UN
Human Rights Report on North Korea could be about the U.S. or South Korea
Global Research, February 20, 2014
Surely one could be forgiven for thinking that when the
Washington Post’s Chico Harlan (February 17) described the conclusions reached
by the UN Human Rights Commission’s investigation into North Korea that he was
really describing his own country, the United States. Harlan wrote,
“The report makes for devastating reading, laying out the way
North Korea conducts surveillance on its citizens (see Edward Snowden’s
revelations about the NSA’s spying on US citizens…and everyone else), bans them
from travel (anyone up for a visit to Cuba?), discriminates against them based
on supposed ideological impurities (has the United States ever been kind to
Marxist-Leninists?), tortures them (water boarding and Abu Ghraib) and
sometimes banishes them to isolated prison camps, where they are held incommunicado”
(recently Guantanamo and other CIA torture camps around the world to which
opponents of the US regime have been rendered, more distantly, the
incarceration of German-, Italian- and Japanese-Americans during WWII.)
The report recommends that North Korea be referred to the
International Criminal Court at The Hague, but if the charges against North
Korea are true, then surely the case for referring the United States to the
same court is at least as compelling. Add the United States’ record of extrajudicial
assassination, its world-leading rate of incarceration, its illegal wars, and
its support for the most vile human rights violators on the planet, among them
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain, and the case for referring US leaders to The
Hague is overwhelming.
The UN report says that North Korea is committing human rights
violations “without any parallel in the contemporary world,” a conclusion that
could only be reached by wilful blindness to the human rights violations of the
United States, its democracy-abominating allies in the Gulf, and its south
Korean neo-colony. South Korea, whose affronts against human rights are passed
over largely in silence by the Western media (and it seems by the UN Human
Rights Commission too), conducts surveillance on its citizens, bans them from
travel to North Korea, discriminates against them if they hold views
sympathetic to North Korea, its official Juche ideology or Marxism-Leninism,
and uses its highly repressive National Security Law to lock up and intimidate
anyone who has a good word to say about North Korea.
The UN report can hardly be taken seriously. It is a transparent
effort to discredit a government that has, for more than half a century, been
in the cross-hairs of a US program of military intimidation, economic warfare,
diplomatic isolation and ideological assault, targeted for regime change for
rejecting participation in a US-superintended global capitalist order. More
than that, by passing over regimes that do what North Korea is accused of
doing, it sanitizes the behavior of the United States and its allies,
buttressing the ideological fiction that anti-capitalist governments are
uniquely human rights violators, while upholders of global capitalism are
uniquely champions of human rights.
If a case is to be pressed to refer North Korea to the ICC, then
referrals of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea to The Hague—to
start—are long overdue. Until this oversight is rectified, it is impossible to
regard the UN report—and the western media’s coverage of it—as anything but
sops to the propaganda imperatives of US foreign policy.
UN
Report on North Korea Targets Both Pyongyang and Beijing
Global Research, February 18, 2014
The UN report on human rights in North Korea released yesterday
marks an acceleration of the US-led campaign to destabilise and ultimately
remove the Pyongyang regime. The catalogue of horrors in North Korea is
designed to stampede public opinion behind any US provocations directed against
Pyongyang, but above all to intensify the pressure on North Korea’s ally,
China.
The highly political character of the UN commission of inquiry
was underlined by the comments of its chair, former Australian judge Michael
Kirby, who declared that the repressive methods of the North Korean regime were
“strikingly similar” to the crimes of Nazi Germany. He likened North Korean
prisons to the Nazi concentration camps in which millions of Jews, gypsies and
political prisoners were exterminated.
Kirby’s condemnation of the North Korean regime, picked up and
amplified by the US and international media, recalls the demonisation of Serbian
leader Slobodan Milosevic as the “Serbian Hitler” prior to the 1999 NATO
bombing campaign that rained death and destruction on that country’s
population. Similarly, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was subjected to a campaign
of vilification prior to the illegal 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that
devastated the country and killed hundreds of thousands of people.
North Korea is a small, impoverished and isolated country, not
an imperialist power like Germany, which, under the Nazis, launched wars of
aggression that ravaged Europe. … …. …. However, the targeting of governments
and individuals by the UN and its associated institutions is invariably highly
selective, politically coloured and geared to the predatory interests of the
imperialist powers, above all the United States.
No one is suggesting that a UN commission of inquiry be
established into any of the crimes of US imperialism, such as waging wars of
aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq—the crime for which the Nazi leaders were
convicted at Nuremberg. Similarly, no UN investigations are under way into the
crimes and human rights abuses of US allies such as Israel or Saudi Arabia.
The lengthy report is based largely on the testimony of North
Korean refugees and exiles who provided gruesome details of their treatment
inside the prison camps. The commission of inquiry was barred from entering
North Korea.
While some of the accounts are undoubtedly true, the North
Korean exile community, particularly in South Korea, is heavily influenced by
anti-communist organisations, right-wing Christian groups and the state
apparatus, particularly the South Korean National Intelligence Service. The UN
commission of inquiry has now given its official seal to testimony from this
layer.
It is no accident that the report itself echoes the propaganda
that has emanated from Washington for years. An entire section is devoted to
“violations of the right to food,” which accuses the Pyongyang regime of
causing widespread starvation and famine, while “large amounts of state
resources… have been spent on the luxury goods and the advancement of his [the
supreme leader’s] personality cult.”
Those who should be held criminally responsible for starving the
North Korean people are above all the successive US administrations that
maintained an economic blockade of the country following the 1953 termination
of the Korean War, in which the United States killed hundreds of thousands of
Korean civilians and soldiers. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Washington systematically tightened the sanctions regime on North Korea in a
calculated effort to bring about its collapse. Any humanitarian aid came with
political strings attached. In the mid-1990s, economic sanctions compounded
food shortages caused by a string of natural disasters, leading to widespread
famine and deaths.
While the role of the US and its allies in systematically
destabilising North Korea goes unmentioned, the UN commission report does
single out China for special mention. It specifically criticises China for its
return of asylum seekers to North Korea, suggesting that it is in breach of its
obligations under international refugee laws.
China is not alone, however, in branding asylum seekers as
so-called “economic refugees” and forcibly repatriating them to face danger and
persecution. Governments in Kirby’s own country, Australia, are notorious for
the “refoulement” of refugees.
The real purpose of the accusation against China is to place it
in the dock alongside North Korea, potentially opening up Chinese leaders to
charges of complicity in “crimes against humanity.” The UN commission report
feeds directly into the Obama administration’s escalating provocations and
pressure against China throughout the Indo-Pacific region, as part of its
“pivot to Asia.”
The US is targeting North Korea in particular because it is
China’s only formal ally and acts as a buffer for China on its northern border.
A change of regime in Pyongyang to one sympathetic to Washington would further
tighten the noose of US alliances, bases and strategic partnerships around
China.
Not surprisingly, the US
State Department welcomed the UN report, saying it “clearly and unequivocally
documents the brutal reality of North Korea.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal praised the report for
“naming and shaming Pyongyang’s accomplices in Beijing.”
The editorial continued, “The report marks the first major
mention of China by name in a UN assessment of North Korea,” and concluded by
bluntly declaring, “The report’s findings underscore that Western policy should
focus on squeezing the regime with a goal of toppling it.”
The trip to Asia by US Secretary of State John Kerry over the
past week signaled that the Obama administration intends to step up the
“squeeze” not only on North Korea, but China as well. North Korea topped the
agenda in Kerry’s talks with Chinese leaders. He told the media that China had
to use “every tool at their disposal, all of the means of persuasion that they
have” to compel North Korea to denuclearise.
By extending the accusations against the North Korean regime to
“crimes against humanity”, the US is effectively ruling out any compromise or
deal with North Korea and setting course for a confrontation with Pyongyang and
its ally in Beijing.
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Speech
of Kim Jong Un at Conference of Ideological Workers
|
|
Pyongyang,
February 27 (KCNA) -- Supreme leader Kim Jong Un made a speech "Let Us
Hasten the Final Victory through a Revolutionary Ideological Offensive!"
at the 8th Conference of Ideological Workers of the Workers' Party of Korea.
The full text of his speech is as follows:
In the meaningful period, when we greeted
the 40th anniversary of the proclaiming by the great Comrade Kim Jong Il of
modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism as the maximum programme of our
Party, we are holding the Eighth Conference of Ideological Workers of the
Workers’ Party of Korea.
Availing myself of this opportunity and in
reflection of the unanimous wish of all the participants in this conference
and all other members of the Party, I pay the noblest tribute to the great
President Kim Il Sung, the founder and builder of the ever-victorious
Workers' Party of Korea, and to the great General Kim Jong Il, the eternal
General Secretary of the Party.
And on the occasion of this conference I
extend, in the name of the First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea,
warm thanks and militant greetings to the participants in the conference and
all other ideological workers of the Party and primary information workers
across the country, who have worked devotedly at workplaces and military
posts, burning their hearts as buglers of the revolution and pathfinders of
the times.
This conference convened on a scale
unprecedented in the history of our Party will be a milestone of radical turn
in exalting forever the brilliance of the imperishable exploits performed by
the great President and the great General, who, holding the unfurled banner
of the Juche idea, led the Korean revolution straightforward along the road
resplendent with victory, in understanding and confirming once again the
importance of ideological work and launching a vigorous ideological offensive
as demanded by the developing revolution.
The most powerful weapon for a party that
wages a revolution shouldering people's destiny is ideology, and it is its
one and only weapon. Without ideology, a party cannot be founded nor can it
exist, and its work and revolutionary struggle are inconceivable separated
from ideological work. The bloodline of the revolution is defended and the revolution
advances on the strength of ideology.
The one and only weapon for the Korean
revolution that made its start empty-handed was a great revolutionary
ideology. The revolutionaries of Korea rallied comrades and obtained weapons
on the strength of the ideology; and on its strength they defeated
imperialist powers and built a prospering socialism. We cannot see a
revolution in the history of any country and of any party that, like our
revolution, made its start with its definite guiding ideology and has turned
ideology into a powerful force for a great struggle and transformation.
The whole course of the Korean revolution
can be called a history of ideological work to give fullest play to the might
of the truth of the revolutionary ideology of the President and the General.
In our revolution ideological work has
always been the most important work, and a great tradition of ideological
work was created in its first days.
Thanks to the wise leadership of the
President and the General, who gave definite priority to ideological work and
resolved all problems by enlisting the mental strength of the masses of the
people in the whole course of their leadership of the Korean revolution, the
revolution could etch only victory in its flag although it blazed the trail
of history. By bringing about high tides in the mental strength of the
service personnel and people, our Party has turned the trials decisive of the
victory and defeat of the revolution and its advance and setback into great
upswings of the revolution, and our revolution has achieved a great success
whenever an upswing was effected in ideological work.
The Third Conference of Ideological Workers
of the Workers' Party of Korea, which was held 40 years ago and where the
great General proclaimed modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism as the
maximum programme of our Party, is of special importance in the history of
our Party that has opened a pivotal phase of the revolution on the strength
of ideology.
That the General defined Kimilsungism as
the guiding ideology of our Party and proclaimed modelling the whole society
on that ideology as the maximum programme of our Party was a political event
that clearly indicated the road for bringing the final victory of the Korean
revolution closer and roused all the service personnel and people to
achieving it.
The historic advance for modelling the
whole society on Kimilsungism gave birth to a powerful political General
Staff that has achieved oneness in ideology and leadership for the first time
in the history of building a revolutionary party, to invincible revolutionary
armed forces that march with the red flag of the Workers' Party as its first
standard and to militant ranks united single-heartedly.
History clearly shows how a powerful
country, which is independent, self-sufficient and self-reliant in national
defence, has been built on this land where worship of big countries and
dogmatism were rooted deep and a socialist fortress created, which remains
unperturbed in the face of worldwide political upheaval and the imperialists'
vicious moves for isolation and suffocation.
Today mankind is studying the great
Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism to search for the road ahead of them. In every
place of the globe the ideology centred on the masses, the revolutionary
theory of independence, has become the spirit and banner of struggle of the
people who aspire after genuine freedom and happiness.
Endless is the glory our service personnel
and people enjoy for having waged the revolution for scores of years along
the road indicated by the great ideology and in the country which is admired
by the whole world and which gave birth to the ideology guiding the era of
independence.
To hasten the final victory of the Korean
revolution keeping up the banner of the great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism is
their faith and will and the wish of the times and history.
We must hold aloft modelling the whole
society on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism as the maximum programme of the Party
and accomplish the Korean revolution without fail on the strength of
ideology, on the strength of single-hearted unity.
The standard-bearers in the effort to model
the entire Party and the whole society on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism are
ideological workers.
The success of not only the effort to
transform all the members of society into advocates of
Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism but the effort to transform all realms of social
life as required by Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism depends on the success of ideological
work.
You should ruminate once again on the deep
reason why the General convened the conference of ideological workers and
proclaimed in front of the Party information workers from across the country
the programme of modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism.
We should spark off a struggle on the
ideological front of the Party first and heighten the intensity of
ideological work, so as to remarkably quicken the onward march of our
revolution for modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.
We have rich experiences of having
forcefully propelled the historic march for modelling the whole society on
Kimilsungism by dint of an intensive ideological offensive, and powerful
forces and means of information and motivation work with which to stir up the
whole country at once.
To hasten the final victory of the
revolution by holding higher the ideological theory of Juche, a powerful
weapon?this is the main spirit of this conference.
In view of the demands of the reality when
modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism poses itself as the
general task of the ideological work of our Party, the Party Central
Committee advances the slogan, "Let Us Hasten the Final Victory through
a Revolutionary Ideological Offensive!" before the Eighth Conference of
Ideological Workers of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Firmly believing that all the participants
in the conference and other ideological workers across the Party, aware of
their honour and responsibility as the ideological standard-bearers in the
effort to accomplish the cause of modelling the whole society on
Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism, will give fullest play to the strength of our
Party's revolutionary ideology and the inexhaustible mental strength of all
the service personnel and people, I would like to speak about some problems
arising in the sector of the Party's ideological work at present.
First of all, we should concentrate all
efforts in the Party's ideological work on firmly establishing the Party's
monolithic leadership system.
The objective of our effort to establish
the Party's monolithic leadership system across the Party and society is to
consolidate the unity and cohesion of the Party, the political General Staff
of the revolution, and its fighting efficiency in all aspects, implement the
instructions of the President and the General to the letter and realize our
people's dreams and ideals at an earlier date.
Now is a crucial period when we have to
break through the ordeals facing the revolution by rallying the service
personnel and people more firmly around the Party and channel their patriotic
enthusiasm, wisdom and resourcefulness to the utmost into stepping up the
building of a thriving country.
The ideological system and leadership
system for carrying out this historic task most scrupulously and perfectly is
none other than the Party's monolithic leadership system.
The ideological work of our Party must
naturally proceed from its basic task in the present period and direct its
main effort to implementing it.
However, Party organizations are now
revealing tendencies of paying only lip service to the work of establishing
the Party's monolithic leadership system and engrossing themselves in paper
work in this regard.
Although a Party-wide discussion of the
documents on establishing the Party's monolithic leadership system was
conducted and many study sessions, public lectures and oath-taking meetings
held, they failed to detect and crush in advance the modern version of
factionalist group which had formed within the Party.
Although there are our Party's great
revolutionary ideology and absolutely correct lines and policies, Party
organizations and excellent people, a factionalist group appeared within the
Party again. Our ideological workers are partly to blame for this.
The identity of the modern version of
factionalist group is that it was an ideologically degenerate entity which
was outwardly overcome with fear for the pressure by the imperialists and
inwardly contaminated with bourgeois ideology and culture.
The factionalist practice of challenging
the Party's monolithic leadership system originates in ideological
degeneration, and the renegades of ideology are bound to oppose the Party and
the revolution in the long run.
Imbuing the Party and revolutionary ranks
with one ideology?this is the seed and core of the effort for establishing
the Party's monolithic leadership system.
The objective of the revolutionary
ideological offensive for establishing the Party's monolithic leadership
system is to make the great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism and its embodiment, the
Party's lines and policies, an element of unshakeable conviction of the
masses of the people.
The revolutionary ideology of our Party has
accorded with the aspirations and demands of the masses at all times, and
there is no line and policy of the Party which they cannot understand and
accept.
A breakthrough should be made in the
ideological offensive by beginning with raising another strong wind across
the Party of studying to be well versed in the immortal works of the President
and the General and the documents of the Party, a library of
Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.
The works and documents are excellent
textbooks for the education in the one and only ideology and a great
encyclopaedia which comprehends our Party's lines and policies.
If they study them in a chronological order
and in a systematic way, all Party members, other working people and service
personnel can equip themselves firmly with the Juche idea, Songun idea, Kim
Jong Il's patriotism, the revolutionary traditions of our Party and class
awareness and fully understand the lines and policies newly advanced by the
Party.
What is important is to carry on the
education work in a scrupulous manner so that everybody can be well-versed in
the instructions the President and the General gave to their sectors and
units and the Party's policies and make them a creed in their work and life.
It is necessary to explain to the masses
the Party's policies for a given period in a logical and convincing way so
that they can sympathize with them and accept them as their own by
themselves. You should pay attention to informing people in easy terms of
what they are eager to know and hear on the basis of the Party's policies and
in the way you tell a thirsty person where he or she can drink water.
In the future, if everybody at a unit is as
well informed of the Party's lines and policies as they are of their family
affairs, the unit will be considered to have conducted ideological work
efficiently and established the monolithic leadership system.
"Exceptions" must never be
permitted in ideological work.
As a saying goes that even a rolling stone
may gather moss, one is bound to degenerate when treated exceptionally. There
may be some special tasks assigned by the Party, but "exceptions" cannot
exist within our Party who are allowed to neglect their ideological life and
be ignorant of its lines and policies. As for special units, ideological work
should be strengthened further and they should be made steel-strong in the
furnace of ideological struggle.
Ideological workers should be able to
discern something alien, if any, at a glance at the eyes of others. They must
use the ideological "scalpel" in time to root out the causes of
such misdemeanors as arguing over the issues decided by the Party,
undermining its leadership exploits covertly or overtly and breeding
corruption within our ranks in contravention of our Party's and class
principles.
It is important to conduct the work of
imbuing the Party and revolutionary ranks with one ideology in close
combination with the practical struggle.
Man's ideology is expressed in his practice
and its outcome, rather than in his revolutionary rhetoric or pledge. He is a
man armed with the Party's ideology as an element of his faith, who, though
seldom speaking, carries out the plans and decisions of the Party Central
Committee on the schedule set and the level demanded by it.
Endeavouring to implement the ideology of
the Party and champion its policies?this is the clearest manifestation of
one's loyalty to it and an important occasion to have the validity of its
lines and policies as an element of one's faith.
The soldier-builders, who carried out their
project on Masik Pass successfully last year, were determined to wage a
death-defying struggle not to delay even for a moment the completion date
proclaimed to the world by the Party Central Committee; they performed a
miraculous feat of completing the project in one year, which was estimated to
take ten, thus staunchly defending the prestige of the Party.
The on-site political work of the People's
Army, which was a three-dimensional and offensive-style ideological work to
inspire everyone from generals to privates with a single desire of fulfilling
their Supreme Commander's order, serves as a good example in the ideological
offensive to establish the Party's monolithic leadership system.
In implementing the instructions of the
President and the General, the Party's new line of developing the two fronts
simultaneously and its policies, all sectors and all units should make an
ideological analysis and review of their failures and the causes for them.
Then they should press on with the frontline-style information and motivation
campaign to learn from the service personnel's spirit of carrying out their
tasks even at the cost of their lives.
The main targets of the ideological
offensive for establishing the Party's monolithic leadership system are the
wrong ideological viewpoint and work attitude of the officials who give
verbal support to the Party's policies but do not implement them immediately.
It is urgent to combat the ideological
maladies of the officials who remain indifferent to the obstacles lying in
the way of implementation of the Party's policies for their own sectors,
units and regions, as well as to the difficulties facing the people in their
living. The ideological education and campaign aimed at rooting out such
undesirable ideological elements as defeatism, self-preservation, formalism,
expediency, irresponsibility and self-centredness should be conducted with an
appropriate methodology. The information and organization sectors of the
Party should be scrupulous in working in close cooperation with each other,
while the ideological campaign should be combined with legal actions to
maximize its efficiency.
The soaring mental spirit of our service
personnel and people, who, after liquidating the modern version of
factionalist group, have hardened up their determination to follow the Party
Central Committee invariably along the long road of revolution, should be
fanned to flare up into flames of a great revolutionary upsurge.
Historically speaking, great victory was
won in the Fatherland Liberation War after the purge of an anti-Party,
counterrevolutionary factionalist clique following the Fifth Plenary Meeting
of the Party Central Committee; the Chollima upswing was brought about in the
course of eliminating the August 1956 factionalist group; and world-startling
successes were achieved in the showdown with the United States and the
socialist industrialization drive after the anti-Party revisionists were
exposed and purged at the 15th Plenary Meeting of the Fourth Party Central
Committee.
The Party's ideological front should
actively encourage all Party members and other working people to follow in
their forerunners' footsteps and become standard-bearers and meritorious
workers in the struggle to champion the Party Central Committee by bringing
about a revolutionary upsurge.
If all service personnel and people,
rallied firmly around the Party, make substantial progress in socialist
construction, those who are wavering for lack of confidence will be brought
to their senses and the monolithic leadership system of the Party will be
established solidly across the Party and society.
Another important task facing the
ideological work of our Party is to raise a strong wind of ideological
campaign to give an impetus to the struggle for defending socialism.
In the present era, as in the past,
socialism represents the ideals of mankind, and it is an irreversible trend
of the times.
We are now following the untrodden path of
history as we risk the dignity of our independent people and the destiny of
socialism in the struggle to repulse the imperialists' frantic attacks. Today
the path of socialism and the inevitability of its victory depend on the
struggle of the Korean revolutionaries.
In performing this honourable mission our
Party and people have assumed for history, ideological workers, the red,
hardcore elements of the Party, should become undying torchlight and loud
bugles.
They should give Party members and other
working people a clear understanding of the essence and character of the
present struggle to defend socialism.
In the struggle we waged in defence of
socialism in the 90s of the last century, we created a historic miracle of
safeguarding our ideology and system against the allied imperialist forces'
moves to isolate and stifle our country.
The ongoing struggle to defend socialism
can be said to be aimed at prevailing over imperialism in all fields of
social life by consolidating the victories and successes achieved so far and
giving fullest play to the advantages and might of socialism.
Recently, our Party has put forward both
the agricultural and scientific fronts as outposts for defending socialism.
Its intention is to constantly remind our people that not only on the
frontline where guns are levelled at each other but also in all other places
where they live, they are engaged in invisible, fierce confrontation and
competition against imperialists. If we, resting on our laurels and praising
ourselves, do not give spur to the revolution and construction and thus fail
to bring real benefits to the people, such socialism is doomed to lose its
appeal.
We should build a thriving country at an
early date by giving fullest play to the advantages and might of socialism,
which capitalism can never imitate nor possess, so as to make socialism as
different in all respects from capitalism as heaven is from earth.
A vigorous ideological campaign should be
launched to demonstrate the might of great army-people unity on a higher
level in building a thriving country.
The solid single-hearted unity of the army
and people around the Party constitutes the cornerstone of our style of
socialism and the great foundation in building a thriving nation. The
eye-opening miracles which have been wrought recently in succession, shaking
the land, mountains and rivers throughout the country are all fruition born
of the great unity between the service personnel and people, their concerted
efforts.
The People’s Army should, in the future,
too, be the prime mover and pioneer in strengthening this great army-people
unity. It should intensify information and motivation work geared to giving
full play to the might of an army strong in ideology both in national defence
and socialist construction. Party organizations and political organs in the
army should ceaselessly create such terms of our era as the "Masikryong
speed" by carrying forward the proud history of the revolutionary army
which has proved with its indomitable revolutionary spirit that Korea's
determination is just its materialization and reality, and civilian Party
organizations should accelerate the work of learning from the revolutionary
spirit and fighting style of the service personnel.
When the time comes when we have to fight
an all-out life-and-death fight with the enemy, we should achieve its final
victory on the strength of the great army-people unity, all-people
resistance, based on the revolutionary soldier spirit.
All sectors and all units should launch a
dynamic ideological offensive so as to make the flames of collective
innovations flare up.
Our people have already gained a valuable
experience of ushering in a heyday in socialist construction through an
all-people, collective innovation movement in the 1970s, a decade of great
changes.
In the 1970s when the country was
resounding with the drumbeats of revolution and the bugle sounds for speed
campaign, they brought about grandiose creation and changes unprecedented in
the history of their country, while militarily coping with the large-scale
war exercises staged by the US imperialists. It was during those days that
our country abolished the taxation system for the first time in the world,
enforced a universal 11-year compulsory education and rendered a colossal
amount of assistance to the developing countries and the fighting peoples of
the world.
It is the intention of our Party to carry
on the building of an economic giant and a civilized state by bringing into
play the might of socialism, the might of collectivism, as in the 1970s.
The flames of the movement of winning the
title of O Jung Hup-led 7th Regiment and the three-revolution red flag
movement should flare up more fiercely in the military and civilian units,
respectively, and vigorous socialist emulation drives be launched among
sectors, units and regions and by stages: by doing so, we should ensure that
a strong wind of collective competition sweep the whole country.
At present our Party demands that all the
military and civilian sectors create model units and, with them as the
initial spark, kindle the flames of joint innovations. Ideological workers
should pay attention to enlisting the creative zeal and activeness of the
masses both in creating such units that advance ahead of the times and in
organizing competition for overtaking them.
An ideological campaign against the abuse
of authority and bureaucratism should be intensified to make all officials
props that, sharing weal and woe with the masses, unite their collectives and
reliable point-men in the mass innovation movement.
Efforts should be channelled into the
information and motivation work for bringing into full play the spirit of
self-reliance whose might has fully been attested in the severe trials of
history.
We can say that the whole history of
socialism of our own style boils down to self-reliance. In the days of
building socialism by their own efforts, our Party and people underwent
unprecedented ordeals and difficulties, but they were loaded with all honours
they could not enjoy through the history of their nation spanning thousands
of years. Had we abandoned the principle of self-reliance succumbing to the
pressure by outside forces, the Juche-oriented socialism would not have been
born on the earth and the name of our country would have suffered eclipse
along with the collapse of the worldwide socialist system. On the track of
self-reliance Chollima rose up on the ruins of war and such a miracle as the
birth of a manufacturer and launcher of an earth satellite and nuclear state
was wrought, a miracle of great significance in the national history.
Ideological workers should intensify
education by means of the history of our socialist construction among
officials and working people to clearly implant in them that self-reliance is
the path of building a thriving nation.
Self-reliance is the spirit of national
self-sustenance and the spirit of going beyond the cutting edge to lead the
whole world with our efforts, with our resources and with our technology. It
is necessary to steadily succeed the fighting spirit with which we made
tractor and electric locomotive from scratch and the spirit with which we
conquered space with our efforts and technology. We should undertake an
information and motivation offensive to ensure that everyone turns out in the
campaign to make everything of our country the assets of socialism that
cannot be found elsewhere in the world, fully conscious that they must go
beyond the cutting edge just in their own posts and workplaces. We should
ideologically support the efforts to make a breach in imperialist manoeuvres
to monopolize high technology, and make advanced science and technology our
own.
It is important to actively encourage
scientists and technicians to firmly defend their revolutionary positions in
the grand march of self-reliance which is led by the locomotive, called
"science and technology." Ideological workers should play a great
role in creating the climate of attaching importance to science throughout
society and making all people well-versed in science and technology.
We must launch an information offensive to
ideologically and morally overpower the imperialist reactionary forces who
are trying to stamp out socialism by all means.
Now the imperialists are hell-bent on a smear
campaign to turn black into white and persisting in their attempts to
infiltrate corrupt reactionary ideology and culture into our country with our
service personnel and young people as the target, while clinging to
manoeuvres to apply sanctions against our country and stifle it. Whereas the
reactionary ideology and culture were their guide to aggression in the past,
they are playing a leading part in aggression at present.
The struggle to defend socialism should be
an offensive operation to, outwardly, gain political and ideological upper
hand over the imperialists that hinder our onward movement and, inwardly,
sweep up non-socialist practices and decadent ideology and culture by means
of the revolutionary ideology and culture.
Ideological workers should dishearten the
enemy by launching a skilful anti-enemy media warfare, radio warfare, which
is aimed at giving wide publicity to the validity of our ideology and cause
and at laying bare the vulnerability and foul nature of imperialists. They
should make ideological "missiles" in larger numbers that can deal
a heavy blow at the enemy and instil firm confidence in victory in our
service personnel and people.
They should take the initiative in
launching operations to make the imperialist moves for ideological and
cultural infiltration end in smoke, while putting up "mosquito net"
double and treble to prevent the viruses of capitalist ideology which the
enemy is persistently attempting to spread from infiltrating across our
border.
By nature, the working masses reject the
bourgeois ideology and culture which preach the money-is-almighty principle
and the law of jungle. We need to create and propagate larger numbers of
wholesome and revolutionary works of art and literature, articles and
presentations of our own style which contain the beautiful dreams and ideals
of the masses and which brim over with national flavour, so as to make the
people turn their backs on the bourgeois ideology and culture of their own
accord. A decisive measure should be taken to use the Internet as a medium
for giving publicity to our ideology and culture in order to cope with the
enemy's moves to widely propagate their reactionary ideology and culture by
misusing the latest scientific and technological achievements made by mankind.
The sector of ideological work and related
units should work out elaborate plans for putting mass media and external
publicity means on a modern and IT basis and make persevering efforts to
carry them out.
The ideological work of the Party should be
conducted in an aggressive manner.
Our Party's strategy and tactics in
ideological work is to make the whole country seethe with a revolutionary
leap forward by making the flames of ideological offensive flare up fiercely
in the attack spirit of advancing against all odds.
The ideological position of our Party
should be arranged in the form for attack, not for defence.
We should also conduct the ideological
education aimed at imbuing the whole society with the red ideology of the
Workers' Party in a proactive way, the political work aimed at calling forth
the mental strength of all the service personnel and people as it is done on
the frontline and the struggle to sweep away all shades of evil ideas and
spirits at a lightning speed.
In order to conduct ideological work in an
aggressive manner, it is necessary, above all, to root out the defeatist view
revealed among ideological workers.
The ideological workers infected with such
a view cannot take even a single step by themselves even if they are put
forward in the van of the ideological offensive.
The "Yongil bomb spirit" created
in the forest of Mt. Paektu and the do-or-die resistance spirit of
Xiaowangqing and Chechangzi were not produced in ordinary days, and the
legend of Chollima, the miracles of the speed campaign, the revolutionary
soldier spirit and the Kanggye spirit were not born under more favourable
circumstances than in the present days.
Comrades,
Defeatism in ideological work is more
dangerous than that in economic work. The present ideological offensive must
start with ridding ideological workers of defeatism.
Those engaged in ideological work in the
birthplace of the Juche idea must not wait for a miracle to be wrought, but
go purposefully amongst people carrying the weapon of ideology and become
active doers and devoted creators who find solutions with them.
The posts of national defence, factories,
farm villages and other places where you are working bear the imprints of
examples of outstanding art of leadership set by the peerlessly great men who
found in the simple opinions of the service personnel and people the best
method of turning misfortune into a blessing and adversity into prosperity.
If you work with the history of
revolutionary leadership of the President and the General as a textbook, you
will find nothing you cannot understand and overcome in your work, and our
Party's ideological work become literally an initial spark for kindling the
flames of a leap forward.
In order to ensure a revolutionary
ideological offensive a success, we should open the gunfire of an ideological
campaign and fire the shells concentratedly, successively and at the right
targets.
First of all, by enlisting all the forces
and means already provided for information and motivational purposes, you
should conduct ideological work in a flexible and intensive way.
When the Party puts forward a new line or
policy, all the networks of education, public lecture and motivation work and
mass media should be mobilized promptly to inform all the people, ranging
from officials at the central organs to farmers in remote, mountainous
villages, of it. The contents, forms, means and methods of ideological work
should, to all intents and purposes, be geared and subordinated to carrying
out revolutionary tasks. The forces and means for information and motivation
work should be concentrated on the projects the Party attaches importance to,
thus strongly beating the drum for kindling the fire of a fresh leap forward.
Ideological work should also ensure that
all shades of evil ideas and spirits never make inroads into our ranks by
giving uninterrupted publicity to the Party's intentions and leading a
continuous advance of the ideological struggle.
It can be likened to removing falling snow
on the runway by snow blower to prevent it from piling up. Ideological work
should be conducted not like a flash in the pan and in the way a ceremony is
held, but in a regular way regardless of time and place so that people can
imbibe the Party's ideas the way they breathe air. An ideological campaign
should be conducted without letup and intensively to sweep away alien
ideological trends and lifestyles. To be strictly guarded against here is the
repetition of the stereotyped speech and method.
It is also important to select the right
targets of the ideological offensive based on an understanding of their
preparedness, characteristics and ideological tendencies, and apply
appropriate means and methods.
President Kim Il Sung already said that
work with people should be conducted in the way a mother does, as she uses
different words when teaching her eldest son and youngest son though they are
of the same blood. If the employees of their units number ten thousand,
ideological workers should know the inner thought of each of them like their
own palms and work with them with ten thousand methods.
The road of our revolution is not smooth,
and every revolutionary front requires genuine and well-qualified ideological
workers who have cherished the staunch revolutionary spirit in their hearts.
In fact, the forces of our Party’s
information workers and primary information workers enrolled in the networks
of education, public lecture and motivation work are great. If they,
numbering tens of thousands, are well prepared, we can form an elite corps
and if we have such a contingency, we will have nothing to be afraid of and
out of reach of our strength.
Of his revolutionary soldiers, the great
General treasured and loved most dearly those who are defending the
ideological front, and led and encouraged them at every step, saying that a
film or an article is as powerful as several thousand tons of food grain or
tens of thousands of gun shells.
The ideological workers of our Party have
assumed a heavy task.
Each of them should become a person strong
in ideas and faith, whom the enemy fear more than they do the forces of a
division or a corps.
Although simple and modest in appearance
they always burn their hearts with the Party's intentions and are
enthusiastic for the revolution and struggle?this is the feature our Party
thinks ideal for information workers. Ideological workers should be true
revolutionaries who never give up the Party's principle of ideological work
in any adversity. They should have the passion of covering long distance in
one night to inform people of the Party's intentions and burning the midnight
oil for several days to study the Party's policies and learn knowledge and
technology.
Having a proper outlook on people is a
vital requirement for ideological workers who have to make them open their
minds.
The information workers of our Party should
be true sons and daughters of people who learn from the latter before
teaching them and highly appreciate their efforts. To this end, they should
remember first whenever they approach them that they stand before the great
people whom the President and the General believed as in heaven and regarded
as their teachers all their lives.
Love and respect for the labouring people
emanate from the spirit of loving labour. Our officials should mingle with
the masses, their hands stained with grease and their shoes with earth, and
be proud of it.
The President and the General performed
great exploits for people all their lives, but left nothing for themselves.
Regarding the ideas and trust of the Party
as the wealth of their lives, ideological workers should find the worth of
living in informing as many persons as possible of the Party's policies and
having collective innovations brought about at the units under their charge.
A genuine ideological worker is the person who values more than nuggets of
gold the excitement he or she feels when people are eager anytime to be
informed of the Party's intentions and when they support the Party's policies
with all their hearts.
When the Party's intentions are informed
and revolutionary songs and hurrah for the Workers' Party and socialism
resound wherever our Party's ideological workers go, it will be a great
encouragement to the Party.
The entire Party should become information
and motivation workers, and all officials should conduct political work.
Whether they are Party, administrative,
economic or primary officials, they should hold it as the main key to
motivate the mental strength of the masses, and direct due efforts to it. In
particular, chief secretaries of provincial, city and county Party committees
and senior Party officials of all sectors and all units should put the
ideological work under their personal control and conduct it with all
sincerity and with much effort.
In the 1970s all the officials, under the
leadership of the Party, used to go down to their subordinate units with
rucksacks on their backs like the anti-Japanese guerrillas had done, rouse
people as required by the Chongsan-ri spirit and Chongsan-ri method and bring
about innovations. This vibrant spirit should prevail throughout the country.
Comrades,
The revolutionary task facing us are
enormous and the situation remains as severe as ever. However, we should leap
forward to bring the future closer and make a ceaseless advance while struggling.
As soon as you leave the venue of this
conference, you should go amongst the service personnel and people to inform
them of the intention of the Party Central Committee and take up the starting
positions of ideological offensive with a fresh determination.
I stress once again: The more vibrantly the
ideological front seethes, the more fully the mental strength of the masses
will be demonstrated, and the more the service personnel and people are
roused, the faster the revolution will advance.
I firmly believe that all our ideological
workers, including the participants in this conference, will become political
workers of the type of the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and
make the whole country seethe and transform the entire army along revolutionary
lines, thus hastening the final victory.
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