Later, self-reliance became the basic spirit and method in all spheres of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle from the building of party organizations, establishment of the people’s revolutionary government and realization of the anti-Japanese national united front to the supply of food and clothing, provision of medical treatment and publication work. In this course, the philosophical axiom that if you follow the principle of self-reliance, you will live, and if not, you will perish, became the motto and soul of life. This revolutionary tradition of self-reliance was later the spiritual staff in stepping up the whole process of the Korean revolution including the periods of postwar reconstruction and socialist construction.
Pioneering the History of Building the Independent State
President Kim Il Sung set up the spirit of national independence as the spiritual mainstay in building the state and thoroughly established it in all spheres.
In the latter half of the 1950s a high tide of socialist construction set in Korea. Embarking on the building of socialism which was regarded as an impossibility in the existing conditions at the time, the President kindled the flames of revolutionary upswing with a determination to implant the spirit of national independence in the minds of the people and carry on the struggle in Korea’s own fashion on the strength of the people. Amidst the flames the Chollima movement was born. The movement was a manifestation of the independent spirit of the Korean people who were out to build a prosperous and powerful nation faster only by their own efforts no matter what the outsiders might say or what roads they might have come along.
At the Fourth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea the President stipulated the movement as the general line of socialist construction. Besides the Chollima movement, various types of mass movements were launched in all stages of the revolution and construction in Korea by rousing the spiritual force of the people and relying on it. On the strength of such movements, socialist construction made headway steadily and a radical change came about in the people’s ideological life and thinking patterns.
In founding the DPRK, he laid down self-reliant defence as one of the main principles of building the independent state and paid the utmost attention to the development of defence capabilities. Taking up the work of founding and strengthening the country’s own armed force as the central task in building selfreliant defence machinery, he propelled the work of training military cadres as the core of the revolutionary military force. The Pyongyang School was the first personnel-training institution of Korea founded three months after liberation for the purpose of raising political and military cadres. The honorary rector of the school was Kim Il Sung himself. This shows that the cadre-training work was a matter of utmost concern for him.
