Korea—The Songun Citadel
Alejandro Cao De Benos, chairman of the Korean Friendship Association headquartered in Spain, wrote a book titled Korea—The Songun Citadel.
Korea Today carries one of the chapters “Songun politics” in brief.
Today in Korea, Leader Kim Jong Il is reliably taking care of a big tree of Songun that President Kim Il Sung planted throughout his life.
The Korean people celebrate August 25 every year significantly.
On August 25, 1960 Leader Kim Jong Il visited the Seoul Ryu Kyong Su 105 Guards Tank Division of the Korean People’s Army as the first step of his Songun revolutionary leadership.
After starting his historic leadership of the army, Leader Kim Jong Il set forth the program on modeling the whole army on the Juche idea, and when some socialist countries overtly gave up the party’s leadership of the army, he invariably maintained the line of unity that the army should be controlled by the party.
After the death of President Kim Il Sung in particular, he consolidated and developed the Korean People’s Army as a pillar of the implementation of the socialist cause and the main force of revolution and thus laid a firm foundation to defend the state and revolution at any political upheaval.
Having unexpectedly lost their father, President Kim Il Sung, whom they had followed as heaven, the Korean people underwent harsh trials shedding more tears than ever before.
Leader Kim Jong Il was more firmly convinced that the destiny of the country and the people depends on weapons, and that the only way to defend and advance socialism in spite of all difficulties lies in relying on the People’s Army.
It is just the Kim Jong Il Songun idea that afterwards amazed the world people and moved the central point of the world history of politics to the Korean peninsula.
The idea produced a strong Songun Citadel.
The Korean people, united firmly behind President Kim Il Sung, liberated the country from the aggression of the Japanese and US imperialists and defended it.
Even after socialism collapsed in other countries, they fully displayed the invincibility of heroic Korea by safeguarding their social system and sovereignty from outsiders’ attack.
In 1998 the United States led the situation to the brink of war clamoring that the DPRK was building underground nuclear facilities and developing inter-continental ballistic missiles. But it withdrew its stand immediately after the spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army issued a hard-toned statement.
Like this, the DPRK, a small country, overpowered a “superpower” by means of military strength and thus forced the United States to adopt a diplomatic way. Eventually, it led to a travel to Pyongyang by secretary of state Madeleine Albright.
The might of the Korean People’s Army, the main force of Songun politics, is fully displayed not only in military affairs, but in the revolution and socialist construction as a whole.
The main characteristic of Leader Kim Jong Il’s Songun is that he defined the army as an important political force leading the cause of socialism and has strengthened it.
The former international communist movement had regarded it as an inviolable formula to define the working class as the vanguard of revolution and rely on it to build socialism.
Just in that manner there were performed Chartism, the Paris Commune and the Socialist October Revolution in Russia.
But entering the IT industry era based on highly developed science and technology, the number of technical and intellectual workers increased rapidly, bringing about a qualitative change in their revolutionary consciousness.
On the basis of the scientific analysis in the changed circumstances of the new era, Leader Kim Jong Il defined the army as the main force of revolution because it is the strongest in revolutionary character and the sense of organization among different classes and strata of society and advanced the idea of “army above the working class” for the first time in history.
While channeling great efforts into the strengthening of combat efficiency for national defense which is the main mission of the People’s Army, Leader Kim Jong Il led the army to play the role of vanguard and shock brigade in economic construction and the development of culture and all other branches.
In the Korean People’s Army, the Supreme Commander and the soldiers form a community of destiny, sharing life and death with each other.
The source of the world-startling might of the Korean People’s Army lies in its political and ideological superiority and the most important factor of it is the steel-strong unity of the armed forces based on revolutionary comradeship.
I sometimes read the biographies of generals.
There are lots of illustrious generals such as Alexander the Great, Mikhail Kutuzov of Russia, Zhuge Liang of China, Stalin and so on. But all of them have their own merits and demerits.
In a word, reading the biographies of all generals of the East and West, I could find Generals of power, but was difficult to find Generals of virtue.
Leader Kim Jong Il is the brilliant commander for Songun politics of the East in our time.
He is the greatest of great generals as he is possessed of unusual wisdom and strategy, strong confidence and will and unrivalled courage and at the same time, the high virtue which is the most important feature of a general.
He embraces all soldiers and bestows his affection and love to them with so warm passion and virtue as to melt even a rock.
In order to return the deep trust of the Supreme Commander they settle all difficult problems under the slogan “We’ll undertake both national defence and socialist construction!”
In recent years when the country underwent difficulties in the economy and could not supply oil and machinery, soldiers built the Anbyon Youth Power Station, Thaechon Power Station, large irrigation channels and many other monumental structures.
Soldiers took part in the nation-wide large-scale land readjusting project and built rest homes and pleasure grounds on celebrated mountains such as Mts. Chilbo and Kuwol.
Films, dramas and art performances of the army are of much interest in DPR Korea and attract the public as a whole.
Based on the philosophy that all problems should be solved by relying on the army, he set forth the wise strategy for the first time in history and brought it into practice most completely
