In June 2004, Chairman Kim Jong Il came to the national food show sponsored by the then Korea Cuisine Association.
Displayed in the show were the national foods prepared by different units including Okryu Restaurant and Chongnyu Restaurant, and the cooking articles for them and different kinds of references.
Looking round one food after another, the Chairman expressed big satisfaction over the fact that the officials and workers in the public catering field prepares different peculiar national foods by correctly inheriting and developing national food heritage true to the Party’s policy of thoroughly establishing the Juche character and national character in all fields of social life.
The Chairman put forward the tasks of programmatic guide for retaining superior national food tradition, adding that the peculiar national foods, developed and enriched through the long history, are associated with pure national characters including creative wisdom and talents, taste and liking of the intelligent and diligent Korean people.
The Chairman explained that the cultured Korean people have prepared and taken various national foods suited to their national character and taste and they became widely known to the world with their taste and fragrance, form and colour. The Chairman stressed that it is of weighty importance not only in improving the people’s dietary life more affluent and civilized by developing the country’s food-processing technique in its own way but in implanting national pride and patriotism to find out and actively encourage every peculiar national food that has been prepared by the Korean people since long ago.
The Chairman also said that the principles of fidelity to historical truth and acceptability to modern sensibilities were consistently adhered to in inheriting and developing national cultural heritages in the past so as to make precautions to both restorationism and national nihilism, thus further developing the excellent dietary culture established by the ancestors. Noting that it is good for the army and society to actively encourage the national foods conveyed from the old times, the Chairman stressed that all sectors should make dynamic efforts to properly retain the heritage of excellent national foods. The Chairman continued that all the excellent national foods created by the ancestors should be found out as much as possible to develop them as required by the era and aesthetic sense so as to make the whole country full of national fragrance and sentiment.
Listening to the Chairman who provided a valuable guide for inheriting and developing national foods, all the participants to the show firmly resolved once again to develop Korea’s dietary culture into the one of the era of the Workers’ Party by bringing about a fresh turn in adding brilliance to the excellent dietary culture of the Korean nation true to the Chairman’s instruction.
