A delegation of the Cambodian paper Khmer Times visited the DPRK several times in recent years and carried the following impression in its travelogue: The DPRK, which regards the Juche idea as the steadfast guiding principle for the Party and state activities, is a powerful country guided by the spirit of self-reliance. The Korean people, who have built a true socialist system by displaying the spirit of self-development, cherish deep in their mind the word Juche, which can be heard everywhere in this country.

The Juche idea is the eternal guideline of the Korean revolution.

President Kim Il Sung embarked on the road of revolution in his early years with a great ambition to win back his country lost to the Japanese imperialists and made clear the principle of the Juche idea that the Koreans are the masters of the Korean revolution and that the Korean revolution, to all intents and purposes, must be carried out by the Koreans themselves in conformity with the specific situation of their country. Under the unfurled banner of Juche that man is the master of his own destiny and has the strength to carve out his own destiny, the Korean people under his leadership launched the anti-Japanese armed struggle and achieved the historic cause of national liberation in August 1945.

Some people of other countries doubted whether the Koreans could build the country without the help of others. But, the Korean people laid firm foundations for building a new country in reliance on their own strength. They completed in a matter of 55 days the Pothong River improvement project which the Japanese imperialists who had occupied Korea by force of arms failed to finish in ten years. The project aimed at protecting the capital city of Pyongyang and the people’s lives and property from flood damage signalled the starting point of a new history of grand nature-remaking projects in Korea.

The Korean people who stepped up the building of an independent and sovereign state were compelled to undergo difficulties and ordeals caused by the three-year-long Fatherland Liberation War. The imperialists claimed that Korea would not be able to rise to its feet again in a hundred years. But, the Korean people rose up again, believing in their own strength. They built gigantic structures on the ruins of war by dint of self-reliance and carried out the task of socialist industrialization in a short span of 14 years, thus laying solid foundations for economic development. When the great-power chauvinists demanded their entry into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), clamouring for an “integrated economy,” the Korean people strictly adhered to the line of building an independent national economy and built a socialist state, independent, self-sufficient and self-reliant in defence. .

The 1990s witnessed the tragic situation in which capitalism revived in some socialist countries. At this juncture, Chairman Kim Jong Il made public the immortal classic work Let Us Defend and Further Exalt the Brilliance of the Korean Style of Socialism under the Banner of the Juche Idea on January 21, Juche 79 (1990), in which he underscored the need to hold higher the banner of the Juche idea. As a result, the DPRK could invariably follow the road of socialism, remaining unperturbed in the face of worldwide political upheavals. In the course of this, the Korean people have cherished deep in their mind the confidence that the Juche idea is the ideological foundation of socialism and the one and only guiding ideology of the revolution and construction.

The Korean people started the socialist revolution and construction from scratch. But whenever they were faced with severe trials on countless occasions owing to intervention and pressure by the great-power chauvinists and constant aggressive manoeuvres of the imperialists to isolate and stifle their country, they solved all the problems arising in the revolution and construction from the Juche-oriented standpoint as they were fully aware that they have nothing but their own strength to rely on. In the rigorous period of the mid-1990s when the country stood at the crossroads of life and death, they stepped up the overall socialist construction under the unfurled banner of Songun, with the Korean People’s Army as the core and main force to firmly defend the Juche-oriented socialism.

Today, the imperialists are going to the extreme in their moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK. But, the Korean people are promoting the work to put their national economy on a Juche-oriented, modern, IT and scientific footing and open an avenue for the building of a powerful socialist country in reliance on their own scientific and technological strength and resources.

The Juche idea serves as the eternal banner of victory for the Korean people, even though time may change and one generation may be replaced by another.