This article, and especially its title, is extremely misleading.  Kim Il Sung was a guerrilla fighter AGAINST the Japanese in northern China, winning accolades as a part of the Chinese communist army before taking over north Korea.  Leaders of North Korea in the early days were chosen based on their loyalty to the communist party.<p>It may be true that the DPRK copied items of propaganda from Japan.  But to say that the DPRK was based on imperial Japan is like saying the Nazi party was based on the Roman Empire (from which it lifted the eagle symbol), or worse yet, the Indo-European civilization (from which it took the swastika).  Certain design elements and terminology were probably copied, but they were taken for practical purposes and had little to do with ideology.