Comrades,

This defence university, which was established with the most sacred and righteous mission and has glorified its name with unexcelled merits and proud academic records for the country and the revolution, is greeting its meaningful 60th founding anniversary.

Celebration of this anniversary of the school, an institute for training steadfast and capable personnel in defending the Party and the revolution by force of arms and the highest defence sci-tech institute in our Republic that reliably supports the historic cause of building a prosperous country with a strong army, is a source of great delight for our Party and people and an auspicious event for the whole country.

On behalf of the Party Central Committee, our government and the whole armed forces of the Republic, I extend warm congratulations to all the teachers, researchers, officials and students of the university standing here with the most dignified and proud feeling of building up the defence industry of lasting significance, which represents the strength of our country, Korea, and its ever-victorious glory.

My warm greetings also go to the family members, who are making painstaking efforts to care for the educators in adding to the weight and prestige of this sacred university, and to those who have  sent their beloved sons and daughters willingly to the forefront of defending the country and the revolution.

Comrades,

If someone asks our Party and people waging the revolution what is their most valuable strategic asset, they will say that is this defence university, a “pedigree farm” for training defence sci-tech talents.

And if he asks what are the most precious resources that can guarantee the future of a powerful country, they will also say they are the revolutionary talented personnel studying at this university.

The university has proved this iron truth of history with its dignified history and wonderful feats.

As I am standing here on this meaningful day, I am reminded of how epochal and decisive the day of 60 years ago was in achieving the success of our revolutionary cause and carving out the destiny of our state.

The founding of this university was not simply something created by the fateful decade, when confrontation between socialism and imperialism and between revolution and counterrevolution was acute and when the urgency of building self-reliant defences in every country posed itself not in words but by shocking events and as a stark reality.

It was an institute born of the steadfast revolutionary will of the Workers’ Party of Korea to take its destiny firmly in its own hands and defend to the last the gains of the revolution achieved at the cost of blood; it was also a crystallization of its firm faith and ideals for setting up a notable landmark in achieving dignity and prosperity by building great strength.

It would not be so hard to imagine how extraordinary and audacious the decision was to found this university amid the then global political landscape and internal and external situations of our country.

If the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung had lived to continue to write his reminiscences without stopping it to our painful memory, he would have recollected why this university had to be founded, I believe.

As it was founded from scratch with the spirit of self-respect and self-reliance as its lifeblood, since the first day of its founding the university, with Juche as its lifeline and characteristic feature, has served as a reliable base for implementing the Workers’ Party of Korea’s line of self-reliant defence and added inexhaustible potential and dynamism to the growth and development of the defence capability of our state.

The Juche orientation and modern character are two attributes and buttresses of our self-reliant national defence, and these can be defended and built up only when it has a base for training its own sci-tech talents.

In fact, from the day of this university’s founding our defence industry could set a clear goal and orientation for its development as a Juche-oriented industry that develops and produces our own style of weapons and other combat equipment, and make rapid development as an industry possessed of self-supporting, modern and advanced characters.

Though it made its start literally from scratch–without the foundations of the machine-building industry and an asset of munitions industry–our defence industry laid already in the 1970s its firm production foundations based on modern defence science and technology, and has since supported the Party’s cause on the strength of Juche-oriented science and industry. The annals of its great history have been written together with those of the history of this university’s development.

This is the very place where large contingents of competent personnel have grown up equipping themselves with the spirit of Juche and up-to-date military science and made tangible contributions to the victorious revolution by satisfactorily raising our country’s defence capabilities to the level as high as is required by the revolution at each period and stage of its development. The fine people trained in this campus now constitute the backbone of the revolutionary industry in writing, together with our Party, a new chapter of history of strength the world has never known.

Our own style of weaponry has attained the power which nobody else on this planet could copy, the powerful strength by which the embryo of great historic events is developing. This strength is undoubtedly the might of potentialities of the Juche-oriented science, crystallization of the pride of Korea and the resourcefulness of the Korean people, and of our proud defence scientists who are the incarnation of those qualities.

The university has untiringly injected the two essential attributes of vitality, that is, the Juche orientation and modern character, into the revolutionary industry that shoulders the destiny and future of the Party, the state and the people, and laid solid and stable foundations for our country to rise as a world-class power. Herein lies the historic importance of the founding of the university and the incomparable glory of its 60-year history.

We know there are long-standing institutes around the world boasting their time-honoured traditions of defence science education and training of capable personnel; yet none of them could be a match for this university, a revolutionary institute, which, based in the capital city of the revolution, has maintained its lineage of absolute loyalty to the Party Central Committee and its lines while firmly supporting the revolutionary cause without a slightest vacillation or hesitation for 60 years for its steadfast inheritance and accomplishment.

This honourable history and traditions of the university and the names and exploits of the numerous heroes born of the university are rather little-known, but the imprints of their life are left anywhere in our country, and their soul of national defence is reflected in the hatred-charged powerful weapons that strike terror into the enemy.

Availing myself of this opportunity, I would like to highly appreciate the teachers and researchers of the university for the ennobling careers they have made and the patriotic feats they have performed while living a wartime-like life even in peacetime on their uninterrupted march of service for the country and their fellow people, mindful of the heavy class mission charged by the Party and the revolution to them. Also, I hope from the bottom of my heart that the students will grow as reliable successors to the cornerstone of our Republic.

Comrades,

The defence university does not simply represent the glorious past and present of the revolutionary industry which is a strong buttress of our independent, powerful and self-sustaining country; it also serves as a bulwark of strategic importance for achieving one victory after another in the years to come.

Your campus is a fierce battlefield, not a comfortable place.

The enemy you are facing are die-hard anti-communists, who would not change their hostile consciousness against our Republic until their doomsday. And they are imperialist aggressive forces that boast their highly advanced military science and technology and munitions industry plus their centuries-old belligerency.

It is a matter of course that the more fearfully they become aware of their doomsday coming closer, the more frantic the ringleader of aggression and its lackeys, dependent on anti-communism and war for their existence, will go and rush to war till they collapse with sheer exhaustion.

This is evident when we consider what happened on October 1 last, when the rulers of the Republic of Korea, holding a pompous ceremony to mark what they called the “ROK Army Day,” glibly read ignoble and disgraceful lines only to reveal their abnormal way of thinking to the outside world.

The puppet regime, attaching special importance to the inauguration of the “strategic command” which they had pushed ahead with as the “core project of the state administration,” claimed that their “latest conventional combat capability has finally merged with the extended deterrent capability of the US.”

Obviously they do not have any strategic weapons worth mentioning, but they have made up the “strategic command”–without real worth–by borrowing their master’s nukes, and praised it as “core unit” and “great build-up of the defence capabilities.” They went so far as to give a long and nice narration of how a latest strategic nuclear submarine of the US entered the ROK for the first time in some 40 years, followed by the landing of a strategic bomber for the first time in history. This is a frank and self-praising admission of the record of their intentional and planned worsening of the regional situation in cooperation with their master.

The “congratulatory speech” is simply a presentation of desperate bluff that comes from their inferiority complex in strength and their morbid consciousness of persecution by our state. In a nutshell, it reveals only their absurd intention to maintain at any cost the balance of strength with us by relying on the ROK-US alliance that has mutated into a nuke-based military bloc.

I am saying this as you need to have a clear understanding of our enemy.

In delivering the “congratulatory speech” Yoon Suk Yeol intentionally made mean and vulgar remarks about ending the government of our Republic. This indicates that he is totally gripped by a blind belief in his master’s “might.”

As you have learned through newspapers and broadcasts, some days ago I made clear my view of and stand towards this matter.

A wise statesman would not act so rashly as to endanger the security of his country and its population; in dealing with a nuclear-armed rival, rather than opt for a confrontation or face-off with it, he would put emphasis on, and concern himself about, how to handle the situation and avoid military conflict.

It is because this option is absolutely right and helpful to ensure the security of his country.

Doing so is just what a veteran statesman would choose to do, an expression of his political proficiency and finesse.

Then what did the man say in Seoul?

Speaking on the doorstep of a nuclear-armed state, he clamoured about responding with overwhelming military strength. How would this be commented on by the audiences the world over?

Would he be praised for having been born with rare courage? Or would he be described as a patriotic commander or the like?

Even if there appeared a matchless commander unheard-of in the time-honoured history, he would not be able to come up with a realistic method of overcoming the distinctions between the capabilities of nukes and conventional weapons.

This is the very reason that I called him one who is most likely to be considered a man lacking something.

For the Republic of Korea, all that it needs to do in order to guarantee its security is not provoking us into using our military strength.

This is so simple a method.

It would find itself safe if it refrained from provoking us or flexing its muscles before us at times, but it seems that Seoul has no one capable of doing such a simple thing.

To be honest, we have no intention of attacking the Republic of Korea.

Thinking of it is abominable, and we hate dealing with those in it.

Formerly, we often spoke about liberating the south and reunification by force of arms, but now we are not interested in it. And since our statement about two separate states, we have been all the more unwilling to be conscious of the state in the south.

However, the point is that the latter provokes us now and then.

We must keep close watch on the recent developments around our country.

Deeply engrossed in their preposterous schemes to “contain” the non-existent threat against them, the US imperialists and their puppets have converted the ROK-US alliance into a nuclear-based one, and they are growing frantic in their arms build-up. Their desperate clamour for war and provocations threaten to disrupt the balance of strength on the Korean peninsula at any moment.

Their expansion of armaments and military actions are justifiable and self-defensive, whereas our responses are threats and provocations–this is the US imperialists’ and their stooges’ way of thinking, an illogical and perverted approach that is tantamount to that of the thief crying “Stop thief!”

In other words, it is a robber’s logic, namely the problem is not what is being done, but who is doing it.

We do not recognize it, and such far-fetched sophism of the enemy can never check our strength from growing.

The disturbed balance of strategic strength on the Korean peninsula precisely means the outbreak of war.

Therefore, the logic on the self-reliant defence building, the logic that we should possess physical strength with which to always contain the enemy and control the situation is absolutely open and above board.

Our progress towards a military superpower, a nuclear power, will grow faster.

Now that the ROK-US military alliance has completely changed into a nuclear alliance as the puppets advertise themselves, the preparedness of our state for nuclear counteractions should be further perfected on the high level defying limits.

By the way, I would like to mention that on October 4 a spokesman for the UN secretary general asked us to lower the rhetoric.

I am not sure that such a request was also conveyed to Seoul, but I would take this opportunity to stress once again that the international community should have a proper understanding of my remarks.

I have clearly and consistently put a precondition of the word “if” whenever I clarified our stand on the use of military strength.

Under the precondition of “if,” our Constitution will issue a strict order to our armed forces.

If the enemy attempt to have recourse to arms against our state, the armed forces of our Republic will use all the strike capabilities without hesitation.

They will not rule out the use of nuclear weapons.

I stress once again: Pinning hopes for survival in such a situation is useless and no fortune or alleged guardianship of God can protect the ROK.

This is not an issue related to rhetoric as mentioned by the UN, but it is exactly a warning of action.

Confronting us are the largest nuclear power in the world and the most vicious of its puppets attempting to fool with its nukes.

Under such circumstances our view, option and resolve can never be changed.

The enemy should refrain from acting rashly.

They should never slight our warning that if they misunderstand it as something like their worn-out, half-baked bluff, they would pay more dearly for it.

The absolute strength we have possessed at present is discharging in a responsible manner the mission of deterring a war and defending peace.

No forces will dare opt for the use of military strength against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a military conflict.

However, the more desperately the enemy try to hold supremacy by dint of the “nuclear alliance” and reverse the strategic situation, the more steadily we should make a leap forward in defence science and industry and the more firmly we should consolidate our war deterrent for self-defence.

Our Party and the government of our Republic will never tolerate the balance of strength being disturbed on the Korean peninsula.

We should neutralize the imperialists’ adventurist military acts of aggressive nature by dint of the absolute superiority of the strength of the Juche-oriented defence science and technology.

Nothing will overwhelm the strength of the Juche-type weapons loaded with the might of the revolutionary ideas and the do-or-die resistance spirit, and we, based on this strength, should create a new world, in which war, hegemony and injustice shall not be allowed.

This defence university should continue to make responsible and devoted efforts until we accomplish this important mission and righteous cause entrusted to us by the times and history.

The basic task facing the university is to train in larger numbers pillars who would further consolidate and glorify the position of our Republic as a world-class military superpower, competent talents who are possessed of the Juche-oriented ideology and theory on defence science, a wealth of specialist knowledge and practical abilities, and the key to this end is to radically improve the level of its education.

To improve the level of its education is the absolute demand of our Party and revolution, and the university should take the lead in implementing the Party’s policy on bringing about a radical turn in education.

True to the essence of our Party’s defence policy on guaranteeing the security of the country and people by our own efforts and in accordance with the characteristics of education in defence science and technology and the global trend of the development of military hardware, the university should formulate its educational programme correctly, reorganize the overall structure of its education and make positive efforts to study and apply advanced teaching methods with the main stress on putting the contents of education on a scientific, practical, comprehensive and modern footing, thus increasing the ranks of talents capable of confidently leading the steady advance and development of our defence industry.

It should thoroughly establish the Juche orientation in the education of defence science and technology so as to play a decisive role in rooting out dogmatic, stereotyped and imitative practices that remain in the defence industry, and pay special attention to intensifying basic science education as suited to its characteristics.

In order for the university to keep up its appearance as befits its position and weight, it should, above all else, improve the quality of the ranks of its teachers and ensure that all of them possess high intellect combined with the qualifications of educators.

With a clear view and stand that improved qualifications are inconceivable separate from scientific research, the teachers and researchers should be proactive in participating in developing cutting-edge military hardware urgently needed in strengthening the country’s defence capabilities and perfecting the combat preparedness of the People’s Army, as well as in projects to push back the frontiers of defence science and technology. In this way, they can prepare themselves to be talented educationists, who possess as their essential qualifications rich experience in education and latest science and technology so as to create a climate of talented persons training students to be more talented ones.

The university Party committee should make strenuous efforts to establish more firmly the unified leadership system of the Party and a climate of strictly observing order, keeping secrets and maintaining moral discipline in the campus and lay firm material foundations of the university. In this way, it can constantly improve the working and living conditions for the teachers, researchers and students, who are invaluable for our Party.

The Party and the state should give active support to the defence university in its work and throw their weight behind it.

Relevant departments of the Party Central Committee should pay close attention to the university’s work and give proper Party-oriented guidance to the university. Other relevant sectors and units should take measures for solving on a priority basis the problems arising in the management and operation of the university.

It is the determination of the Party Central Committee to radically transform the appearance and educational environment of the university with the goal of turning it into one of the most prestigious universities in the world at an earlier date.

The university should be furnished with the latest educational apparatuses and equipment and IT means so that other universities dare not compare themselves with it in terms of the level of modernization.

…

The validity and superiority of our Party’s defence policy and the Korean-style education policy and our state’s scientific and technological force and its level of remarkable development should be represented by the prestige and reputation of this university, and the honour of renowned red scientists creating new things from nothing if they are needed for our revolution should belong to its graduates.

Defence university students who will carry through the revolution following our Party,

All of you, wearing the military uniform of the revolution in your precious university days and spending these days filled with a sense of uncommon mission and patriotic enthusiasm, should keep in mind that your academic records reflect your revolutionary faith, patriotism and loyalty and be ardent in studying and earnest in thinking, thus preparing yourselves to be pillars who will shoulder the future of the Juche-oriented defence science and munitions industry.

You should always bear in mind that as students of the defence university, you should be called exemplary young students of Korea, who cherish loyalty to your country and revolution as your lifeblood, are well-versed in the latest scientific and technological advances in your major fields, and are possessed of creative abilities.

To develop the defence university into the highest institute responsible for producing without interruption talented revolutionary personnel and world-renowned inventors that are representative of the future of our munitions industry and defence science, and into an authoritative and prestigious defence science research centre, in order to ensure the eternal security and prosperity of our country–this is the Party Central Committee’s firm determination and will.

Fully convinced that all the teachers, researchers, students and graduates of the university, mindful of the expectations of their Party, country and fellow people, will continue to demonstrate the excellence of the revolutionary industry by displaying their ennobling revolutionary spirit, achieving substantial progress in education, making high academic achievements and developing powerful weapons, I once again extend warm congratulations and offer my heartfelt tribute to our Party’s faithful revolutionary soldiers and true patriots on the occasion of their holiday.