Kim Il Sung's Soviet Image-Maker By Anatoly Medetsky Staff Writer Vladimir Filonov / MT Mekler holding a Korean newspaper with a photograph of himself as a young Soviet officer with Kim Il Sung in 1945. When World War II ended, and the Korean peninsula was divided into Soviet and U.S. occupation zones, South Korean radio began reporting that the leader of communist North Korea, Kim Il Sung, was not an ethnic Korean. At a time when Koreans ached for a leader of their own after decades of Japanese subjugation, Kim's grassroots popularity appeared to be in jeopardy. The job...