On the 59th Anniversary of Chairman Kim Jong Il’s Start of Work at the C.C., the Workers’ Party of Korea

-DPRK and June 19

 On June 19, 1964, 57 years ago, Chairman Kim Jong Il of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, started working on the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

 Since then, radical turns were brought about in the work of the WPK.

 Kim Jong Il developed the Party into an ideologically integrated whole.

 In those days, when he started working on its Central Committee, leadership authority of the leaders of the ruling parties of the socialist countries was being abused and they were experiencing difficulties and hardships due to the manoeuvres by the modern revisionists. Kim Jong Il raised the Juche idea authored by President Kim Il Sung, the founder of the WPK, as the invariable guiding ideology of the WPK, and ensured that the ideological unity of the Party was strengthened in every way possible, thus transforming it into an ideologically pure entity, organizationally complete whole and integral whole in action. When the ruling parties of the socialist countries were dissolved in the late 1990s, he published several works, proving the scientific accuracy and truthfulness of socialism, so as to make the WPK hold high the banner of socialism.

Kim Jong Il developed the WPK into one which has a firm mass foundation.

 He ensured that it became a motherly party which assumed the responsibility for the destiny of the masses of the people and took care of them. Regarding “The people are my God” as his motto, he led all Party organizations and officials to go among the masses to share good times and bad with them, lend their ears to their demands and make devoted efforts for them so as to make the WPK’s policies and lines reflect the demands and aspirations of the people. Thanks to his benevolent and all-embracing politics, the WPK achieved the single-hearted unity of the leader, Party and people for the first time in history and turned the whole society into a large harmonious socialist family.

 As a result, the WPK was developed into a party which took root deep among the masses of the people, an invincible party enjoying absolute support and trust from the people.

Kim Jong Il made the WPK acquire the ever-victorious leadership mode.

 In the wake of collapse of socialism in several countries of the world in the 1990s, the allied imperialist forces imposed vicious sanctions to stifle and isolate the DPRK. In the face of the harshest-ever trials, he administered the unique Songun politics as the basic political mode of socialism and the leadership mode of the WPK, firmly safeguarding the sovereignty and dignity of the country from the manoeuvres of the allied imperialist forces; the DPRK strengthened its self-defence capabilities in every way possible, won victory in the unprecedented anti-imperialist confrontation and struggle to defend socialism and overcame all difficulties, thus laying firm foundations for building a powerful socialist country by dint of army-people unity. His exploits in Party building are carried forward by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Every year the DPRK celebrates June 19 in the same splendid way as it does October 10, the founding day of the WPK.

-Son of Mt Paektu

  Mt Paektu is the native home of Chairman Kim Jong Il (1942-2011).

 Called the ancestral mountain of the Korean nation and the sacred mountain of the Korean revolution, it is the highest mountain in Korea, and had been uninhabited from time immemorial because of the rugged terrain features and rough weather. The “first residents” appeared in the primeval forests in the late 1930s, when Korea was under military occupation by Japan (1905-1945).

As the leadership base of the anti-Japanese armed struggle, which was being waged fiercely in the vast Manchurian plain under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, was to move to Mt Paektu, secret camps and the headquarters of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army were built in the Sobaeksu Valley.

 In this nameless place, which was surrounded by high mountains and dense forests and where the Sobaek Stream meanders, a log cabin with a roe-hoof door handle, which was smaller than other log cabins, was set up.

 In this small log cabin Chairman Kim Jong Il, who left indelible imprints in the political history of the world, was born on February 16, 1942.

 Born to the guerrillas, his life was extraordinary from the beginning; he grew up wearing clothes permeated with powder smoke, eating army rations and hearing the charge sound.

The first human reflected in his eyes was his mother in military uniform, and he grew up among the guerrillas. His first playing ground was Mt Paektu.

 Recollecting his uncommon birth and growth with deep emotion, President Kim Il Sung wrote: That Kim Jong Il is a son of Mt Paektu means that he was born of the anti-Japanese revolution as a son of the nation. He is a son of Korea who started his life and rose as a lodestar of our revolution in the embrace of the anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters.

 In the days when a new democratic society was being built in the country, where backwardness, poverty and colonial survivals were prevalent after its liberation on August 15, 1945, in the days of the Korean war between 1950 and 1953, when he learned at the table of the Supreme Headquarters the mysterious tactics of defeating the allied imperialist forces, and in the days when many factories and beautiful streets were being built from the debris after the war under the leadership of President Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il cherished a grand ambition to lead Korea to the bright future by inheriting the cause of Kim Il Sung. The poem, O, Korea, I Will Add Glory to Thee, which he wrote when entering Kim Il Sung University in the early 1960s, depicts how great his ambition was.

The period of over half a century since June 1964, when he started working at the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea after graduating from the university, was the days when he implemented the ambition.

 He developed the Juche idea, authored by Kim Il Sung, as the guiding ideology of the Korean people and the era of independence, and applied it to all the realms of his country, turning it into a country united single-heartedly, a powerful socialist country. He ushered in a golden age of art and literature, called Renaissance in the 20^th Century by the world, and opened up a heyday of construction by having numerous architectural structures built to the surprise of the world.

 In the end of last century the DPRK had to experience unprecedented economic hardships and trials owing to the harsh economic sanctions and blockade the allied imperialist forces imposed upon it by taking advantage of the collapse of several socialist countries and to the consecutive natural disasters.

 During the period, which would have brought others to their knees more than one hundred times, Chairman Kim Jong Il was always with people and soldiers. On his field guidance tours he encouraged them, sharing weal and woe with them.

 Thanks to his original Songun politics, the DPRK became a military giant, equipped not only with the state-of-the-art means of attack and defence but also war deterrent that no powerful enemy could belittle, defended its own style of socialism and made a firm springboard for building a powerful socialist country by reversing the tide.

 Kim Jong Il worked heart and soul to remove the pain of national division.

 Thanks to his will and decision, an inter-Korean summit meeting was held for the first time in the history of national division in Pyongyang in 2000, and the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration, a milestone for national reunification, was adopted.

 His external activities aspiring to independence, peace and friendship proved their justice and vitality in practice.

 Many countries established diplomatic relations with the DPRK, transcending differences in ideology and social system. The DPRK contributed to encouraging the international trend to aspire to independence, peace and friendship by expanding and developing economic and cultural exchanges and cooperation with many countries and strengthening solidarity with the progressive peoples, who aspired after independence and justice.

 The achievements of the great man, who contributed to the progress of mankind and society, will be handed down to all generations to come.

-With an Ennobling Sense of Humanity

 Chairman Kim Jong Il (1942-2011) of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was a man with a great, ennobling sense of humanity.

 It is well known that he, despite his failing health during the last years of his life, was always on tour for field guidance to provide the people with happier life until he died on a train bound for on-site guidance.

 There are a lot of anecdotes about his travels for the good of the people, which are helpful in seeing his ennobling sense of humanity.

 In March 2000 Kim Jong Il gave on-site guidance at a farm in Taehongdan County in the northern alpine region of the country. On a visit to a village, he acquainted himself with the living conditions of the ex-soldiers there who had volunteered to work at the local farm after their military service. There, he called on a newly-married couple at their home.

 Hearing from an official that the hostess was pregnant, Kim Jong Il said it was happy news, and asked how many of the wives of the ex-soldiers were going to have a baby sooner or later. Then, he warmly asked the couple to tell him whatever difficulties they had in life.

 The hostess, attracted by his warm heart, asked the Chairman to name her baby to be born soon. Giving a hearty laugh, Kim Jong Il accepted her request pleasantly.

 That evening he gave a name as she had asked. Then he took an effective measure for the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital to dispatch a mobile medical team to Taehongdan County to offer good service to expecting wives of the ex-servicemen.

 On a visit to the Ryongyang Mine in May 2009, Kim Jong Il went as deep as a cutting face to encourage the workers there.

 That day he happened to meet a woman who had been working at the mine as an excavator operator for 14 years since she voluntarily left her home in Pyongyang to work there. Seeing her, Kim Jong Il immediately noticed her sallow face. After his return, he sent a woman official of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea to the mine to learn about her condition.

 Hearing the report that she had most probably contracted an incurable disease, he, quite worried, instructed that she should be rushed to the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital for confirmation of her illness and the best possible treatment.

 Thus, the woman was put to an all-round examination at the hospital, received intensive treatment for two months under the great concern of the medical staff, and finally got full well.

 The last document he signed in his lifetime was related to the supply of fish to the people on the occasion of the New Year of 2012. It is no accidental that the Korean people, bidding their last farewell to the Chairman after his death, lamented as bitterly as they would do over the loss of their own parents, and some even tried to block the way ahead of the bier car out of their deep sorrow.

 Kim Jong Il’s sense of humanity went beyond national boundaries and nationalities.

 A huge number of ordinary people from around the world received warm care from him, including Jindallae of Palestine, the Novichenkos of Russia, and Govind Narain Sribastaba of India.

They unanimously said that Kim Jong Il was a man with a great, ennobling sense of humanity, who showed warm, genuine care for whoever his acquaintance was.