Attracted by Kim Il Sung who treated him as an old friend, he asked him to visit his country.
Kim Il Sung accepted his sincere request. His visit was slated to be made on the occasion of the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Bandung Conference (The 1st conference held In April 1955, representatives from twenty-nine governments of Asian and African nations gathered in Bandung to discuss peace and the role of the Third World in the Cold War, economic development, and decolonization).
Unfortunately, Kim Il Sung contracted an illness prior to his departure for Indonesia and a complicated situation was created in Southeast Asia. Officials tried to dissuade him from the visit. But he set out on the journey to Indonesia, saying that it would be inappropriate if he postponed his visit to Indonesia when President Sukarno had invited him and visited him first, so eager to meet him.
The Indonesian President accorded Kim Il Sung unprecedentedly sincere hospitality during his visit to his country in April 1965.
He personally handled all security work for his guest and arranged grand welcoming ceremonies to honor him. He even invited him to a session of the Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly of Indonesia to which none of heads of foreign states had been invited. And he ensured that the Order of the Republic of Indonesia 1st Class was conferred upon Kim Il Sung. When he took his guest to Bogor botanical garden boasting its history spanning more than a hundred years, Sukarno showed him a rare orchid bred by the garden through hard work of scores of years and told him that he would like to name the flower Kimilsungia.
In October 1965 Indonesia was plunged into a political upheaval. Sukarno was shorn of all power and remanded in custody. Even his former friends shunned him. But Kim Il Sung remained faithful to his friendship with an obligation to him.
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In August 1968 he arranged for the DPRK ambassador in Indonesia to visit him and console him. And in 1970 when Sukarno was spending his remaining days in hospital, his condition having turned for the worse, Kim Il Sung sent the DPRK ambassador to visit and comfort him.
Recollecting his meetings and friendship with Kim Il Sung, Sukarno said that President Kim Il Sung was the greatest and most outstanding man filled with warm humanity and that the world had never witnessed such a great man as him.
M. Raihan Ronodipuro is a Master’s student in School of Public Policy & Management at Tsinghua University, China. Previously, he was awarded a Chinese MOFCOM Scholarship and earned a Master of Law in International Relations from the School of International and Public Affairs at Jilin University in China. He serves as an Associate Researcher in the Department of Politics and Security at the Center for Indonesia-China Studies (CICS). He is presently a member of the International Relations Commission at the Directorate of Research and Studies for the Overseas Indonesian Students’ Association Alliance (OISAA) 2022/2023.