Kim Jong Il, eternal Chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission
Impregnable Military Fortress
On April 9, Juche 82 (1993), Kim Jong Il was elected the Chairman of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. His election 21 years ago provided a fundamental guarantee for the DPRK’s might as an impregnable military power.
Chairman Kim Jong Il strengthened the Korean People’s Army (KPA) into elite armed forces.
He continuously inspected the KPA units so as to develop the army, the mainstay of the self-defensive military power. His inspection trips covered the Panmunjom post on the Military Demarcation Line, which stands face to face with the enemy, a frontline post on height 1 211, and remote posts on mountains as well as the post on Cho Islet in the West Sea of Korea, to which he went braving raging storms. The trips he made were the key factor in thoroughly preparing the KPA as armed forces strong in ideology and faith, as armed forces determined to defend the country, the people and socialism unto death.
He paid deep attention to intensifying military and political training in the KPA units while improving material and cultural standards of life of the service personnel. He visited the units of all branches of arms and services one after another to guide their military and political training. In the course of this, he taught them how to crush the enemy’s attempts of preemptive strike and wipe them out at a stroke, thus training them into a-match-for a-hundred combatants. Saying that the Supreme Commander exists for the soldiers, not vice versa, he took meticulous care of their living conditions as their fathers would do. Such warm and scrupulous affection of Chairman Kim Jong Il, who regarded the soldiers as his own sons and daughters, closely rallied the entire army around him, forming an invincible ranks with single-hearted unity.
He gave fuller play to the army-people unity, a traditional trait of the Korean society. Under his leadership, the DPRK greeted an eye-opening reality of the great army-people unity that achieved oneness of ideology and work style at the highest level.
Kim Jong Il gave top priority to military affairs over all other affairs of the state, and created an atmosphere of attaching importance to it throughout society so that the whole country turned into an impregnable fortress.
He attached great significance to civil defense work in enhancing the country’s defense capabilities. To this end, he saw to it that all the people carried out military and political training in the Worker-Peasant Red Guards and the Young Red Guards with a hammer or a sickle in one hand and a rifle in the other, even in the difficult situation created in the late 20th century.
His energetic leadership in the civil defense affairs fully prepared all the people, regardless of sex and age, to turn out as one in defense of the country, and turned the country into an impregnable fortress capable of safeguarding every inch of its territorial sky, waters, and land with honor from any surprise preemptive strike and attack by modern military hardware of the enemy.
Kim Jong Il had the defense industry built up so that material and technological foundations for a self-defensive military giant were laid out.
He put forth a line of economic construction, which ensures preferential development of the defense industry and simultaneously accelerates the development of light industry and agriculture. It greatly spurred the defense industry of the DPRK as required by the times.
The defense industry of the DPRK has been enhanced to such a standard that it can manufacture military hardware powerful enough to frustrate any moves of aggression of the imperialists boasting of their military technology and to shatter their strongholds.
The heroic KPA, now led by Marshal Kim Jong Un, another brilliant commander, will win the final victory in the ongoing showdown with the U.S. and display its might as the powerful revolutionary Paektusan army.
