Kim Il Sung was born on the same day the Titanic sank, 15 April 1912! He and his family defected to China when the Japanese Empire took over Korea as his parents were openly against Japan. He became interested in communism while in China. He led a lot of missions in Japanese controlled Korea with his own Chinese union and it was no surprise that after an explosion on a railway track that Japan decided to invade China. Kim escaped to the Soviet Union where he fought on the Soviet side in World War 2. He was appointed leader of the Korean Communist Party and leader of North Korea following the Surrender of Japan. Other than starting the Korean War, Kim Il-Sung built of a cult of personality, became president and supreme leader of North Korea and created his own ideology called Juche (elf reliance). Romanian dictator, Ceausescu was one of his biggest fans. Before his death from a heart attack in 1994, he appointed his son Jong Il to be his successor. His birthday called the Day of the Sun and is a North Korean holiday, celebrated exclusively in North Korea.

Kim Jong Il was born in a town in Vyatskoye in the Soviet Union on 16 February 1941 (even though North Korean cult of Personality states Mount Paektu and in 1942 but NK's biographies are unreliable). Much like his father, he had his own cult of personality like how his birth turned winter into spring (that is from his NK bio). He became the second supreme leader of North Korea in July 1994 following his father's death. Although he signed an agreement to disarm the country's nuclear weapons, he failed to vow to those wishes.
He was known for wearing sun glasses and jumpsuits. He also kidnapped a South Korean actress and her ex-husband to make some rather anti-capitalist and low budget films for him in 1978 but they fled from him 1988.
Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack in December 2011 like his father and was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Un. North Korean state media stated that upon his death, the ice on Mount Paektu cracked and the sky glowed red. He and his father were both embalmed and are on display in North Korea's capital Pyeongyang.