Kim Il Sung and the Banner of Independence

President Kim Il Sung, upholding the banner of independence, rendered immortal services to the times and history.

Having embarked on the road of struggle for the country and people in his early teens, he authored the Juche idea, the gist of which is that the masses of the people are the masters and the driving force of the revolution and construction; in other words, it means that man is the master of his own destiny and has the strength with which to carve out his destiny.

Since then the Korean revolution has vigorously advanced along the road of independence.

In the period of the armed struggle to liberate Korea from the Japanese military occupation, he ensured that the guerrillas kept the strong conviction that they should fight the Japanese by making themselves weapons and grenades instead of looking forward to aids from others.

The guerrillas waged the arduous armed struggle for over 15 years, holding high the slogan of winning back the country by themselves, and achieved the country’s liberation.

After liberation he made sure that Korea took the road of Korean-style democracy, not adopting other countries’ styles, and vigorously led the struggle to reunify the country divided by foreign forces.

In the grim days of the Korean war (1950-1953) to repel the aggression of the United States he ensured that the service personnel of the Korean People’s Army employed unique tactical methods such as building tunnels and bringing direct-firing guns up to the heights, thus winning victory in the war.

After the war he put forward a unique line of economic construction to give priority to the development of heavy industry and simultaneously develop light industry and agriculture, and led his people to get rid of flunkeyism and dogmatism and take the road of independence.

When other socialist countries persistently forced Korea to join the CMEA, insisting on the “integrated economy” within them, he never vacillated in the slightest nor deviated an iota from the line of building the independent national economy.

In the mid-1980s the trend of “reform” and “openness” was sweeping the socialist countries, but he firmly maintained the independent stand and held up higher the red flag, thus defending the socialist system of Korea reliably even though others abandoned socialism.

Kim Il Sung paid great attention to realize the cause of making the world independent throughout his life.

He gave clear answers to the matters of principle arising in realizing the cause of global independence such as those on maintaining independence in the struggle for peace and fighting against the imperialist forces of aggression with the united efforts of all the peace-loving forces of the world, and on struggling while uniting and vice versa. When Francois Mitterrand, head of the French Socialist Party, visited Korea in February 1981, Kim Il Sung said to him that in order to prevent a new world war, the European countries should not be aligned with any blocs but make themselves independent and neutral, and that they should help the newly-emerging countries to firmly maintain their independence and build theirs into independent, sovereign states.

When he met Utsunomiya Tokuma, Japanese politician, he told him that the global peace would be surely maintained only when all the countries of the world, including European and Asian countries as well as Japan became independent and that it was his ideal for peace.

Kim Il Sung assisted heart and soul other countries in accomplishing their cause of anti-imperialist independence.

Already in the period of anti-Japanese armed struggle for Korea’s liberation he actively assisted the Chinese revolution and defended the former Soviet Union with arms. After liberation he also gave unstinted assistance to the countries and nations in their struggle against imperialism.

The support and assistance given by him to the Algerian people who launched an armed struggle for the national liberation in Africa, known as the Dark Continent and the continent of colonies, wrote a brilliant page in the world history of national liberation struggle.

When the Algerian patriots, encouraged by the victory of the Korean people in the Korean war, waged an armed struggle after forming the National Liberation Front in August 1954, he sent them food and other materials and set the day and the week of Algeria so as to express solidarity with them in their struggle.

When the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic was established in September 1958, he saw that the DPRK was the first country to acknowledge it and establish diplomatic relations with it.

He also gave energetic and disinterested support and aid to the peoples of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Namibia in their struggle against colonialism and racism, the Latin American peoples’ struggle against the US imperialists and pro-US dictatorship, Arabians’ struggle against the US imperialists and Israeli Zionists, as well as the Cuban, Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian peoples’ struggle against the aggression of the US imperialists, thus greatly inspiring them to bring about historic victories.

The banner of independence upheld by President Kim Il Sung is a great power of strength and encouragement to the Korean people who are achieving eye-opening successes in the socialist construction with a firm stand of independence and also to the progressive peoples of the world who are struggling for the realization of global independence.