Day of the Shining Star
Kim Jong-il was born in February 1941 to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-suk in Siberia in the Russian Federal Republic, Soviet Union where his father had been in exile because of his guerilla activities. North Korean propaganda, however, dates Kim Jong-il's birth to 16 February 1942 and locates it at the Mount Paektu area in Korea, the mythical place of origin of the Korean people, where Kim Il-sung supposedly ran a guerilla camp. In reality, the guerillas were based in Manchuria at the time and Kim himself had been to the Soviet Far East before and after Kim Jong-il's birth.
Kim Hong-il (general)
However, Japanese secret police were increasingly active in Northeast China hunting down Korean partisans, and for his own safety Kim left the region and went to Shanghai. In 1926, he joined the Republic of China's National Revolutionary Army. His second son Kim Yong-jae was born around this time. He participated in the Northern Expedition, and was later stationed at Wusong Fort and then the . While assigned to the latter post, at the request of Kim Koo of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, he provided Lee Bong-chang and Yun Bong-gil with the bombs used in 1932 in the Sakuradamon assassination attempt against Emperor Hirohito and the Hongkew Park attack on Japanese troops which killed General Yoshinori Shirakawa of the Shanghai Expeditionary Army. During the Shanghai War of 1932, he served as an intelligence officer with the 19th Route Army. In 1934, he was reassigned to the Luoyang branch of the Republic of China Military Academy, where he was in charge of a special course for Korean officer candidates in the ROC army.