A Country of Strong Independence

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is known worldwide as a country of strong independence as it always maintains the principle of independent politics, self-supporting economy and self-reliant national defense.

The DPRK has demonstrated its dignity by dint of independent politics.

When he started revolutionary struggle to liberate his country from the Japanese military occupation (1905-1945), Kim Il Sung, founding father of socialist Korea, put forward the unique line of anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution suitable to the specific conditions of Korea.

In the years after the country’s liberation when he was leading the efforts to build a new society he adopted progressive democracy of the Korean style, which was neither Soviet style nor American style, and indicated the road the country should follow in its socialist revolution and construction, with no regard for the experiences of other countries or established formula.

The line of Songun politics advanced by General Kim Jong Il who carried forward the ideas and cause of Kim Il Sung, was to all intents and purposes an independent line ensuring reliable defence of the sovereignty and dignity of the country by efforts of Koreans in today’s world, in which the moves of aggression and arbitrariness of the imperialist superpower reached the extreme.

Throughout its history, the DPRK has resolutely rejected the intervention and pressure by great-power chauvinists and kept to the independent stand, insisting that there can be big and small countries but no senior and junior ones in international relations.

Many socialist countries collapsed nearly at the same time after dancing to the tune of others, but socialist Korea was as strong as ever.

Over the recent years the DPRK launched artificial satellites in the face of the pressure of big countries as a lawful right of a sovereign state.

This fact alone demonstrated patently to the international community Korea’s strong independent stand.

The DPRK has been displaying its might as it develops a self-supporting economy.

From the initial period of building a new society Kim Il Sung held high the banner of self-supporting national economic construction. When the country was utterly laid waste in the wake of the Korean war (1950-1953) started by the US aggressors, he initiated the original line of economic construction of developing heavy industry on a preferential basis and light industry and agriculture in parallel.

Following this line, the DPRK built powerful heavy industry with the machine-building industry as the core in a short span of time and, on that basis, it rapidly developed light industry and agriculture. As a result, it performed the historic task of industrialization only in 14 years and established a comprehensive and multi-faceted economic structure.

Kim Jong Il made strenuous efforts to enable Korea’s self-supporting economy to give play to its might more powerfully by depending on cutting-edge technology.

He advanced attaching importance to science and technology as the strategic line of building a thriving nation, and energetically led the nationwide drive to break through the cutting edge. He personally organized a development team of CNC machine tools and laid the solid foundations for producing high-performance CNC machine tools.

Thanks to his leadership in the DPRK the machine-building industry, the basis of industries, was put on a modern footing; it built production lines of fibre and fertilizer fed by its abundant raw materials and based on the cutting-edge technology, and a new iron-making system using no coking coal and scrap iron; light-industry factories were updated; the arable land across the country was standardized into large ones, and new gravitational waterways and tidal flats were built, which opened sure prospects for bringing about a radical improvement in agricultural production.

The DPRK has emerged victorious with its self-reliant defence capabilities.

Kim Il Sung set the greatest store by arms from the first days of his revolutionary struggle and finally liberated the country through his successful leadership of the 15-year-long anti-Japanese armed struggle.

Although he was very busy building a new Korea, he paid primary attention to building an army; he founded the regular armed forces before he established the state and laid strong foundations for defence industry. Thanks to the strong military capabilities built up by him, the DPRK, less than two years old, inflicted a disgraceful defeat on the US, for the first time in the latter’s history, in the Korean war and defended its sovereignty and dignity.

After the war Kim Il Sung continued to direct great efforts to building up the defence capabilities. The military line of making the army a cadre army, modernizing the entire army, arming all the people and turning the whole country into a fortress and the line of simultaneous development of the economy and defence upbuilding, both advanced by him, contributed to increasing the might of the KPA and raising the defence capabilities of the country.

The incidents of the US armed spy ship Pueblo and the US spy plane EC-121 in the 1960s and many others, all caused by the US, which led to acute confrontation between the DPRK and the US, always ended in the victory of the former. This was a brilliant fruition of the line of self-reliant defence.

Towards the close of the last century Kim Jong Il’s Songun politics raised the DPRK’s defence capabilities to the highest level. After the end of the Cold War the US-led imperialists intensified aggressive moves against the DPRK. Given the situation, Kim Jong Il gave top priority to increasing the KPA’s might, political and ideological, military and technological.

Through his incessant inspection of the KPA units he maximized the KPA’s combat efficiency and foiled the enemy’s aggressive attempts at each step. He advanced the line of economic construction in the Songun era.developing defence industry on a priority basis and light industry and agriculture in parallel.

Under his Songun-based leadership the KPA developed into an invincible, powerful army, prepared for both attack and defence, and the country built up its nuclear deterrent.

Today the DPRK with a glorious 60-odd-year history as a country strong in independence is now led by Kim Jong Un. In his first formal speech in April he announced that the DPRK would follow as ever the road of independence, the road of Songun and the road of socialism.

The DPRK will shine forever as a power of independence.

 

Over 60 Years of the Development of Science

and Technology in Korea

 

Before its liberation in 1945, Korea remained a backward colonial semi-feudal society and lagged far behind in modern technical civilization as it did not go through an industrial revolution.

When the country was liberated from Japan’s military occupation, its science and technology were in a woeful state. There were few specialists and technicians for restoring blast furnaces and factories the Japanese destroyed when they were fleeing.

Kim Il Sung, founder of socialist Korea, found out them one by one and trained them into the pillars of the building of a new society. At the same time, he vigorously pushed ahead with the construction of Kim Il Sung University and other educational institutions in order to bring up scientists and technicians of working people origin.

He had research institutes, experimental stations and test and research laboratories built first for solving urgent problems arising in the building of a new society and the scientific research institutions expanded gradually in keeping with the demands of the developing realities. Under his leadership a fisheries research institute, the central mining research institute and many other scientific research institutions as well as scores of experimental stations were organized in various fields of the national economy after the liberation.

In October 1946 he convened a meeting of scientists and technicians, the first of its kind in Korea, to inspire the scientists and technicians with zeal for nation building and encourage them to turn out actively in the struggle for the building of a new society.

During the grim days of the Korean war (1950-1953) ignited by the US he put forward the proposal for the establishment of the Academy of Sciences, though he was very busy leading the service personnel and people to victory, shouldering the heavy burden of war. Pursuant of his proposal, a meeting of scientists was held in the flames of war, resulting in the founding of the Academy of Sciences (the present State Academy of Sciences) on December 1, 1952.

The founding of the academy marked a turning point in the development of science and technology in Korea. It provided the country with a reliable base to push ahead with its science and technology in a unified and coordinated way.

He gave field guidance at the academy on scores of times, illuminating the way ahead of it in each period and at each stage. Regarding scientists and technicians as the most precious treasures of the country, he took all necessary steps for the development of the country’s science.

The founding of the State Academy of Sciences and the laying of a firm foundation for developing the country’s science and technology onto world standards in a short period of time is one of the most distinguished exploits he performed on behalf of his country and people.

Korea’s science and technology which had constantly developed under the leadership of President Kim Il Sung greeted a heyday of their development under the guidance of General Kim Jong Il.

The smaller a country is, the greater efforts it must pay to developing science and technology, and develop them up onto the advanced world level by running 10 and 100 steps while others take one–this was his view and determination.

He set forth the attitude toward science and technology as a key question decisive of the destiny of the country and socialist cause, in keeping with the demand of the times when the significance of science and technology has increased and fierce competitions are waged among countries in the field of science and technology.

He visited the State Academy of Sciences in April 1995 and solved all the urgent problems arising in the development of the country’s science and technology. He made energetic efforts to bring up to the highest level all the branches of science and technology including basic sciences, electronics, information technology and bioengineering and development of new materials. In the closing years of the last century when Korea was experiencing the most trying ordeals, he had precious fund left of the country allocated to the development of CNC technology. This clearly shows how much prominence he gave to science and technology. Thanks to his tireless efforts, Korea could secure world supremacy in CNC technology.

His guidance over science and technology was geared to breaking through cutting edge not only in CNC technology but also all other branches of science and technology.

The successful launching of Korea’s first artificial satellite in August 1998 was a great demonstration of the validity and vitality of Kim Jong Il’s idea of attaching importance to science and technology.

Regarding the policy of attaching importance to science and technology as one of the three pillars for building a thriving nation in Korea, he always paid a close attention to the work of the State Academy of Sciences and set out new targets for the development of science.

When he visited the State Academy of Sciences in January 1999 as the first leg of his field guidance tour in the new year, he advanced a new task of rapidly developing the country’s cutting-edge science and technology and took necessary measures for its implementation.

He visited the Hamhung Branch of the State Academy of Sciences several times. While giving field guidance at the Bioengineering Branch in 2011, he highly appreciated the success the scientists had achieved and set new targets for them.

Enjoying his great affection and trust, the State Academy of Sciences, the highest institute of science, actively leads the development of the country’s science and reliably supports the building of a thriving socialist country with science and technology as required by the era of knowledge-based economy.

Marshal Kim Jong Un inherits the idea of President Kim Il Sung and General Kim Jong Il of attaching importance to science and technology. In his speech at the military parade held to celebrate the centenary of Kim Il Sung’s birth in April 2012, he said that single-hearted unity and invincible military might plus the industrial revolution in the new century are a thriving socialist country.

Amid the industrial revolution in the new century spreading throughout the country, Korea’s science and technology will register more brilliant successes.