In recent years, catastrophic armed conflicts have broken out one after another across the world, arousing deep concern of the international community. These developments pose a serious threat to the destiny and development of mankind while wantonly violating global peace. They have resulted entirely from the imperialists’ criminal ambition to sustain and expand their world hegemony.

The imperialists are more desperately resorting to the moves for aggression and war to stamp out the ever-growing socialist and anti-imperialist independent forces by means of power and maintain their crumbling dominant position.

In order to ensure global peace and security, all countries and nations must fight resolutely against the imperialist moves for aggression and intervention, and the most important thing in this effort is that the peoples of all countries should have a steadfast spirit of independence.

The yardstick to judge whether you are an independent man or a slave is your ideological spirit. If you have a strong spirit to defend your dignity at the risk of your life, you can defeat any aggressors easily. Otherwise, you will have to give in to the imperialists’ high-handed and arbitrary practices and in the end you will not even be able to maintain your existence.

A good example is the Iraqi war that broke out over 20 years ago. In the lead-up to the war the US imperialists engineered a despicable psychological warfare to create illusions and fear of them among the local people. Many Iraqis, including high-ranking government and military officials, were spiritually disarmed completely by the psychological warfare, and finally surrendered to the aggressors and submitted to their demands.

Iraq, once a self-styled Middle East power, was conquered in one stroke without waging a proper battle and its innocent people were forced into the fate of slavery.

The reality teaches us a bloody lesson that those countries which abandon the spirit of independence and succumb to the imperialists’ threat and blackmail will, without exception, fall into the calamity of war and ended up as modern-type colonies.

Today the reality of the DPRK is clearly etching in the world history of politics the immutable truth that the people with a firm spirit of independence can win the fight against any formidable imperialists and achieve their cause without fail.

In the first half of the last century, the revolutionaries of Korea’s first generation turned out in the do-or-die struggle against the brigandish Japanese imperialists armed to the teeth with the burning revolutionary spirit of defeating the imperialist aggressors and winning back the nation’s sovereignty by their own efforts at any cost when their country was under the Japanese imperialists’ military rule. They held high a red flag, the banner of independence, in the anti-Japanese war. Their brilliant victory in the war was a priceless product of their spirit of independence. As they had carried forward their revolutionary traditions as their lifeline, the Korean people could emerge victorious in the war (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953) unleashed by the US imperialists against their country, only five years since they had shaken off the yoke of colonial slavery, and demonstrated the spirit of heroic Korea to the whole world. And they worked miracles in the Chollima era on the debris of the war, thus building the most advantageous socialism on this planet.

Many unexpected difficulties and hardships cropped up in the course of advancing the cause of socialism, but the Korean people have defended their dignity more precious than their lives and vigorously advanced the cause of justice, while frustrating all sorts of threats, blackmail and pressure of hostile forces by dint of ideology.

The DPRK, small in territory and population, has won victory in the long-standing showdown with the formidable imperialist enemies as its people are firmly armed with the spirit of independence.

The victory of the anti-imperialist struggle is in store for the people strong in the spirit of independence.

The Korean people, as they are staunchly adhering to the stand of independence against imperialism, are working devotedly for the development and prosperity of their country with confidence in the sure victory of their cause.

Un Jong Chol