History adorned with Songun leadership

The life of President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) who was a great statesman of the world in the 20^th century, is the history adorned with the Songun leadership.

Kim Il Sung founded the Songun idea and pioneered the independent cause with arms.

At the time when he set out on the road of revolution in his teens, it used to be a formula in the world socialist movement to build a party before an army. The preceding theory had no word of Songun. He opened an original way of Songun revolution unrestricted to any ready-made theory and formula.

The revolution means the arms and the army decides the destiny of a given nation. Only with its own powerful army, the nation can win revolution by beating the armed imperialists, and can carve out its destiny independently. This is the revolutionary principle the President expounded and the point of his idea of attaching importance to military affairs.

The idea of attaching importance to the arms and military affairs is just the Songun idea. It embodies the arms philosophy that the revolution starts, advances and emerges victorious by means of arms; and it contains the truth of revolution that the destiny of a country rests on the arms.

The President declared the founding of the Songun idea as well as the Juche idea at the historic Kalun meeting on June 30, 1930. Under the condition that there was neither a party nor home front support, he founded the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army in April 1932, defeated the Japanese imperialists by force of arms and achieved the historic cause of Korean liberation.

He developed the might and dignity of socialist Korea by the invincible military power.

Even after the liberation (August 1945), he directed primary effort to strengthening the revolutionary armed forces. In a short span of time of not less than three years after the national liberation, he developed the KPRA into the regular Korean People’s Army that had the modern services and arms on a proper scale. So in the Korean War (1950-1953) that broke out five years after the liberation, north Korea worked a miracle of defeating the US, which was boasting of its being the “strongest” in the world, and the armies of its 15 satellite countries.

After the war, he continued to strengthen the military power. He put forward the 4-point military line---turning the entire army into an army of cadres, modernizing the whole army, arming all the people and fortifying the whole land---and led the effort to thoroughly implement the line. In December 1962 he advanced the line of simultaneously carrying on the economic construction and defense built-up, and then the defense industry of north Korea made rapid progress.

As it had such a strong military power, the north Korean army and people have been full of confidence and valor in the long-standing confrontation against the US, the so-called “superpower.” In January 1968 the KPA navy captured the US armed spy ship Pueblo that invaded into the territorial waters of Korea. Then, the US set a vast amount of its armed forces on a war footing, clamoring for a “retaliation” and an all-out war. With a decisive an-eye-for-an-eye declaration Korea dampened the American spirit and made it write an apology. Now north Korea is handling the hard line of the US with the harder line with the stand that if the enemy draws out a dagger it will take a long sword, and that if the enemy points a rifle it will aim a gun. This strong attitude cannot be thought of apart from the invincible military power he had provided earlier with his Songun leadership.

The President brilliantly solved the problem of succeeding the revolutionary cause on the principle of Songun.

What is noteworthy of his history consistent with the Songun leadership is that he brought up leader Kim Jong Il to be a brilliant commander of Songun from his early years. The life of Kim Jong Il started unusually, for he was born a son of guerrillas on February 16, 1942, on Mt. Baekdu the sacred mountain of Korean revolution, amidst the gunfire of the anti-Japanese warfare. On the grim days of the Korean war in the 1950s, he stayed with President Kim Il Sung at the supreme headquarters, acquiring the qualities and traits of a future brilliant commander at the operation table.

During his unusual boyhood he keenly felt that Songun was the fundamental factor of the successful Korean revolution that overcame al the trials, and made a firm resolution to defend and accomplish with arms the revolution which had been pioneered with the arms. His on-the-spot guidance to a KPA unit on August 25, 1960, was the beginning of his Songun leadership. Under his leadership the military power of north Korea has further strengthened.

The north Korean army and people have long regarded him as the great successor to the Songun cause. When President Kim Il Sung was alive, Kim Jong Il was appointed the Supreme Commander of the KPA (December 24, 1991)  and elected the chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission (April 9, 1993). As the President creditably solved the problem of succeeding the Songun cause, the north Korean army and people could adhere to the banner of socialism with a firm confidence under the severest hardship and open a new era of building a great prosperous powerful socialist state under the leadership of Marshal Kim Jong Il.