On June 19, 1964, 57 years ago, Chairman Kim Jong Il of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, started working on the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, and in the DPRK this anniversary is celebrated as one of great importance. It is indicative of the fact that, contrary to scornful dismissals in imperialist media, dutifully parroted by ‘respectable’ bourgeois academics and by sham socialists everywhere, the choice of leader in the DPRK is not one of family connection but is based on a long history of hard work. In Comrade Kim Jong Il’s case, even as a schoolboy he was involved in politics. He was active in the Korean Children’s Union and the Democratic Youth League of North Korea (DYL), taking part in study groups of Marxist political theory and other literature. In September 1957 he became vice-chairman of his middle school’s DYL branch (the chairman had to be a teacher). He pursued a programme of anti-factionalism and attempted to encourage greater ideological education among his classmates. After admission into the Workers’ Party of Korea and subsequent elevation to the Central Committee, not only did he carry a heavy workload but his contribution was assessed by his peers to be such as to render him the person best suited to undertake such a heavy and difficult responsibility as leading the DPRK. As it turned out, their judgment was not wrong.
The DPRK is a tiny country of 26 million people, geographically half the size of the UK, but with only 18% of its surface comprising arable land. As is well known, the country has been throughout its history subject to crippling sanctions by the various imperialist powers, specifically designed to cripple its economy to ‘prove’ socialism doesn’t work. If these problems were not enough, Comrade Kim Jong Il took the helm of the country in 1994, just three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main trading partner, which hugely disrupted its economic activity. And then to cap it all the DPRK suffered several years of severe flooding that devastated its crops. These were the Herculean challenges that Comrade Kim Jong Il, at the head of the Workers’ Party of Korea, had to face. Under his leadership the entire Korean people rose as one to overcome all difficulties and were able greatly to increase their production capacity in record time, not least because of the ‘Songun’ (military-first) policy proposed by Comrade Kim Jong Il which saw Korea’s million-strong army mobilised to serve the national effort.
When the ruling parties of various socialist countries were dissolved in the late 1990s, he published several works, proving the scientific accuracy and truthfulness of socialism, so as to make the WPK hold high the banner of socialism.
Kim Jong Il developed the WPK into one which has a firm mass foundation. “The people are my God” was his motto, and he led all Party organisations and officials to go among the masses to share good times and bad with them, lend their ears to their demands and make devoted efforts for them so as to ensure that the WPK’s policies and lines at all times reflected the demands and aspirations of the people.
In the wake of collapse of socialism in several countries of the world in the 1990s, the allied imperialist forces imposed further vicious sanctions to stifle and isolate the DPRK and gleefully expected that it too would collapse . In the face of the harshest-ever trials, Kim Jong Il administered the unique Songun politics as the basic political mode of socialism and the leadership mode of the WPK, by this means firmly safeguarding the sovereignty and dignity of the country in the face of the manoeuvres of the allied imperialist forces. In this way, he ensured that the DPRK strengthened its self-defence capabilities in every way possible, won victory in the unprecedented anti-imperialist confrontation and struggle to defend socialism and overcame all difficulties, thus laying firm foundations for building a powerful socialist country by dint of army-people unity. His exploits in Party building are carried forward by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Every year the DPRK celebrates June 19 in the same splendid way as it does October 10, the founding day of the WPK.