Spirit of Independence of President Kim Il Sung

President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) maintained the principle of independence throughout his life.

Rehe Expedition and Principle of Independence

In the mid-1930s the Comintern gave a directive to the anti-Japanese armed forces operating in northeast China to advance towards Rehe. The content of the directive was that first, these anti-Japanese armed forces must advance towards Liaoxi and Rehe and conduct joint operations with the Chinese Worker-Peasant Red Army to contain the Japanese imperialist aggressor forces advancing towards the China proper, and second, realize integration of the anti-Japanese struggles in the Chinese mainland and in northeast China and bring about a fresh upsurge in the overall anti-Japanese movement.

According to this directive, the anti-Japanese armed units operating in northeast China, abandoning the principle of guerrilla warfare, advanced to the open areas, in the course of which they suffered heavy casualties. The result was that the anti-Japanese movement in northeast China faced grave difficulties.

Seeing through the adventurous line of the Comintern, Kim Il Sung refused to blindly follow the line, and maintained the line of independence of Korean revolution to the last. As a result, the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army commanded by Kim Il Sung played a great role in eliminating the aftermaths of the Rehe expedition and revitalizing the anti-Japanese armed struggle in northeast China.

Rejected Demand of Joining CMEA

When a delegation of the DPRK government visited the Soviet Union in 1956, there were held government-level talks between the two sides. At the talks the Soviet side officially proposed that the DPRK join the CMEA (Council of Mutual Economic Assistance), stressing that the DPRK should carry out industrialization by machines supplied by the Soviet Union instead of building machines by itself and that it would not be cost-effective to establish the machine-building industry.

Seeing that, if his country joined the economic bloc of socialist countries it may lose independence in its economic construction and be subordinated to the big country politically, Kim Il Sung rejected the demand.

Later, he said: The CMEA is not right theoretically; it exerts a negative effect to other socialist countries; joining the CMEA means that our country will be subordinated to the Soviet Union. Is it necessary to wage a revolution to be subordinated to another country again after making the revolution, and what is difference between being subordinated to a capitalist country and being subordinated to a socialist country–this was his stand.

The justness of his insight and judgement and his thoroughgoing stand of independence was clearly proved by the former socialist countries in Eastern Europe, which had been members of the CMEA and later lost their political and economic independence.

Production of Steel with UHP Electric Arc Furnace

When presiding over an important meeting in May 1988, President Kim Il Sung said that the country should abandon steel-making by relying on coking coal and adopt the super-electric steel-making method.

At that time, the DPRK was making steel by relying on imported coking coal.

At that meeting, Kim Il Sung said: The process of producing steel by making pig iron with coking coal is outdated; this process requires three types of furnaces–a coke oven, splintering furnace and blast furnace–as well as a blower and a variety of large auxiliary facilities; therefore the metallurgical industry must abandon this process and adopt the process of making steel with super-electricity. He added that if we manufactured the equipment necessary for this process on our own, like pitch electrode, large-capacity transformer and facilities for automation through computer, we would fully be able to establish the Juche orientation in our metallurgical industry.

Just after the liberation of the country (August 1945), he had already said that we should study the process of making steel by relying on coal deposited in abundance in our country.

Later, the country built UHP electric arc furnace that does not use coking coal.

In recent years, it has built the oxygen converters and the oxygen-blown blast furnaces, thus establishing a new iron-making system. These are the result of the line of independence of  Kim Il Sung who stressed the need to put the metallurgical industry on a Juche-oriented basis over half a century ago.