of North Korea. The phrase was used in a line of the preamble to the Constitution, as amended on June 30, 2016, and in subsequent revisions.
It reads (in the original version):
Under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Korean people will uphold the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung as the eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Comrade Kim Jong Il as the eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [...]
History of the title
Presidency of North Korea before 1994
The post of "President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea" was established in the Constitution of North Korea in 1972. Until then, Kim Il Sung held the posts of premier and general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea.
In 1972, the presidency was established, and Kim Il Sung was elected to the position by the Supreme People's Assembly, the North Korean legislature, on December 28, 1972. Kim served as president until 1994 when he died, and the position was left vacant and his son and successor Kim Jong Il was not given the title.
"Eternal President"
The preamble of the Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as amended on September 5, 1998, reads:
Under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Korean people will hold the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung in high esteem as the eternal President of the Republic [...]
The president was the de jure head of state of North Korea, but whose powers were exercised by the "sacred leader" of the nation's state ideology called Juche. According to Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills, this amendment to the preamble was an indication of the unique North Korean characteristic of being a theocratic state based on the personality cult surrounding Kim Il Sung. In addition, North Korea adopted a Juche calendar dating from 1912, the year of Kim Il Sung's birth.
The 2012 constitution once again referred to Kim Il Sung as the "Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Eternal leaders of North Korea” as title given to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il posthumously. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as title given to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il posthumously. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q468325. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 1994, 1972 and 1998.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eternal leaders of North Korea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.