Kim Il-Sung
By the late 1950s and during the 1960s and the 1970s, the North Korean economy preformed quite well and that many North Koreans enjoyed a higher standard of living than the South Koreans. By the 1980s however, the South started to take over. Despite this however, the North Korean economy still preformed quite well until the Fall of the Soviet Union, North Korea's biggest trading partner in 1991 where the North Korean economy declined and fell far behind the South. Kim died of a heart attack on 8 July 1994. He was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-il.