January 1, Juche 103 (2014)

    Dear comrades,

    Dear service personnel of the Korean People’s Army, all our people, and our other compatriots,

    Having seen out 2013, a year in which we left a significant footprint on the road of the sacred march of the Juche revolution, we are seeing in the new year 2014 filled with confidence in the future and with revolutionary pride.

    Reflecting the boundless yearning and high respect of all our service personnel and people for the great President Kim Il Sung and General Kim Jong Il , I would like first to pay the highest tribute and offer New Year greetings to the leaders.

    I extend tribute also to the martyrs who dedicated their precious lives to national defence and socialist construction last year, and offer New Year greetings to all the service personnel and people who are opening a new era of national prosperity following the leadership of our Party.

    And as we greet the new year I hope that homes across the country will be overflowing with greater happiness and joy.

    My New Year greetings go also to my compatriots in the south who are fighting for independence, democracy and national reunification, to my compatriots abroad, who are devoting their all to the prosperity of their motherland, and to the progressive peoples of the world and other foreign friends who love justice and peace.

    Last year was a proud year in which the entire Party, the whole army and all the people waged an all-out offensive in support of the Party’s new line of developing two fronts simultaneously and thus achieved brilliant successes in building a thriving socialist country and defending socialism.

    Last year our service personnel and people, firmly rallied behind the Party, exalted the brilliance of the ideas and cause of the President and the General and strengthened still further the political and ideological might of our revolutionary ranks.

    Through the political events held in celebration of the 65^th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK and the 60^th anniversary of victory in the Fatherland Liberation War, and in the whole course of last year’s struggle, they demonstrated their firm faith in and commitment to holding the President and the General in high esteem and carrying forward their imperishable exploits.

    Our Party’s policy of respecting and loving the people and our people’s heartfelt loyalty by which they trust and follow the Party as they would do their own mothers have become integrated, and thus the blood-sealed ties between them have reached a new, higher stage.

    Amid the seething effort to build a thriving country last year we took the resolute measure of removing the factionalists lurking in the Party. Because our Party detected and purged the anti-Party, counterrevolutionary factionalists at the opportune time and based on a correct decision, our Party and revolutionary ranks were further consolidated and our single-hearted unity was solidified to the greatest possible extent. Through this struggle our Party affirmed that as a party that serves the people, it will fully discharge the honourable mission it has assumed before the times and history and devote its all to the good of the people by enhancing its militant functions and role.

    Last year we consolidated our self-defence capability and achieved a brilliant victory in the showdown with the imperialists.

    The scientists, technicians and workers in the sector of the defence industry, by going beyond the cutting edge of military science with steadfast faith and mettle, demonstrated the strength of Songun Korea and rendered great services to consolidating the national defence capability. The officers and men of the Korean People’s Army and the Korean People’s Internal Security Forces, cherishing the spirit of defending their leader and motherland to the death, defended their Party and leader, country and people at the risk of their lives and smashed the enemy’s reckless moves to ignite a nuclear war and their clamour about confrontation with the DPRK at every step, thus exalting the dignity and might of their country.

    Though the circumstances were harsh and complicated last year, our service personnel and people, by pooling their efforts, achieved great successes in the struggle to build their country into an economic giant and improve the people’s standard of living.

    An upsurge was achieved in production in several sectors and units of the national economy, and the foundations of our self-supporting economy were further consolidated. The officials and working people in the agricultural sector in particular, despite the difficult conditions and unfavourable climate, made innovations in production, and thus contributed to improving the people’s standard of living.

    The service personnel and other builders erected numerous monumental structures contributing to the prosperity of their country and the well-being of their fellow people, thus ushering in a golden age of construction.

    Having turned out in response to the Party’s appeal to create the “Masikryong speed,” they completed in a short period of time many construction projects, such as the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Unha Scientists Street, Munsu Water Park and Masikryong Ski Resort, as befitting creations of the era of the Workers’ Party; they did so by displaying burning patriotic enthusiasm and working with devotion. In this way, they revealed their country’s proud appearance, which is changing with each passing day, and ensured that the people’s laughter would ring out louder. Those who turned out in the reclamation of the Sepho Plateau and other large-scale construction projects overcame numerous difficulties to tame Nature and thereby achieved a breakthrough in realizing the Party’s far-reaching plan at an early date.

    The sector of culture, including sports and education, also made fresh strides last year.

    True to the Party’s intention of building our country into a sporting power, a strong sports wind swept the country, and our sportspeople won gold medals in international competitions, thus exalting the honour of their motherland. The preparations for enforcing universal 12-year compulsory education were successfully promoted, many achievements were made in the field of science and technology, and up-to-date medical facilities were introduced to improve the healthcare services for the people. In the field of music many famous works of our times were created which have inspired loyalty in all the service personnel and people and encouraged them to wage a dynamic struggle and perform great feats.

    The shining victories and successes we achieved last year can be ascribed to the fact that the entire Party, the whole army and all the people, in support of the revolutionary and people-oriented lines and policies of our Party and its wise leadership, waged a heroic struggle with an indomitable faith in and commitment to building a thriving socialist country without fail.

    Through last year’s struggle we clearly demonstrated that our ideology, our strength and our way are the best and no force can check our sacred advance to accomplish our far-reaching ideals and goals.

    I extend heartfelt thanks to all the service personnel and people who adorned the meaningful year 2013 with eye-opening successes by displaying boundless loyalty to the Party, warm affection for their country and an unparalleled self-sacrificing spirit.

    Comrades,

    The new year 2014 will be a year of magnificent struggle, a year of historic change, in which we will, by raising a fierce wind, achieve a major leap forward on all the fronts where we are building a thriving socialist country and usher in a golden age of Songun Korea.

    Our struggle this year will be a worthy struggle to translate the people’s beautiful ideals and dreams into reality at an early date; it will become a victors’ march to the venue where next year we will celebrate on a grand scale the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the glorious Workers’ Party of Korea.

    In this year filled with hope we must usher in a great golden age of the revolution and construction by stepping up our heroic march with enthusiasm and confidence in victory.

    “Let us raise a fierce wind and, filled with confidence in victory, achieve a major leap forward on all the fronts where we are building a thriving socialist country!” is the militant slogan our Party and people should uphold this year.

    This year we should ensure that in the sectors of agriculture, construction and science and technology the torch of innovation is held high in the vanguard and that the flames of this torch inspire a leap forward on all the fronts of socialist construction.

    This year is significant, as it marks the 50^th anniversary of the publication by President Kim Il Sung of the Theses on the Socialist Rural Question.

    We should fully demonstrate the validity and vitality of the theses by carrying out the ideological, technological and cultural revolutions dynamically in the rural areas and bringing about a decisive improvement in agricultural production. This year we should maintain agriculture as a major thrust of our effort to build the economy and improve the people’s standard of living, and we should concentrate all our efforts on farming. The agricultural sector should be proactive in introducing scientific farming methods and should farm responsibly so as to make certain that it meets the target for cereals production set by the Party. It should improve animal husbandry and adopt the widespread use of greenhouses to grow vegetables and mushrooms in order to guarantee the increased supply of meat, vegetables and mushrooms for the people.

    We should usher in a new golden age of construction this year.

    Construction is a key front in the effort to solidify the foundations of a thriving country and of a happy life for the people. The construction sector should erect world-class buildings representative of the Songun era, along with many other structures that can help improve the people’s living conditions; by doing so it will solidify the foundations of the self-supporting economy and create the conditions for our people to lead a more affluent and civilized life. Work on the multi-tier power stations on the Chongchon River, on the livestock farming bases in the Sepho area, on the Kosan Fruit Farm and on the new waterway in South Hwanghae Province, along with the reclamation of tidal flats and the construction of other major projects, should be accelerated so that they are completed on schedule. It is important to step up the construction of houses and dormitories, to promote projects for improving the conditions and environment for education, and to establish cultural and welfare service bases, all of the highest standard. This year, too, our service personnel and people should make a concerted effort to create a more magnificent Pyongyang and to improve the layout of the provinces, cities and counties in such a way that they retain their local features.

    Science and technology are the engine for building a thriving country, and the happiness of the people and the future of the country depend on their development.

    The scientific research sector should open up a shortcut to building a knowledge-based economy by solving the long-term problems in developing the country’s economy and improving the people’s standard of living, along with the scientific and technological problems arising in the actual situation, and by going beyond the cutting edge. All scientists and technicians should achieve outstanding results by skilfully riding the excellent “steed” provided to them by the Party and giving the fullest possible scope to their talents and enthusiasm. By doing so, they can become true patriots who contribute to building a thriving nation. A climate of acknowledging the importance of science and technology should prevail throughout society, and all officials and working people should diligently learn modern science and technology, upholding the slogan of making all the people well versed in science and technology.

    We should raise the fierce flames of innovation in the vanguard sectors, basic industrial sectors, and all other sectors of the national economy.

    The metal and chemical industries are twin buttresses of an economic giant. Developing these industries is a major guarantee for economic construction and improving the people’s standard of living. These industrial sectors should hold high the slogan of making them Juche-oriented and modern and launch a vigorous campaign to boost production by relying on our own raw materials and fuels and on the latest science and technology. In this way they can supply sufficient of the steel and various chemical goods that are needed to reenergize the national economy as a whole and improve the people’s standard of living.

    We should give definite priority to the electric-power and coal-mining industries. While taking steps to maximize the production of electricity at the existing power stations, we should draw up viable plans for radically easing the strain on electricity supply and work hard to carry them out. It is important to produce more electricity, with priority given to hydraulic resources while making use of wind, geothermal, solar and other sources of natural energy. We should proactively increase production at coal mines and find a radical solution to the problem of rail and other means of transport. The electric-power and coal-mining industries and the rail transport sector should make coordinated innovations and thus give a powerful boost to the development of the national economy.

    We should direct great efforts to developing light industry, which plays a major role in improving the people’s standard of living. By stepping up modernization and the introduction of CNC technology into their production lines and increasing the proportion of locally-available raw and other materials they use, light-industry factories should put production on a normal footing. And all cities and counties should produce various kinds and larger quantities of quality consumer goods by developing local industry in conformity with their specific conditions.

    The state should take steps to bolster the fishing sector. The sector should follow the example of the fishing sector of the People’s Army that landed a huge haul by carrying out the order of the Supreme Commander. By modernizing fishing vessels and equipment and launching a dynamic fishing campaign based on scientific methods, it should ensure that all ports resound with the whistles of vessels returning with full loads. It should also conduct shallow-sea farming on an extensive scale.

    We should protect and expand the country’s priceless natural resources, including underground, forest and marine resources, and conduct an energetic mass-based tree-planting drive to cover all the mountains with thick forests.

    All sectors of the national economy should increase production by tapping every potential and all latent reserves, and at the same time launch a brisk economy drive. Economizing means production and is a manifestation of patriotism. We should step up the economy drive throughout society so as to make economical use of every watt of electricity, every gramme of coal and every drop of water. All the people should get into the habit of meticulously managing the country’s economy with a high sense of patriotism and an attitude befitting masters.

    We should decisively improve economic guidance and management. We should tighten the unified guidance of the economy given by the state under the leadership of the Party, enhance the sense of responsibility and creativity of enterprises and encourage all the working people to discharge their roles and responsibilities as the masters of production and management.

    We should make big strides in developing culture, including education.

    The education sector should improve the contents, methods, conditions and environment of education as required by the revolution and developing times and bring about a fresh turn in education, including secondary general education. By focusing on medical treatment and preventive medicine for promoting the people’s health, the public health sector should ensure that the benefits of the socialist healthcare system are more easily accessible to the people.

    Art and literature are a bugle, a powerful encouragement, for the revolutionary advance to build a thriving country. The sector of art and literature should produce large numbers of contemporary masterpieces which are high in ideological and artistic quality and touch the heartstrings of the audience, keeping step with the advance of our revolution and the vibrant reality.

    We should raise more fiercely the strong sports wind across the country. We should encourage our sportspeople to step up their training with the high ambition of becoming world champions, and splendidly implement the Party’s plan of building our country into a sporting power by developing sports science and technology and implementing the policy of making sports mass-based.

    We should continue to channel great efforts into building up the country’s defence capability.

    Strengthening the defence capability is the most important of all state affairs, and the country’s dignity, the people’s happiness and peace depend on powerful arms.

    We should further develop the People’s Army as the powerful revolutionary army of Paektusan that is unfailingly loyal to the Party, the leader, the country and the people. The main link in the whole chain of developing the People’s Army is strengthening the company, which is the basic combat unit and the base of the soldiers’ life. We should make all the companies elite combat units that are fully prepared politically and ideologically, militarily and technologically and their loving homes, overflowing with brotherly affection. By stepping up political and ideological education among the service personnel, we can train them to be strong in ideology and faith and ready to defend the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and the Party Central Committee to the death. They should intensify combat training and launch a brisk movement to become crackshots so as to prepare themselves as match-for-a-hundred combatants with excellent marksmanship, a strong physique and a high sense of discipline.

    The Korean People’s Internal Security Forces should creditably discharge their noble mission and duty of defending the leader, system and people by thoroughly establishing the Party’s command system and revolutionary military climate within themselves, and the Worker-Peasant Red Guards should intensify their combat training and be fully ready for action at all times.

    The defence industry should manufacture larger numbers of modern military hardware of our own style that is light, unmanned, intelligent and high-precision, so as to solidify our self-defence capability.

    We should further consolidate the political and ideological position of our revolution.

    The political and ideological position is a fortress that decides between victory and failure in the battle to defend socialism, and consolidating the revolutionary ranks politically and ideologically is the most important task facing us.

    In this significant year, in which we greet the 40^th anniversary of the programme of modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism advanced by the great General, we should solidify the Party organizationally and ideologically, train all the members of society to be equipped with Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism and cement the single-hearted unity of the revolutionary ranks.

    It is imperative to establish the monolithic leadership system in the Party, ensure the purity of the Party’s ranks and improve the militant functions and role of Party organizations. We should intensify ideological education among officials, Party members and other working people to ensure that they think and act at all times and in all places in line with the Party’s ideas and intentions, with the steadfast faith that they know only the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and our Party. We should ensure that they display political awareness in approaching even the slightest phenomenon or element that infringes on the unity of the Party and the revolutionary ranks and threatens to undermine their single-hearted unity, and completely eliminate them. They should wage a vigorous struggle to stamp out any form of alien ideology and decadent lifestyle which may undermine our system and thus resolutely smash the enemy’s schemes to infiltrate us ideologically and culturally.

    In order to make the flames of a leap forward flare up on all fronts of building a thriving socialist country, it is crucial to give full play to the mental strength of the masses.

    The greatest potential for creation and innovation, the fundamental key to miraculous change, lies in giving play to the mental strength of all the service personnel and people. A sweeping ideological campaign designed to inform and motivate them should be undertaken to give free rein to the mental strength of Party members and other working people. They should all make Kim Jong Il ’s patriotism part of their mental qualities and apply it in practice, and thus become performers of heroic feats in the worthwhile struggle to build theirs into a socialist country that is powerful and civilized.

    We need to establish stringent revolutionary discipline and order in all domains of the revolutionary struggle and construction work.

    This is an important factor in demonstrating the advantages of collectivism in our society and achieving success in all undertakings. All sectors and all units should carry out to the letter the policies of the Party and the laws, decisions and directives of the state, and encourage officials and working people alike to observe the laws, regulations and order with full awareness of being masters of our society and citizens of the DPRK.

    Officials should make redoubled efforts to carry out their duties as leading participants in the revolution and faithful servants of the people.

    They should organize undertakings in a big way by displaying absolute loyalty to the Party, a high sense of responsibility for their work and fervent zeal, and strive with unflinching perseverance to implement the Party’s plans and intentions without fail.

    They should regard meeting the people’s demands and interests as the absolute criteria for their performance, be concerned only about doing the things the people want and like, and do everything in a way that is beneficial to them. They should listen sincerely to people’s demands and opinions, and live and work as their true servants who devote themselves for their interests at all times.

    This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the day when President Kim Il Sung signed his last document–an historic one concerning the country’s reunification.

    True to the behests of President Kim Il Sung and General Kim Jong Il , we should make fresh headway in the national reunification movement this year.

    To resolve the reunification issue in keeping with the aspirations and demands of our fellow countrymen, we should reject foreign forces and hold fast to the standpoint of By Our Nation Itself.

    The driving force for national reunification is all the members of the Korean nation in the north, in the south and abroad; only when we remain steadfast in this standpoint can we reunify the country independently in line with our nation’s interests and demands. To tour foreign countries touting “international cooperation” to resolve the inter-Korean relations issue, one related to our nation, is humiliating treachery that hands our nation’s destiny in the hands to outside forces. The north and the south should uphold the principle of independence, which is one of the three principles for national reunification and has been confirmed in the north-south joint declarations, hold fast to the standpoint of By Our Nation Itself, and respect and implement the declarations with sincerity.

    We should make positive efforts to defend our national security and peace.

    The US and south Korean war maniacs have deployed legions of nuclear war equipment in and around the Korean peninsula and are frantically conducting military exercises aimed at a nuclear war against the north; this is precipitating a critical situation in which any accidental military skirmish could lead to all-out war. Should another war break out on this land, it will result in a deadly nuclear catastrophe and the United States will never be safe. The Korean people must never tolerate the manoeuvres for war and confrontation by the bellicose forces at home and abroad, but stoutly resist and frustrate them.

    A favourable climate should be established for improved relations between the north and the south.

    It is heartrending to see our nation partitioned by foreign forces, and it is more intolerable still to see one side slinging mud at and being hostile to the other. All this does is allow the forces who are undesirous of seeing one Korea, to fish in troubled waters. It is high time to put an end to the slander and calumny that bring no good to either side, and they should desist from doing anything detrimental to national unity and reconciliation. The south Korean authorities should discontinue the reckless confrontation with their compatriots and the racket against the “followers of the north,” and choose to promote inter-Korean relations in response to the call of the nation for independence, democracy and national reunification. We will join hands with anyone who gives priority to the nation and hopes for its reunification, regardless of his or her past, and continue to strive for better inter-Korean relations.

    All the Korean people in the north, in the south and abroad should achieve solid unity under the banner of true patriotism, the banner embodying the principle of By Our Nation Itself, and turn out in the nationwide struggle for the reunification of the country. By doing so, they can open up a new phase for independent reunification, peace and prosperity this year.

    Last year, in the international arena, the imperialists persisted in their interference and war moves threatening the independence of other sovereign states and mankind’s right to existence.

    Especially the Korean peninsula, the hottest spot in the world, was in a hair-trigger situation due to the hostile forces’ manoeuvres for a nuclear war against the DPRK, which posed a serious threat to peace and security in the region and the rest of the world.

    Nothing is more precious for our people than peace, but it is not something that can be achieved if we simply crave and beg for it. We can never just sit back with folded arms and watch as the dark clouds of a nuclear war against us hover over the Korean peninsula. We will defend our country’s sovereignty, peace and dignity by relying on our powerful self-defensive strength.

    Holding fast to the ideals of our foreign policy–independence, peace and friendship–our Party and the government of the DPRK will, in the future, too, strive to expand and develop relations of friendship and cooperation with all the countries that respect our sovereignty and are friendly to us, and to safeguard global peace and security and promote the common prosperity of mankind.

    The tasks facing us are gigantic and difficulties stand in our way. However, our revolutionary cause is sure to emerge victorious as we advance under the great banner of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.

    Let all of us strive for greater victory in the new year, filled with high ambition and unwavering confidence and firmly united behind the Party with a single heart.