Dear comrades,
Filled with the dignity and self-respect of victors who have set up a shining milestone in the history of the glorious Workers’ Party of Korea and our country, we are greeting the new year 2016.
Reflecting the fervent loyalty of all the people and service personnel, I extend noblest respect and New Year greetings to the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the symbol of socialist Korea and the Sun of Juche.
My New Year greetings go also to all the service personnel and people who are working with devotion for the prosperity of their socialist country, fully determined to follow the road of Juche to the end together with the Party, and I wish that every home is filled with harmony and that the happy laug
As we see in the new year, I extend greetings to our compatriots in the south and abroad who are struggling to ac
The year 2015 was a year of gigantic struggle which was adorned with significant events and eye-opening successes, a year of victory and glory in which socialist Korea fully demonstrated its prestige and might.
Last year we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea as a proud and significant revolutionary event for the great Paektusan nation.
Having turned out as one in hearty response to the Party’s call, our service personnel and people, by waging a heroic struggle in the revolutionary spirit of Paektu and through bold army-people cooperation, brought about proud labour ac
The Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station, Chongchongang Stepped Power Station, Sci-Tech Complex, Mirae Scientists Street, Jangchon Vegetable Cooperative Farm and many other structures of lasting significance, as well as beautiful socialist villages, all embodying the Party’s ideas and policies, sprang up, demonstrating the mettle of a country which is advancing by leaps and bounds, reducing ten years to one.
Our working class, scientists and technicians, true to the instructions of the great leaders, took a major stride forward in making the metallurgical industry Juche-based, built model, standard factories of the era of the knowledge-driven economy in various parts of the country, and put production lines on a modern and IT footing. Thus they opened a new road of advance for developing the overall economy and improving the people’s standard of living. The flames of the campaign to implement the Party’s ideas and defend its policies forged a proud reality in which our domestically-produced planes were flying in the sky and our domestically-produced subway train was running under the ground, and rich fish and fruit harvests with a socialist flavour that brought pleasure to the people were gathered. Our sportspeople, including our dependable women footballers, exalted the honour of their motherland and further encouraged the militant spirit of our service personnel and people by winning gold medals in international competitions.
Through the large-scale events held to celebrate the Party’s 70th anniversary which drew the attention of the world, we demonstrated far and wide the might of the single-hearted unity of all the service personnel and people around the Party, and the bright future of Juche Korea.
The moving scenes that unfolded in the October celebration square shook the world with a power greater than that of an atomic explosion or of a satellite launch. They clearly showed that nothing can check the dynamic advance of our Party, service personnel and people that are fighting with their single-hearted unity and arms as their ever-victorious weapons.
Last year our service personnel and people protected the country and nation from the danger of war and safeguarded the dignity of the Republic and world peace with honour.
That we defused the hair-trigger situation, teetering on the brink of armed conflict owing to the grave political and military provocations by the hostile forces, and defended the dignity and security of our motherland from a possible calamitous war is a brilliant victory born of the Herculean might of the great army-people unity and of the powerful Paektusan revolutionary army.
What makes us look back on last year wit
Educated and trained in the embrace of the great leaders and the Party, our young people rushed ahead along the path of the Korean revolution established by the Party, creating the charging spirit and culture of young people of the Songun era and performing laudable deeds that touched people’s heartstrings. The millions of our young people, fully equipped with the revolutionary ideology of the great leaders and firmly rallied behind the Party, have grown strong in ideology and faith to become successors to the cause of the Juche revolution. This is the greatest source of dignity, pride and success for us.
All the victories and successes we ac
Our Party, in sharing the seething innovation and miraculous ac
Because there are the Party’s wise leadership, our invincible army and our great people that absolutely support the Party and defend it to the death, we have no difficulties to fear and can accomplish any cause, however great, without fail–this is the proud conclusion of last year’s struggle.
I extend warm thanks to all the members of the Workers’ Party of Korea, all the service personnel and all the people who glorified last year with a heroic struggle and feats in devoted support of the cause of the Party, cherishing ardent loyalty to it and faith in certain victory.
Comrades,
This year is a significant one, when the Seventh Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea is to be held.
The congress will proudly review the successes our Party has ac
We should celebrate the Seventh Party Congress as a glorious meeting of victors, as it will constitute a historic landmark in fulfilling the cause of the Juche revolution.
“Let us usher in a golden age in building a thriving nation this year, when the Seventh Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea is to be held!”–this is the militant slogan our Party and people should uphold on their advance.
All Party members, service personnel and other people should turn out as one with ardent loyalty to the Party and outstanding patriotic zeal, and demonstrate the spirit and mettle of Korea that is charging forward towards final victory in a race against time.
We should concentrate all our efforts on building an economic giant so as to bring about a fresh turn in developing the country’s economy and improving the people’s standard of living.
In order to make breakthroughs towards ac
The problem of electricity should be resolved as an undertaking involving the whole Party and state. The existing power stations should be well maintained, renovated and operated at full capacity to ensure the maximum output of electric power. The construction of the Tanchon Power Station and other projects designed to boost the country’s power generating capacity should be promoted, along with the efforts to ease the strain on electricity supply by making proactive use of renewable energy. All sectors and all units should wage a vigorous campaign to economize on electricity and make effective use of it. The coal-mining sector should raise the fierce flames of an upsurge in production to ensure the adequate supply of coal to thermal power stations and various other sectors of the national economy.
The state should adopt comprehensive measures to make certain that the metallurgical industry receives adequate material supplies, and that the metallurgical factories, such as the Kim C
Our Party maintains improving the people’s standard of living as the most important of all state affairs.
The crop farming, animal husbandry and fishing sectors should make innovations aimed at effecting a radical change in improving the people’s standard of living. The agricultural sector should actively adopt superior strains and scientific farming methods, speed up the comprehensive mechanization of the rural economy and adopt strict measures for each farming process, with a view to fulfilling the cereals production plan without fail. The animal husbandry and fishing sectors, which are waging an all-out struggle in response to the Party’s call, should ramp up production as quickly as possible and see to it that the fish farms, vegetable greenhouses and mushroom production bases established across the country prove their worth. In this way they can contribute to enriching the people’s diet.
Light industry should place its factories and enterprises on a highly modern footing, provide them wit
Construction is a yardstick and visual evidence of the strength of a country and the level of its civilization; it constitutes a worthwhile, important undertaking for embodying our Party’s people-oriented policies. The construction sector should launch a general offensive to implement the Party’s construction policy and grand plan. In doing so, it should build key production facilities, educational and cultural institutions and homes on the highest possible standard at the fastest speed, to serve as models and standards of the era. In this way it can make sure that the great golden age of construction continues without letup.
All sectors of the national economy should set ambitious goals and maintain regular production by tapping every possible internal reserve and potential. They should also make it an important policy-oriented requirement to improve product quality, ensure the domestic production of equipment and rely on locally-available raw and other materials, making strenuous efforts to this end.
The whole Party, the entire army and all the people should throw themselves into the campaign to restore the country’s forests.
Urban and rural areas, workplaces and villages should be kept neat and tidy, and positive steps should be taken to conserve the country’s resources and prevent air, river and sea pollution.
Our Party is steadfast in its determination and will to solidify the foundations of a thriving country by means of science and technology and, with them as the engine, ac
The Cabinet and other state and economic organs should decisively improve their economic planning and guidance. Leading economic officials should equip themselves fully with Party policy, draw up plans for economic work in an innovative way and give a strong push to it on the principle of developing all sectors at an exponential speed by relying on the inexhaustible creative strength of the working people and by means of modern science and technology. They should accurately identify the main link in the whole chain of economic development and concentrate their efforts on it while revitalizing the overall economy, especially when the conditions are unfavourable and a lot of difficulties are cropping up. They should be proactive in organizing and launching the work of establishing on a full scale our own style of economic management embodying the Juche idea, thus giving full play to its advantages and vitality.
The political and military might of our Republic should be comprehensively strengthened.
The politico-ideological position of socialism must be cemented to make it rock-solid.
We should regard ideology as the driving force of the revolution and focus on the five-point education aimed at training all service personnel and people to be strong in ideas, at inscribing on their hearts the revolutionary spirit of Paektu, the spirit of the blizzards of Paektu. In this way we can encourage them to give free rein to their indomitable mental strength in the struggle to carry out the instructions of the great leaders and safeguard the Party’s policies. Political work and information and motivational work like that conducted on the front line should be vigorously undertaken to ensure that the whole country seethes with an atmosphere of heig
Single-hearted unity is the great foundation and ever-victorious weapon of the Juche revolution. All officials, Party members and other working people should plant their burning hearts in the garden of the offices of the Party Central Committee and share the Party’s ideas, breathe the same breath as it and keep pace with it so that they can travel one road for ever, following the Party. Party organizations and state organs should give absolute priority to the demands and interests of the people by thoroughly applying the politics of prioritizing, respecting and loving them, and take responsible care of their political integrity and material and cultural life to the end. Party organizations should understand the public sentiment, rally broad sections of the masses closely around the Party, and launch an intensive struggle among officials aimed at rooting out all vestiges of abuses of power, bureaucratism and corruption that gnaw at and undermine our single-hearted unity.
The country’s defence capability should be built up.
In this year, in which we mark the 20th anniversary of the movement of winning the title of O Jung Hup-led 7th Regiment initiated by General Kim Jong Il, the People’s Army should further develop itself into a revolutionary army of the Party in which the Party’s unified command system is thoroughly established, into a steadfast army of the Party that maintains its revolutionary faith to the death, and effect a turn in implementing the Party’s four-point line of building up the army to make it formidable. By keeping it as the essence of its training to conduct it in a real-war atmosphere and put it on a scientific and modern footing, the army should raise fierce flames in which all service personnel are tempered as elite soldiers who are fully prepared for modern warfare and dependable fig
The officers and men of the Korean People’s Internal Security Forces should smash at the first signs the manoeuvrings of the class enemy and hostile elements to harm the leadership of the revolution, our socialist system and our people’s lives and property, and the members of the Worker-Peasant Red Guards and the Young Red Guards should intensify their combat and political training so that they are fully prepared to defend their villages.
The munitions industry should develop defence science and technology, put the defence industry on a highly Juche-oriented, modern and scientific footing, and give full play to the revolutionary spirit of Kunja-ri. In this way it can develop and produce, in greater numbers and varieties, the means of military strike of our own style that are capable of overwhelming the enemy.
We should ensure that our people enjoy the highest quality and standard of civilization.
By raising the flames of a radical improvement in education in the new century, we should renovate the conditions and environment for education and decisively improve its quality, so as to bring up talented personnel who are knowledgeable, morally sound and physically strong. We should, in order to protect the people’s lives and promote their health, improve medical treatment and preventive work as required by the socialist public health system.
We should make sports mass-based and part of daily life and thus ensure that the whole country is bubbling over wit
We should launch a powerful drive to establish moral discipline so as to ensure that a sound and civilized way of life prevails throughout society.
All officials and working people should turn out as one in the struggle to usher in a golden age in building a thriving nation this year, when the Seventh Party Congress is to be held.
It is the tradition of our struggle and the nature of our people, if it is the Party’s call, to turn out with a single mind and will and work continuous miracles as great as moving mountains and filling in the seas.
The heroic working class of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, as befits the core unit of the Juche revolution and the nation’s “eldest son,” should stand in the vanguard in supporting the Party’s ideas and cause and advance, holding high the torch of a new great revolutionary upsurge in building an economic giant. Agricultural workers, with the sense of responsibility that they are in the trenches on the first line of the forward echelon of the campaign to defend socialism, should strive to bring about a turn in agricultural production. Intellectuals should promote the building of a thriving country by means of brilliant scientific and technological successes as required by the era of the knowledge-based economy, and should become pacesetters and standard-bearers in creating the shining civilization of the age of the Workers’ Party.
Our Party pins great hope on the role of young people in today’s general advance. Young people, cherishing the trust placed in them by the Party in giving them prominence as masters of the youth power, should further train themselves into dependable pillars of the country and become creators of miracles and heroes at all the sites where a thriving nation is being built.
Officials should immerse themselves in the reality in order to inspire the masses and to conduct every undertaking in a revolutionary and scientific way. They should also become true servants of the people and able leading personnel of the revolution who make selfless, devoted efforts for the good of the people with the ennobling view on life that they have nothing more to wish for, even though their bodies may be scattered like grains of sand on the road for the good of the people.
In all fields of social life we should sustain the original features and grand appearance of our society which is advancing on the strength of people helping one another and leading one another forward and through a concerted effort. Our target is to create a Juche-oriented socialist power, and the might of socialism is none other than the might of collectivism. All sectors and all units should make their main priority the interests of the state, the Party and the revolution, introduce the successes and experience gained by leading units and make leaps and bounds in the flames of collectivist competition.
The spirit of self-development first should be upheld in building a thriving socialist country. The worship of big powers and dependence on foreign forces is the road to national ruin; self-development alone is the road to sustaining the dignity of our country and our nation and to paving a broad avenue for the revolution and construction. With affection for, and trust, dignity and pride in everything that is ours, we should ac
Reunification is the most pressing and vital task facing the nation.
Last year, to mark the 70th anniversary of national liberation, we appealed to all our compatriots to pool their efforts in opening up a broad avenue to independent reunification, and we strove to make it happen. However, the anti-reunification forces that do not want national reunification or improved inter-Korean relations stirred up a frenzy in their efforts to start a war, creating a potential conflict situation, which caused grave apprehension at home and abroad. The south Korean authorities, contrary to the trend of inter-Korean dialogue and détente, publicly sought to realize their goal of “regime change” in the DPRK and unilateral “unification of systems,” and fanned distrust and confrontation between north and south.
This year we should hold up the slogan “Let us frustrate the challenges from the anti-reunification forces at home and abroad and usher in a new era of independent reunification!” and press ahead more vigorously with the national reunification movement.
We should reject foreign intervention and resolve the issues of inter-Korean relations and national reunification independently, in keeping with the aspirations and demands of the nation.
It was outside forces that divided our nation, and it is the United States and its followers that are obstructing the reunification of our country. Notwithstanding this, the south Korean authorities are perpetrating a smear campaign against their fellow countrymen in collusion with outside forces while touring foreign countries asking them to solve the internal issue of our nation, the issue of its reunification. This is a betrayal of the country and nation that leaves the destiny of the nation at the mercy of outside forces and sells out its interests.
The issue of inter-Korean relations and national reunification should, to all intents and purposes, be resolved by the efforts of our nation, in conformity with its independent will and demand, true to the principle of By Our Nation Itself. No one else will or can bring our nation reunification.
The whole nation should struggle resolutely against the sycophantic and treacherous manoeuvres of the anti-reunification forces to cooperate with outside forces. The south Korean authorities should discontinue the humiliating act of touring foreign countries touting for cooperation as a way of resolving the internal issues of the nation.
It is fundamental to realizing the country’s reunification to prevent the danger of war and safeguard peace and security on the Korean peninsula.
Today the peninsula has become the most dangerous place in the world and a hotbed of nuclear war owing to the US aggressive strategy for dominating Asia and its reckless war moves against the DPRK. Every year the US and south Korean war maniacs are conducting large-scale military exercises aimed at a nuclear war against the DPRK; this is precipitating a critical situation on the Korean peninsula and throwing serious obstacles in the way of improving inter-Korean relations. Last year’s August emergency showed that even a trifling, incidental conflict between north and south may spark fighting and escalate into all-out war.
The US and south Korean authorities must discontinue their extremely dangerous aggressive war exercises and suspend their acts of military provocation that aggravate the tension on the Korean peninsula.
It is our consistent stand to strive patiently for peace on the peninsula and security in the region. However, if aggressors dare to provoke us, even to a slight degree, we will not tolerate it but respond resolutely with a merciless sacred war of justice, a great war for national reunification.
We should value such agreements common to the nation as the t
These principles and declarations constitute a great reunification programme common to the nation, and all the fellow countrymen hope they can be implemented as soon as possible and a radical phase opened up in reunifying the country.
If they are sincere about improving inter-Korean relations and reunifying the country peacefully, the south Korean authorities must not seek pointless confrontation between systems, but make it clear that they intend to respect and sincerely implement the t
All the Korean people in the north, in the south and abroad will smash all challenges and obstructive moves by the anti-reunification forces at home and abroad and build a dignified and prosperous reunified Korea on this land without fail under the banner of By Our Nation Itself.
The United States has persistently ignored our just demand to replace the Armistice Agreement with a peace treaty and so remove the danger of war, ease tension and create a peaceful environment on the Korean peninsula. Instead, it has clung to its anachronistic policy of hostility to the DPRK, escalating the tension and egging its vassal forces on to create a “human rights” furore against our country. However, no plot and scheme of the enemy can break the indomitable will of our service personnel and people to defend and add brilliance to our style of people-centred socialism, the foundation of their happy life.
The challenges from the hostile forces remain uninterrupted and the situation is as tense as ever, but we will invariably advance along the road of independence, Songun and socialism under the unfurled red flag of the revolution; we will make every responsible effort to safeguard peace and security on the Korean peninsula and in the rest of the world.
Our Party and the government of our Republic will further strengthen their solidarity with the peoples of the world who are opposed to aggression and war, domination and subordination, and develop relations of friendship and cooperation with all countries that respect our national sovereignty and are friendly to us.
The cause of Juche-oriented socialism is ever-victorious, and only victory and glory await us as we advance under the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
Let us all strive for the final victory of the revolution, full of confidence in victory and optimism.
As we greet the hope-filled new year, I wish the people across the country good health and happiness.
