Kim Il Sung delivers a speech at a mass meeting of welcome held in Pyongyang
Great Man of National Rebirth
August 15 that President Kim Il Sung liberated Korea by leading the arduous anti-Japanese war to a victory was the historic day that gave a new birth to the Korean nation and opened a new start of socialist Korea.
Korea had long ago been famous as a land of morning calm, a country with a time-honored five-millennia historyand outstanding cultural traditions. It was reduced to a colony in 1905.
Under the imperialist occupation of Japan, Korea was turned literally into a land of the Middle Ages, its people finding themselves at a crossroads of life and death. The name of the country was removed from the world map.
President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), who was born at the time of national distress, set out on the road of revolutionary struggle to rescue his country and people from misery.
Having crossed the Amnok River at the young age of thirteen with a firm determination never to return home before the country was liberated, he set about waging the revolution. Convinced from the first days of his revolutionary struggle that the masters of the Korean revolution were none other than the Korean peoples themselves and that when all of them rose up and fought in unity, they would defeat the Japanese imperialists and realize the country’s liberation; he closely rallied enthusiastic young people and started the anti-Japanese armed struggle.
During the protracted struggle against Japanese imperialism, he put forward outstanding policies and lines and applied original strategies and tactics, thus leading the Korean people’s struggle for national liberation to victory. The anti-Japanese armed struggle he organized and led occupies a prominent position in the history of national struggle of the colonial countries of the world.
The Koran people had to fight against Japanese imperialism that had been boasting of being the “leader of Asia” and vying with fascist Germany to bring the world under its control; they had neither backing of a state nor support from a regular armed force: they had to obtain everything-weapons, ammunitions, clothes, food and others-by themselves. It was, indeed, an arduous struggle beyond imagination.
The anti-Japanese guerilla fighters, however, under the leadership of their commander Kim Il Sung endowed with ardent love for the country and nation, waged a bloody struggle and devoted their all, life and blood, to the sacred war of national liberation.
Many battles, including the Pochonbo Battle in June 1937 and the Musan Area Battle in May 1939, inflicted telling blow on the ruling structure of Japanese imperialism and instilled in the hearts of the Korean people the hope of national resurrection.
The anti-Japanese armed struggle was a revolutionary war fraught with difficulties unprecedented in the world history. It was the national event that President Kim Il Sung, an iron-willed and brilliant commander of Mt. Paektu, achieved the historic cause of national liberation by overpowering Japanese imperialism armed from top to toe.
This significant day over 60 years ago brought about a fundamental change in the destiny of the Korean people. They, who had been suffering colonial slavery for decades, regained their freedom and liberation, and embarked on the broad road of building a new society, independent and creative. After liberation such democratic reforms as land reform, nationalization of major industries and enforcement of a law on sex equality were carried out in the northern half of Korea, followed by the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on September 9, 1948, the first of its kind in the East. The DPRK has developed into a people-centered socialist state where the people have become the masters of everything and everything serves them, a state independent in politics, self-supporting in the economy and self-reliant in defense.
Korea is now demonstrating its might as an impregnable fortress of socialism, a political and military power, under the leadership of Marshal Kim Jong Un who is successfully carrying forward generalissimos Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il’s cause.
Korea, guided by his leadership has in recent years been in the limelight of the international community as a small, but big country, which fully displays its sovereignty and dignity against the highhandedness of the imperialist superpower.
A decision of the Central Committee and the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the National Defense Commission of the DPRK and the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK on awarding the title of the DPRK Marshal to Kim Jong Un was released on July 17, 2012.
The awarding of the title of DPRK Marshal to Kim Jong Un was a token of absolute trust and loyalty of the Korean army and people for him who works hard to bring earlier the prosperity of the country.
Marshal Kim Jong Un represents the eternal banner of victory for Songun Korea.
Kim Jong Un’s holding of the title of DPRK Marshal is an auspicious event not only for the Korean people but also for the world’s progressives loving justice.
