Talk:Eternal leaders of North Korea

Status
This is false, the "eternal president of the republic" is simply a line in the preamble of the DPRK constitution, it has no governmental status, it is not designated as a head of state, it is simply in a preamble which is as you know, non-functional text. NoJoyInMudville 15:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

It has status! I myslef worked with diplomatic notes which were addressed to the President Kim Il Sung even in 2000! 83.167.112.237 (talk) 19:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe one should add the expression "Eternal President of the Republic" in Korean ... would be nice! 80.109.117.16 12:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Added on template above. Rigadoun (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. 80.109.117.16 22:10, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Is our translation accurate? (Expert needed.)  The text we have "공화국의 영원한 주석" Google translates it out to "Republic of the eternal comment".  If we put in "Eternal President of the Republic", we get "공화국의 영원한 대통령"  Accordingly, I've tagged the text as verificaiton needed. --S. Rich (talk) 22:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Sort of. 대통령 is the president in the sense of a Obama or Lee Myeong-Bak. 주석 (主席) is a chairman and used to refer to the heads of state of the DPRK, PRC, and Vietnam. Eternal Chairman of the Republic would be more accurate but Eternal President is so embedded in popular speech I don't think it would be appropriate to change the title of the article. I'll make an edit reflecting the direct translation. Rbritt518 (talk) 22:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Page needs update
I marked this page as because Pak Pong-ju seems to have been released from office (Premier) on April 11, 2007.
 * Also, a new constitution is in effect 2009. --S. Rich (talk) 18:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Isn't this a misinterpretation?
Surely 'eternal' is an adjective, and the office is 'President of the Republic'.218.14.51.238 (talk) 08:15, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The adjective is part of the title. North Koreans would never refer to him as just "President Kim Il-sung." Rbritt518 (talk) 22:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Eternal President of the Republic will be merged with President of North Korea. RicJac (talk) 15:05, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

"Theocratic state" nonsense
North Korea does not have a state religion, as far as i know they're officially atheist even... Thus it doesn't meet any definitions of a real Theocracy. Not even slightly. (Political religion doesn't count imho, because then the soviet union and in addition any other authoritarian state would have to be called theocratic aswell.)

I suggest removing or updating that reference for now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.254.42.34 (talk) 22:12, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Title update
The page should be updated. The preamble has been changed and now there's the new title of "Eternal leader" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.117.200.160 (talk) 12:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC)


 * ✅--Obonggi (talk) 05:07, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think this was a smart move. "Eternal leaders of Juche Korea" is one phrase in the preamble of the constitution. To my knowledge, it doesn't even designate anything. It simply describes the positions of Eternal President and Eternal General Secretary. I found zero reliable sources that discuss "Eternal leaders of Juche Korea" either as a designation or a phrase (though there might be sources that cover both posthumous positions collectively under some other title). I think this should be moved back,, because the topic that the current title delimits is not notable (WP:GNG). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@TaerkastUA: I tried to find it, but I don't find anything. Only for Kim Jong-il, called the "영원한 수령" in North Korea's websites. For this, see the Constitution of North Korea (2016). Thanks. --Garam (talk) 14:10, 11 September 2017 (UTC)


 * It's an interesting issue. The original constitution mentions Kim Il-sung's title as "eternal President of the Republic", the e is lowercase, I think the title would still be as President of North Korea, just Kim holding the post indefinitely.-- Tærkast (Discuss) 21:31, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I think we need consensus here. If it boils down to two vs. two, I think we'll have to revert to the original wording, which is the last stable version, WP:TITLECHANGES. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:01, 18 October 2017 (UTC)


 * In hindsight, this article probably ought not to have been created anyway or to have been structured this way. Note that the original wording as it appeared in the 1998 constitution had "eternal" in lowercase, so the article should have been simply President of North Korea. That having been said, reverting to the previous article title wouldn't make sense as it is no longer mentioned in the constitution. The current wording in the 2016 constitution "uphold the great Comrades Kim Il Sung [and Kim Jong Il] as the eternal leaders of Juche Korea" is mentioned in exactly the same way as the previous title for Kim Il-sung in the 1998 constitution. In any event, I think the best way forward would be to move this article to President of North Korea, or merge it with List of leaders of North Korea and add the relevant information there under "Eternal leaders" or something similar.-- Tærkast (Discuss) 21:05, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Kim_Il-sung
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Kim_Il-sung. Sdkb (talk) 07:28, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

== Split "President of North Korea" from this page I believe that President of North Korea should be a separate article from Eternal leaders of North Korea. There is a lot that could be written under that article such as the history of the office and the powers that office had under the 1972 and 1992 North Korean constitutions.--Migs005 (talk) 10:53, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Seconded. Glide08 (talk) 11:30, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I think that would be appropriate. 73.71.251.64 (talk) 16:44, 1 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose, in my opinion, the article is too short for it to be split. Information about North Korea and it's politics are already pretty limited, splitting it up is unnecessary and unwieldy to maintain and edit. The Kim articles themselves already talks about their tenure, plus it might cause confusion with the President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. PyroFloe (talk) 05:33, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Support. I think it's just the opposite. Because this article has such a confusing scope, editors (like me) have been deterred from adding content about the original office. There are literally decades worth of scholarship on it, so I don't think that article would be untenable. There is no confusion with regard to President of the SPA Presidium in reliable sources, and here at Wikipedia we resolve them by using hatnotes to direct people to the article they're looking for. Split the page. Both topics are notable and a clear scope will encourage people to edit. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:48, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: With Kim Jong-un now holding an office officially translated as "President of the DPRK," both options are inadequate. I have made "President of North Korea" into a disambiguation page with a suggested red link for Kim Il-sung's living office. 73.71.251.64 (talk) 05:26, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Kim Jong-un's office is President of the State Affairs Commission, not President of the Republic. Glide08 (talk) 22:26, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This bold move leaves 106 articles pointing to the new dab. Help with fixing the errors would be appreciated.  Most of them should be fixable with one edit to Supreme People's Assembly. Certes (talk) 23:09, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Support. I agree with . I have been researching about North Korea for a while, and I could add a lot more details. I mean yeah there is not much known about North Korea but then we might discover more. Maybe just to prepare for the future? Janok(talk) 14:47, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

This page doesn't pass notability
According to WP:N, an article needs:

"Sources should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability. There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected." The sources for this article are another Wiki, which is WP:NOTSOURCE, and a book with a very trivial mention of "eternal leaders". If this doesn't have secondary sources (which it doesn't), than it should be removed.Stix1776 (talk) 12:36, 16 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Note to other readers: see the deletion discussion above, I provided a few news sources that discuss the title in the context of legitimization of succession and the North Korean cult of personality. toobigtokale (talk) 11:55, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment: Seems to me that the idea of “Eternal Leader/President/Chairman” being a de jure title is encroaching on WP:OR territory. I cede that anecdotally it certainly seems to be utilized as a de facto title. However, my point is that as passing line “in remembrance of” doesn’t seem to equate to a legitimate ‘title’ or ‘position.’ Calling it a “posthumous award” is really pushing it.
 * All that being said, I’m hardly an expert in North Korean politics and culture. If enough secondary sources back the article as-is, then fine. It does contextualize the NK cult of personality a bit. Otherwise, I would argue that this article should be deleted and amalgamated into the Constitution of North Korea article. MWFwiki (talk) 13:36, 13 February 2024 (UTC)