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Correspondent
On September 9, 1948, the DPRK, the first people’s democratic state in the East, was founded. Korea was turned into a colony of Japanese imperialists (1905-1945).

Kim Il Sung, hero of the Korean nation, waged an arduous anti-Japanese struggle for 15 years to win back the country. In August 1945, Korea was liberated by the general attack of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army led by him and all-people resistance.

After liberation, he led the people to build a new Korea in which exploitation and oppression were abolished and all the working people could lead a happy life.

Such democratic reforms as agrarian reform, law on nationalisation of major industries and law on gender equality were put into force; this enabled the peasants to become owners of land, the workers to become masters of their factories, and the women to be fully-fledged masters of society.

People who had been oppressed and exploited for thousands of years became masters of the country, many of them being elected deputies to power organs.

The founding of the DPRK constituted a new, brilliant page of the history of the Korean people’s struggle for building an independent and sovereign state.

The history of 70 years of the DPRK was beset with continuous trials and difficulties; the road to independence that the country had chosen was never plain sailing, typical challenges being the fierce Korean war (1950-1953), war threat which has lasted for scores of years, and extreme economic difficulties in the late 1990s caused by the imperialists’ manoeuvres to isolate and stifle the country. Such were very difficult to overcome.

Nevertheless, the Korean people never gave up their choice, overcame all the challenges facing the country, and turned the country into a powerful state, independent in politics, self-supporting in the economy and self-reliant in national defence, a power admired by the world.

Korea, a backward, colonial agrarian country in the past, realised the epochal task of socialist industrialisation in such a short span of 14 years.

It also built self-supporting national economy, composed of powerful heavy industry which is capable of manufacturing state-of-the-art equipment like artificial satellite and CNC machine as it wanted, modern light industry and other branches.

The Seventh Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea held in 2016 set out the goal of transforming the country’s economy into a knowledge-based economy by putting it on a Juche-oriented, modern and IT footing. The Third Plenary Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee of the WPK held in April this year advanced a new strategic line of concentrating the whole strength of the country on socialist economic construction.

In the people-centred socialist country, in which people are the masters of everything and everything serves them, such national measures for the people have been put into force as free medical care and universal free compulsory education, and building houses at state expense.

Before liberation, there was not even one university, and the country had only a dozen scientists and technicians; now the country has developed into a civilised state with hundreds of universities and more than one million intellectuals, and there is no illiterate person. It is the only tax-free country in the world. The human rights of the working people are fully guaranteed, and the country has become a large harmonious family, in which all the people help and lead one another forward.

The Korean people, who had been subjected to the fate of colonial slavery, directed their first and foremost efforts to strengthening their national defence capabilities. Through the scores of years of arduous efforts, they have built up their defence capabilities with which they can repulse any aggressive forces. Now, it has attained the status of a strategic nation recognised by the whole world.

That the country, which has a small territory and population and where backwardness and poverty prevailed, achieved such a status in only 70 years is ascribable to the guidance by its leaders. President Kim Il Sung and General Kim Jong Il were great persons whom the world still admires and respects boundlessly. Today Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, an outstanding political leader in modern ages, is enjoying the attention of the whole world.

His lead in the creation of a peaceful environment on Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia is striking the world with admiration. The DPRK will surely shape a more splendid future under his leadership.

The Social Root of the DPRK

Assisting the army and helping the people – these expressions widespread in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are a crystallisation of the reality of the country, where the unity in ideology and fighting mettle between the army and people has been realised and socialism is safeguarded by dint of its might.

The people assisting the army and the army helping the people is a traditional trait of the country.

President Kim Il Sung, founder of socialist Korea, put forward in the period of the anti-Japanese armed struggle the ideology of the great army-people unity, as expressed in the slogan: “As fish cannot live without water, so guerrilla cannot live without the people.”

Since then, the trait began to strike its root.

The Korean guerrillas achieved the cause of national liberation through a do-or-die struggle against the strong Japanese army, although they enjoyed no state support nor assistance from a regular army, and the Korean army shattered the myth of the “mightiness” of the enemy and won victory in the fierce Korean war, as they helped the people sincerely and the people assisted them self-sacrificingly.

The trait based on the great army-people unity is displayed on a higher stage at present.

The Korean People’s Army has put forward many slogans, one of them being “Let us take upon ourselves both national defence and socialist construction!”

This slogan demonstrates its ennobling character as a defender of the people and creator of their happiness, as well as its will to take the lead in economic construction.

The army is now playing the vanguard role in the political, economic, cultural and other fields in the country.

Its role as a pacesetter and activities as a shock force in economic construction is not confined to labour assistance. What is most important is that it plays the vanguard role in achieving oneness in ideology and fighting spirit; in other words, it ensures that all members of society learn from its revolutionary and militant ideology and fighting spirit.

In the process of this, the unity is realised of ideology and fighting spirit of the army and the people, and this unity becomes the most revolutionary and solid one, incomparable and unbreakable – this is the ideology of the great army-people unity.

It can be said that the army and the people with same ideology and fighting spirit are closer than their respective kinsman. This relationship is a source of their strength with which they overcome any difficulties.

The relationship between the army and the people helping each other has developed into the unity of their mental and moral traits and action.

The service personnel are doing the lion’s share in the projects, large and small, all aimed at promoting people’s well-being, like building power stations, livestock farms, fish farms, modern bases for cultural and leisure activities, and even laying out people’s neighbourhoods.

Typical example is the world-class Ryomyong Street, which was built in less than one year by dint of the army-people unity.