Astatue of Kim Il-sung stands on the campus of Yuwen High School in Jilin city, Northeast China's Jilin province. Nearby, a classroom preserved from his student days serves as a reminder of a little-known chapter in the shared history of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Nearly a century later, the school remains closely connected to its northern neighbor. Since 1960, Yuwen High School has maintained a sister-school relationship with Changdok School in Pyongyang. In 2011, it welcomed 30 students from the DPRK.
For the school, the friendship between China and the DPRK is not merely a matter of diplomacy. It is woven into the school's own history.
The young student
The story begins in 1927.
Amid war and political upheaval, Kim Il-sung (1912-94) moved with his family to northeastern China. Following a recommendation, he enrolled at the newly established Yuwen High School.
"At that time, our school was an important center for the dissemination of Marxist thought and a focal point of anti-feudal activism," explains Xiu Haixia, deputy secretary of the school's Party Committee.
Founded in 1917 under the influence of China's New Culture Movement, the school quickly gained a reputation for its progressive spirit. When Kim studied there, Ma Jun, the first member of the Communist Party of China from Jilin province, was on the faculty and filled the school library with revolutionary literature.
In 1929, Kim met Shang Yue, a Chinese-language teacher who had recently arrived at the school. Together, they read the works of Lu Xun and Maxim Gorky, explored the foundations of Marxist-Leninist theory, and discussed the future of the Chinese and Korean revolutionary movements.
More than two decades later, Kim returned to China in 1953 as the leader of the DPRK (1948-94), becoming one of the earliest foreign leaders to pay an official visit to the newly founded People's Republic of China.
During the visit, he asked then-Premier Zhou Enlai to help locate his former teacher Shang Yue, who was teaching at Renmin University of China. The Chinese government subsequently designated Kim's former classroom at Yuwen as the "Comrade Kim Il-sung Memorial Study Room".
Today, photographs from his student years remain on display there. Many original details have been carefully preserved, and even the desks and chairs have been re-created to reflect the original setting.
In 1960, Yuwen High School and Changdok School in Pyongyang formally became sister schools. Changdok had been founded by Kim's grandfather, and Kim studied there from 1923 to 1925. Exactly how the partnership between the two schools was first established remains unclear.
Yet, the relationship soon deepened. In 1964, when Yuwen restored its original name after a period as Jilin No 22 Middle School, Changdok sent a commemorative banner to mark the occasion. That same year, Yuwen erected a 2.1-meter bronze statue of Kim, which was restored in 1970 and rebuilt in 1986.
Since 1964, Yuwen has hosted more than 100 official and civilian delegations from the DPRK. The school's first visit to the DPRK took place in 1974, and by 2018, it had completed 19 exchange visits
