January 17, 2026Jan 17, 2026
KCNA Pyongyang Times

Peoples’ spiritual strength motive power for national development

Date: 31/03/2023 | Source: Pyongyang Times | Read original version at source

The Korean revolution can be claimed to be the history of ideological campaign in which it was pioneered and advanced and emerged victorious on the strength of ideology. With the help of ideology, the spiritual strength, the Korean people dynamically promoted the prosperity and development of the country.

Spirit of unity

The DPRK is a country in which the leader and people are single-mindedly united with each other.

Its single-mindedness of the leader firmly believing in the people and the latter fully trusting and following the former remained unchanged even in hard times for the country.

President Kim Il Sung met an old man from Poptong of Kangwon Province who drove an oxcart on a mountain pass in the period of the strategic, temporary retreat of the Korean People’s Army during the Fatherland Liberation War(June 1950-July 1953).

It was so dark that the old man could not recognize the President. Answering the President's question where he was going, he said he was going north to see General Kim Il Sung.

The President asked him again why he was going to see the General in this chaotic situation of war. The old man replied in a reproachful tone that they could survive and win the war only when they followed the General.

When he asked the old man once again whether their side was likely to win in the war, he confidently said, “It will win. That’s for sure. We have nothing to worry about as we are led by the General, We will win.”

Thanks to the single-minded unity of the President who firmly believed in the people and aroused their inexhaustible strength and the people who were boundlessly loyal to his leadership, the DPRK achieved a great victory in the Fatherland Liberation War which is called a showdown between a rifle and an atomic bomb and has vigorously advanced socialist construction even in the face of flagrant challenge and ceaseless obstructive moves of the hostile forces.

Spirit of national self-sustenance

The spirit of self-sustenance always served as the banner of struggle and the motive power for a leap forward in the whole course of the Korean revolution.

When the US imperialists who had started the Korean war argued that the DPRK would be unable to rise again in a hundred years referring to its desperate plight after the war, the Korean people hastened postwar reconstruction by relying on their strength and completed socialist industrialization in 14 years to build a socialist state which is independent in politics, self-supporting in the economy and self-reliant in defence.

Their confidence in the validity of their cause and their strength produced miraculous legends when the great-power chauvinists demanded the DPRK join the COMECON and the imperialists intensified their moves to isolate and stifle the country.

In the past ten years, in particular, when a golden age of construction was ushered in, with modern cultural recreation grounds for the people, new streets, factories and greenhouse farms and other miraculous creations rose up across the country at a surprising construction speed. All of them are closely associated with the spirit of national self-sustenance of the Korean people to achieve world-class civilization and development by their own efforts overcoming the manifold difficulties.

View of life for the future

The Korean people regard revolution itself as a struggle for the rosy future.

During the anti-Japanese armed struggle to win back the lost country from the Japanese imperialists, the anti-Japanese guerrillas had neither the backing of a state and support of a regular army, but undauntedly fought against the one million-strong Kwantung Army of Japan to build a new world where the new generations would live happily free from exploitation and oppression.

The firm confidence in the victory of the revolution and hope for the future of the anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters were one of the primary factors in their achieving the historic cause of national liberation.

Supported by the fervent desire of the Korean people to bring the happy future, such a grand task was set forth as the 10 long-term goals for socialist economic construction after the war and a period of upsurge was brought about in socialist construction for attaining the goals.

“Let us live not merely for today but for tomorrow!”, “Let us take responsibility for the safety of the project and guarantee its absolute quality for all eternity!” and other slogans are the principles of life cherished by the Korean people.

The hope for better future more powerfully promotes the advance of the Korean people who are speeding up the comprehensive development of socialist construction.

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