The anti-Japanese armed struggle was a revolutionary war to defeat Japanese imperialism and achieve the cause of Korea’s liberation and a historic event that produced great ideological and spiritual wealth guaranteeing forever the uninterrupted victory of the just cause of the Korean revolutionaries.

The armed ranks composed of the excellent sons and daughters of the Korean people created the indomitable spirit and built up the strength to defeat imperialist tyranny and established great traditions of fundamental and lasting significance in the development of the Korean revolution.

The spirit of defending the leader to the death, the most important element of the ideological and spiritual wealth of the Korean revolution, the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and revolutionary optimism were born in the battlefields of the anti-Japanese war, and the indomitable revolutionary spirit and army-people unity were handed down by the anti-Japanese revolutionary forerunners.

In the initial days of the revolution, the anti-Japanese guerrillas held Kim Il Sung in high esteem as the centre of unity and leadership and staunchly defended the headquarters of the revolution.

It is also the spirit of defending the leader to the death that is firmly kept in the hearts of the Korean people at present.

As they possessed this spirit, ordinary people dedicated their lives to protecting the portraits of President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il by preventing even a single drop of water from going into them in the rough seas and service personnel of the Korean People’s Army protected slogan-bearing trees, which constitute a treasure of the anti-Japanese revolution, by covering them with their own bodies though they were engulfed in blazing flames.

Apart from this spirit, there can be neither the spirit of defying death in carrying out the lines and policies of the Workers’ Party of Korea nor the spirit of becoming a human bomb, the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and revolutionary optimism.

Herein lies the reason why the spirit of defending the leader to the death form the kernel of the ideas and spirit created by the anti-Japanese revolutionary predecessors.

The revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and fortitude of the anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters, who repaired their weapons and made bombs in primitive forests with the indomitable will to defeat the enemy no matter how often they might have to die and achieve national liberation, enables all the people to become fighters who do not know the word “impossible” in socialist construction.

The great army-people unity, which was created during the anti-Japanese armed struggle and is steadily being carried forward, now serves as a powerful guarantee for defending the country and the revolution and a driving force of construction of a powerful socialist country.

Today the service personnel of the Korean People’s Army find out and do more good things for the people and defend their lives and property at the risk of their lives, just as the anti-Japanese guerrillas who fought for the people by relying on them under the slogan “As fish cannot live without water, so guerrillas cannot live without the people”.

It is the excellent trait of the DPRK for the army to bring the people happiness and the latter to regard offering the former assistance as patriotism and assist them with all sincerity.

The revolutionary spirit of the anti-Japanese war with eternal viability is reliably carried on generation after generation and decade after decade and dynamically propels the victorious advance of the building of a powerful socialist country.