The Sobaeksu Valley is located in the dense primitive forest at the foot of Mt Paektu, Samjiyon city, Ryanggang Province in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

From time immemorial, the valley had been an uninhabited place. But today it witnesses an endless stream of Korean and foreign visitors, for there is the native home of Chairman Kim Jong Il, who was born on February 16, 1942.

Around the time he was born, the valley served as the strategic centre of the Korean revolution true to the idea of Kim Il Sung, Commander of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army, that the Korean revolution should be accomplished through the efforts of the nation and his strategy and tactics that the overall revolution should be brought to an upsurge by building the Paektusan Secret Camp, the strategic base of the revolution, in the motherland and by expanding the anti-Japanese armed struggle to the homeland.

Kim Il Sung also chose Mt Paektu in order to give hope of national liberation and fighting spirit to the Korean people and kindle the fierce flames of the liberation struggle with the mountain, which the Korean nation had worshipped from time memorial, as a base of struggle.

Under his seasoned leadership, a new form of secret base was built in Mt Paektu, and it became the centre of the Korean revolution from the second half of the 1930s to the first half of the 1940s.

In those days the Korean revolutionaries kept the camp’s location strictly confidential, so later nobody knew the location of the secret camp, Kim Jong Il’s native home in particular.

In 1986 President Kim Il Sung personally found the location of Kim Jong Il’s native home, which had nearly been buried in oblivion.

It was thus restored to its original state.

Hanging in the room of the log cabin are portraits of President Kim Il Sung, Chairman Kim Jong Il and anti-Japanese war heroine Kim Jong Suk; displayed on a desk are a sectional Korean map, a wooden pistol and a pair of binoculars.