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National Meeting Marks Army Day

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

    Pyongyang, April 24 (KCNA) -- A national meeting was held at the April 25 House of Culture Sunday to celebrate the 73rd anniversary of the heroic Korean People's Army (KPA), the revolutionary armed forces of the Workers' Party of Korea. Present at the meeting were senior officials of the Party, the state and the army, chairpersons of the friendly parties, leading officials of the organs of the armed forces, members of the Cabinet, servicepersons of the KPA and people from all walks of life in Pyongyang.
    It was attended by overseas Koreans on a visit to the socialist homeland.
    Present on invitation were foreign diplomatic envoys and military attaches' corps members here and foreign guests.
    Kim Yong Chun, chief of the General Staff of the KPA, made a report at the meeting.
    He noted that the more than 70-year-long course covered by the KPA is a glorious history in which it has grown to be an army of the party and the leader, a-match-for-a hundred revolutionary army, recording the annals of the arduous and complicated Korean revolution with heroic struggles and feats, and a history of worthwhile struggles in which it has fulfilled its noble mission and duty as a main force of the revolution for independence, sovereignty and socialism.
    The reporter went on to say:
    President Kim Il Sung founded the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, successfully accomplishing the historic cause of founding the revolutionary armed forces of Juche. He energetically led the work to train the revolutionary armed forces into the driving force of the Korean revolution, guided by the idea and principle of attaching importance to the army and giving priority to the military affairs.
    Under the wise guidance of the President, our revolutionary armed forces have traversed a proud path of victory, weathering out the tempest of the arduous revolution in the van, and performed great exploits for the country and the people.
    The KPA has steadily carried forward the history of genuinely succeeding to the Juche-oriented cause of building the army and entered a new stage in its development under the leadership of Kim Jong Il, the peerlessly brilliant commander of Songun.
    He made a deep insight into the international environment of the Korean revolution and the rapidly changing situation and law-governed requirements for carrying out the socialist cause in the 1990s and, on this basis, developed in depth the Songun revolutionary leadership, thus making a history of the fresh turn in the building of our revolutionary armed forces.
    Under his dynamic leadership the KPA has developed to be an invincible revolutionary army equipped with unique war methods of our own style and having offensive and defensive capabilities strong enough to beat back any formidable enemy at a single blow, depending on the independent and modern defence industry.
    The KPA has grown to be invincible revolutionary armed forces which have taken on the appearance in all aspects as the army of the leader, the army of the supreme commander. It has fulfilled its mission and role as core unit of the revolution in defending the country in a do-or-die spirit and building a great prosperous powerful socialist nation. This has been possible entirely because the KPA has enjoyed the great Songun revolutionary leadership of Kim Jong Il and it has grown to be an army of Kim Jong Il, the army which has inherited his unshakable faith based on Juche, steel-like will, matchless courage and pluck.
    Our army and people are faced with the honorable tasks to dynamically make the general march for the Songun revolution under the guidance of the Party in order to build a great prosperous powerful socialist nation, achieve the country's reunification and win a final victory of the Juche revolution.
    All the servicepersons of the KPA and people should resolutely defend and glorify the President's ideas and theories of army building and exploits performed by him in it and become true loyalists who defend Kim Jong Il politically and ideologically at the cost of their lives and staunchly struggle along the road of the Songun revolution led by him despite any adversity.
    The KPA should continue to dynamically stage the movement for winning the title of O Jung Hup-led Seventh Regiment to be the first-line death-defying corps of Kim Jong Il, the first-line human bullets and bombs.
    The reporter underlined the need to channel sustained great efforts into developing the defence industry in line with the requirements of modern warfare and the trend of the development of the latest military science and technology, true to the WPK's strategic line of giving priority to its development.
    He called for realizing the three forms of cooperation for national independence, peace against war, reunification and patriotism under the uplifted banner of the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration which reflects the idea of "By our nation itself" and thereby bringing about a new turn in the efforts to accomplish the cause of national reunification, the supreme task of the nation.
    An extremely tense situation is prevailing on the Korean Peninsula due to the heinous moves of the U.S. to stifle the DPRK, the reporter noted, and continued: The army and the people of the DPRK will never remain a passive on-looker to the U.S. moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK, but steadily bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defence to cope with the enemies' reckless moves for military aggression.
    Should the U.S. start a war of aggression on the Korean Peninsula at any cost despite our repeated warnings, our revolutionary armed forces will mobilize the military deterrent force built up for years and wipe out the aggressors to the last man and win a final victory in the stand-off with the U.S.