Hongtaoshanzi Battle Won by Guerrilla Tactics called Mangwon

President Kim Il Sung was the ever-victorious, iron-willed brilliant commander who defeated the Japanese imperialist army by using the superb guerrilla strategy and tactics during the arduous anti-Japanese armed struggle.

Chairman Kim Jong Il said:

"Comrade Kim Il Sung created unexcelled military strategies and guerrilla tactics, believing that an enemy superior in terms of military technology could be prevailed over by means of political, ideological, strategic and tactical superiority, and he inflicted death on and struck terror into the Japanese aggressor army at every step by dint of his adroit military tactics of appearing from out of nowhere and disappearing again."

During the anti-Japanese armed struggle, President Kim Il Sung created the original strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare and always took the initiative in a lot of battles with extremely subtle art of command, thus inflicting serious defeat on the Japanese aggressor army.

Arduous March can be said as the comprehensive test for all the strategy and tactics created during the guerrilla war.

During the days of Arduous March, the President employed a guerrilla tactics called Mangwon to turn Hongtaoshanzi into the "Punch Bowl" for the enemy and won the battle.

Mangwon means causing a fight for the enemy to grapple with each other and slipping out to see what happens from the distance.

It was in the late January, Juche 28(1939) that the guerrilla unit led by the President arrived near Hongtaoshanzi, Changbai County, China, overcoming all sorts of hardships.

It was the high mountainous area covered with thick forest and the top of the mountain reminded people of a sea of forest.

When the guerrilla unit found itself near Hongtaoshanzi, a group of enemy who tried to find out the track of the headquarters appeared again and followed it.

If they didn't put the enemy off the scent at the right moment, the greater number of the enemy would concentrate on the guerrillas, which would lay bigger obstacles to their march.

President Kim Il Sung decided to throw the enemy off the track by using the favorable topographical conditions and ordered the unit to march along the hillsides of Hongtaoshanzi.

It got dark when the guerrilla unit made two rounds of Mt. Hongtaoshanzi.

Then, a great number of the enemy appeared far in the forward direction and marched towards them. There was the enemy in the back who followed them for several days and the new one in the front, thus making the situation extremely critical.

The President told the guerrillas to secretly slip aside on a fallen tree by using the inky blackness that made it impossible to recognize its own side and advance into the sharply pressed secluded place to the northeast.

When the enemy following the guerrilla unit all the time found the unit approaching in the darkness, they thought as if the unit of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army had launched a counterattack against them and began to fire first. The latter took a heavy toll unexpectedly and fired away at the former.

They didn't recognize that the opponent was their own side and opened fire on each other fiercely, which was really do-or-die fight.

They fought like dogs firing machine guns for about an hour and after seeing wholesale corpses, they felt dumbfounded by the fact that they fought against their own side.

Driving the tenacious Japanese imperialist army into the deep valley of Mt. Hongtaoshanzi that was turned into a "Punch Bowl" for the enemy, the unit of the KPRA took a good rest in the nearby forest and started to march again next day.

The victory of Hongtaoshanzi battle under the command of President Kim Il Sung demonstrated the might and adroit tactics of the KPRA to the world and dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese aggressor army that made frantic efforts to "suppress" the headquarters of the KPRA.