Chairman Kim Jong Il said.
“Depending on others for raw materials and fuel is as good as leaving one’s economic lifeline in the hands of others. If one is to be economically self-sufficient and develop the economy on a safe basis and with a long-term perspective, one must depend on one’s own raw-material and fuel sources and mainly meet one’s own demand for them.”
It is obvious today for everyone that they cannot develop the economy on a solid and safe basis if they depend on others for raw materials, fuel and power.
It is the truth that one should build one’s own solid raw-material, fuel and power bases.
If one fails to keep the truth in mind and make efforts for its end, one’s economic lifeline will be left in the hands of others, and in the long run one will get into a poor situation of making the economy swallowed up by others, to say nothing of management and development of the stable and solid economy.
The imperialists are now moving more openly to seize regions of resources, the economic lifeline and make others’ economy under their control. Validity of the truth becomes more obvious in such a situation as now.
Having already been confident of validity of this truth, the Workers’ Party of Korea and the DPRK people began building their own raw-material, fuel and power bases.
The DPRK people began laying bases for the socialist independent national economy in the 1950s and the 1960s.
At that time, there were no or limited amount of some natural materials and fuel such as natural rubber, crude oil and cokes in Korea. Under such condition, it was not easy for the DPRK people to build raw-material, fuel and power bases needed to the economic development on their own without any help from others.
They did not vacillate or waver before the manifold difficulties and trials as they were confident of the truthfulness of the truth that their existence hinges on their own strength.
The Korean people channeled great efforts into the supply of domestic raw materials instead of imported ones while steadily expanding and consolidating the raw material bases by giving priority to the mining industry.
As it has no coke, the Korean people made efforts to establish the self-supporting metallurgical industry system of producing iron by using anthracite abundant in the country and thus provided a sure guarantee for the Juche-oriented development of iron-making industry depending on the domestic raw materials.
The Korean people made efforts also to solve the raw-materials of light industry by industrial method depending on the abundant domestic resources.
Cotton farming is bad in Korea due to its nature and climate and they also developed the method of making vinalon from limestone and anthracite and fiber from reed so as to fully supply the domestic raw materials for fiber production.
The Korean people made efforts also to produce power by their own efforts.
Thanks to the their active efforts to build their own power bases, the large-, middle- and small-scale hydroelectric power plants and the thermoelectric power plants were built in large numbers, thus building solid power industry bases with their own abundant power resources.
In this way, the DPRK laid its own solid raw-material, fuel and power bases that serve as its economic lifeline and, by relying on them it is now advancing dynamically to build an economic giant that would remain unchanged in any economic crises.
