On June 19, 1964, Chairman Kim Jong Il started working at the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

It is another significant day in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea along with the founding anniversary of the WPK (October 10, 1945).

That day, Kim Jong Il sat up all night for his work in the office. Early next morning he went out to the garden with officials.

Strolling along the dewy path in the compound of the Party Central Committee, he said to the accompanying officials as follows: Look at the red Party flag fluttering on top of the building of the Party Central Committee. The history of the flag of our Party began on the day when President Kim Il Sung formed the Down-with-Imperialism Union and held up the red flag of the revolution. It was from then on that our Party began to strike strong root.

After a while, he continued: Now is the time for us to hold the red flag higher. We should fight more staunchly to accomplish the cause of the President, holding aloft the red flag of the revolution, whatever difficulties and trials may confront the revolution. As in the past, so in the future, too, our Party should be strengthened and developed into the glorious party of Comrade Kim Il Sung for all eternity. To strengthen and develop our Party into the party of Comrade Kim Il Sung forever—this is my lifetime task.

Along with the history of his leadership over the Party, the WPK has been further strengthened and developed into a Juche-oriented revolutionary party in which the leader’s ideological and leadership system have been firmly established, and a party which serves the masses of people and enjoys their absolute support and trust, forming a harmonious whole with them. It has also demonstrated its dignity and might to the whole world as an ever-victorious party leading the revolution and construction along the road of Juche, the road of independence, whatever trials and upheavals.

Kim Jong Il personally guided different fields and sectors, including Party work, economic construction and art and literature, from the day when he started working at the Party Central Committee.

He formulated the revolutionary ideology of the President as Kimilsungism, brought about the renaissance in the 20th century and led the grand socialist construction to a brilliant victory.

In the grim period of the 1990s, when socialism collapsed in the East European countries, he frustrated the imperialists’ moves to stifle the DPRK and honourably defended socialism under the uplifted banner of Songun.

His decades-long leadership over the WPK was adorned with the heroic epic of the outstanding leader who performed enduring exploits for the Party and the revolution, the country and the people.

That is why the Korean people commemorate June 19 as a significant day to be brilliantly recorded in the history of the WPK.

Today they are greeting victories and glory on the road of glorifying the WPK as the eternal party of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and faithfully supporting its leadership, holding the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un at its top post.

Yang Ryon Hui