Today marks the 32nd anniversary of the demise of President Kim Il Sung, the father of socialist Korea and founder of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. More than three decades later, the Korean people still deeply miss him. They recall his warm love for the people and emphasize that, through his outstanding leadership, he laid a lasting foundation for the prosperity of all generations to come.
One of the key aspects of President Kim Il Sung‘s political philosophy and his lifelong motto was “to believe in the people as in Heaven”. As he once explained, the principles he chose to follow were: first, to respect and serve the people as his God; second, to devote everything to them; and third, to do everything by relying on their strength.
He believed in the people’s inexhaustible strength and led them to achieve miracles.
When President Kim Il Sung was born, his motherland was under Japanese colonial rule. The Korean people were deprived of their country and ceaselessly exposed to extreme humiliation and mistreatment. From an early age, he dedicated himself to the struggle for national liberation. After many years of determined and arduous armed resistance, he led the anti-Japanese struggle to victory over the occupying forces.
Just a few years after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, the US ignited a war against the newly established DPRK, less than two years old at the time. The young country had to face a technologically and numerically superior enemy. Progressive people around the world were concerned about the fate of the DPRK. However, President Kim Il Sung achieved the impossible, once again leading the struggle to victory. Thanks to his military strategy and leadership, the army and people of the DPRK succeeded in driving back the invading forces.
Since the country’s liberation he devoted himself tirelessly to improving the well-being and happiness of the Korean people. He spent his time among ordinary citizens, traveling to every corner of the country to have frank discussions with them and work to improve their living conditions. Although officials around him tried to persuade him to take some rest, he continued working without pause, as he regarded caring for the people and seeing them happy as his rest.
He inspected more than 20 600 factories, farms, military units, and other places throughout his lifetime. In the course of these field guidance visits, he traveled more than 578 000 kilometers – equivalent to circling the Earth about 14 and a half times. Under his leadership, the Korean people completed the historic task of socialist industrialization in just 14 years, laying a solid foundation for an independent national economy.
Today the Korean people are achieving amazing miracles under the outstanding leadership of the respected Marshal Kim Jong Un. The Marshal works hard every day to turn the aspirations and ideals of the Korean people into reality, without taking a break and regarding it as his lifelong motto to believe in the people as in Heaven, as President Kim Il Sung did.