Generalissimo Kim Il Sung

July 27 this year marks the 61^th anniversary of the victory of the Korean people in the Fatherland Liberation War or the Korean war (1950-1953). Greeting the day the world people remember with emotion the achievements Generalissimo Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) made in defeating two imperialisms in one generation.

Kim Il Sung defeated Japanese imperialism which militarily occupied Korea (1905-1945) and liberated his country.

In 1925 when he was in his teens he went to an alien land, firmly determined not to return before Korea became independent. On April 25, 1932 he founded the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army, the predecessor of the present Korean People’s Army, in Antu County,Northeast China, thus, declaring the anti-Japanese war.

A showdown between the elite troops of Japan, which posed as “the leader” of Asia and one of the five military powers in the world, and the Korean guerrilla army which had neither the state rear nor the support from a regular army and was actually “a drop in the ocean” as was called by the Japanese, surpassed all established ideas.

Kim Il Sung, however, frustrated the enemy’s numerical and technical superiority by means of the political and ideological, strategic and tactical superiority. He put the one-million-strong Japanese Kwantung Army on the defensive by creating and applying skilfully his unique tactics, including rear-harassing operations, active operations of combination of large-unit activities with small-unit ones, attacking the west while sounding in the east, allurement, ambush and circular tactics.

Under his adroit command, the AJPGA dealt a heavy blow to the enemy in every battle. The Japanese army and police screamed that General Kim Il Sung employed the art of compressing space and Korea’s guerrilla army fought a war with tactics which could not be found in any books on military science.

At last the Japanese imperialists were defeated and the historical cause of Korea’s liberation was achieved on August 15, 1945.

Kim Il Sung displayed the national sovereignty and dignity to the world by defeating in the Korean war (1950-1953) the US imperialists who boasted of being “the strongest” in the world.

On June 25, 1950 the US provoked a war against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which was less than two years since its founding. It hurled into it a huge armed force over two million strong, including its ground, naval and air forces, troops of 15 vassal states, the south Korean puppet army and the remnants of the former Japanese army, and enormous amounts of war supplies worth over 73 million tons. In those days the US generals bragged that the war would be finished within a few days. The world people worried over Korea’s destiny.

However, the war ended against everybody’s expectation. The young DPRK defeated the US-led imperialist allied forces.

The miraculous victory of the Korean people was attributable to Kim Il Sung’s outstanding strategies and tactics, unique military art and adroit command.

In his radio address Go All Out for Victory in the War delivered on June 26, 1950, the next day of the start of the US armed invasion, President Kim Il Sung inspired the entire army and people of Korea to wipe out the enemy, and ordered the KPA units to switch over to an immediate and all-out counteroffensive. True to his order the KPA units checked the enemy’s advance and went over to the counteroffensive several hours after the start of the war and liberated Seoul, the capital of south Korea, after three days. They liberated over 90 per cent of the territory and 92 per cent of the population in the south in a little over a month.

During the war he put forth various tactics as required by the situation, such as the formation of the second front by a regular army, the strengthening of the action of striking the enemy behind, night warfare, mountain warfare, actions of surprise attacks, snipers’ and separate heavy-machine-gun teams, movements of aircraft- and tank-hunting teams, and tactics of applying direct-firing guns and attacking by torpedo boats, thus constantly annihilating and weakening the enemy. Military and technical superiority of the US was smashed to smithereens by Kim Il Sung who applied diversified and flexible strategies and tactics suited to the situation, always taking the initiative. At last the US knelt down before the Korean people.

Mark Clark, UN forces commander, who signed the Korean Armistice Agreement similar to the documents of surrender of the US, on July 27, 1953, confessed that the success of the Korean army was attributable to the talented command of General Kim Il Sung.

After the war Kim Il Sung developed the DPRK into an invincible socialist country by leading the fierce confrontation with the US imperialists to victory.

He put forward the line of simultaneously carrying on the building of the economy and defence in the early years of the 1960s when the situation on the Korean peninsula became aggravated by the moves of the US imperialists to provoke another war. He also advanced the self-defensive military line whose main contents are to train the whole army into a cadre army and modernize it, to arm all the people and fortify the whole country. Thanks to those lines, the KPA was developed into the armed force whose every member is an equal to a hundred foes, and the whole country turned into an impregnable fortress

He wisely led the service personnel and people of the DPRK to crush the constant military provocations by the US. A typical example was the Pueblo incident in January 1968.

When its armed spy ship Pueblo was captured by the KPA navy after having intruded into the territorial waters of the DPRK, the US deployed a huge armed force including a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier on the coastal waters of Korea and drove the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of war, talking boisterously about “a powerful military countermeasure” and “retaliation” just like a thief crying “Stop thief!”

At that time Kim Il Sung declared that the Korean people and army would retaliate for the “retaliation” of the enemy and return an all-out war for an all-out war and saw to it that the KPA was fully prepared for combat.

Suppressed by his matchless courage and grit, the US solemnly apologized to the DPRK for the espionage and hostile acts the Pueblo had committed and signed a document on assuring no more violation of the territorial waters of the DPRK by any warship in the future. As the then US President Johnson deplored, it was the first letter of apology in the history of the US.

The immortal military achievements of Generalissimo Kim Il Sung will shine for ever in the world history of the anti-imperialist struggle.