The Kumsusan Palace of the Sun (Korean: 금수산태양궁전), formerly the Kumsusan Memorial Palace (금수산기념궁전), is a building near the northeast corner of the city of Pyongyang that serves as the mausoleum for Kim Il Sung, first Supreme Leader and founder of North Korea, and for his son Kim Jong Il, whose preserved bodies have been displayed publicly since their deaths in 1994 and 2011.

[6] The palace was built in 1976 as the Kumsusan Assembly Hall (금수산의사당) and served as Kim Il Sung's official residence.

Here, they are given small speaker devices that play a narration of the Korean people's grief when Kim Il Sung died.

Visitors then file into a museum room containing awards and honours given to Kim in his lifetime by foreign countries, universities, friendship associations, etc.

[20] The room has large paintings and photographs of Kim Il Sung meeting world leaders during their visits to North Korea and during Kim's trips abroad, such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong of China, Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, General Secretary and Chairman Erich Honecker of the former East Germany, Gustáv Husák of the former Czechoslovakia, Wojciech Jaruzelski of Poland, Todor Zhivkov of Bulgaria, János Kádár of Hungary, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Josip Broz Tito of former Yugoslavia, Houari Boumediene of Algeria, Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania and Yasser Arafat of Palestine, as well as several former Soviet leaders, including Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev and many other well-known people including Che Guevara and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

[citation needed] On the early morning of 8 July 1994, Kim Il Sung collapsed in Hyangsan from a sudden heart attack.

Kim Il Sung was revered as the "Eternal President," and his leadership style and ideology shaped the nation's policies and identity.

Kim Jong Il's leadership continued the legacy of his father, maintaining the same ideological and political framework, known as Juche, which emphasizes self-reliance and independence.

[22][23] Reportedly, Russian experts were brought to the mausoleum to embalm Kim Jong Il's body for permanent display in the same manner of his father and other former Communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh,[24] and Joseph Stalin (until 1961 when he was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis).

[1][25] On 16 February 2012, the 70th anniversary of Kim Jong Il's birth, the building was formally renamed the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun by a combined act of the North Korean cabinet and parliament, and the Workers' Party of Korea leadership, which was read aloud.

After months of renovations, on December 17, 2012, Kim Jong Il's first death anniversary, the palace was officially reopened to the public in a ceremony.

The preserved remains of Kim Jong Il are now shown to the public in a separate room, as well as several items related to him and documents made by him personally.

In addition to internal improvements, the palace grounds were renovated and turned into an expansive park and flower garden for the benefit of visitors.