Chairman Kim Jong Il left behind a lot of anecdotes about his revolutionary life which will be etched in the annals of Songun-based leadership. Some of them go as follows:
First Step
Kim Jong Il took his first step for Songun-based revolutionary leadership by inspecting on August 25, 1960 the Seoul Ryu Kyong Su Guards 105th Tank Division of the Korean People’s Army. The unit was famous because when the Fatherland Liberation War started in June 1950, it advanced southward swiftly to be the first to dash into Seoul and performed brilliant feats in battles of Suwon, Taejon and Rakdong River.
Looking round the unit, the leader highly evaluated its feats and put forth important tasks and ways to carry out its mission. When he saw at its soldiers’ hall the slogan Let us defend with our very lives the Party Central Committee headed by the respected Comrade Kim Il Sung! he said that the slogan was good, as it truthfully reflected the unshakable faith of the Korean people and the KPA personnel and the fundamental requirement to absolutely trust and follow Kim Il Sung and fight selfsacrificingly for the Party and leader even at the cost of their lives. He remarked that through the slogan he could see the unit conducting the political work efficiently, and he praised the KPA as the best.
Then he emphasized that to defend the Party and the leader resolutely is the essential mission and the hardcore of the glorious tradition of struggle of the KPA, and that the KPA would have to win the final victory of the Korean revolution upholding the slogan.
He also told accompanying officers and other servicemen about important roles of tanks in modern warfare. Saying that the 105th Tank Division was an accomplished unit that had executed glorious exploits during the Fatherland Liberation War, he encouraged them by saying that if the US imperialist aggressors started another reckless war, the tankmen of the unit should wipe out the enemy from the Korean land completely as the guard tankmen had done during the Fatherland Liberation War. He made a firm determination to lead the revolution and construction by relying on the KPA.
August 25, 1960 was really a historic day representing a milestone in the history of building up the Korean revolutionary armed forces along with April 25, the founding anniversary of the KPA.
Extraordinary Strategy
It was when the US armed spy ship Pueblo intruded Korea. Kim Jong Il was reported by a KPA commanding officer that the armed spy ship was intruding the waters off Wonsan. He immediately advanced an operational plan to capture the ship through joint operations of guard warships and torpedo boats.
On January 23, 1968 a pursuit plane corps of the KPA distracted the enemy’s attention to strike terror into them by looping over the ship. Availing itself of the opportunity, a KPA torpedo boat flotilla dashed towards the ship in order to overawe them. At the same time a KPA submarine chaser approached the ship, containing the desperate fire of the enemy, while a search team jumped onto the spy ship to capture the crew and ship completely.
To cope with the follow-up touch-and-go situation, Kim Jong Il instructed relevant KPA officers to keep a closer watch in the sea and air and smash the enemy warships and aircraft if they intruded the Korean territorial waters and air even an inch. Being daunted by his courage, self-confidence and extraordinary strategy, the US imperialists found no other alternative than to withdraw all their warships including nuclearpowered aircraft carriers from the East and South seas of Korea and some forces and warplanes from frontline posts. Finally they signed a written apology at Panmunjom on December 23, 1968.
The US, instead of learning a lesson from the Pueblo incident, committed a hostile act against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by mobilizing large spy plane EC-121, when Kim Jong Il gave an order to shoot down the plane and demonstrate to the world that the DPRK means it when it warns that it will answer the American “retaliation” with retaliation and an all-out war with an all-out war. Thus, on April 15, 1969 the spy plane was shot down with all its crew of some 30 spies by KPA fighter planes.
In August 1969 the US military plane OH-23G intruded the sky over Kumchon-ri, Korea, only to be shot down as well.
Matchless Courage
The DPRK was in focus in the world political arena after the Koreans suffered their greatest loss in their history, the demise of President Kim Il Sung. The world was keenly concerned about the future policy of the country. At this juncture Kim Jong Il introduced the political mode of Songun in all fields by building on the valuable experience he had gained over the long years of administering the Songun-based revolutionary leadership, or Songun politics.
On January 1, 1995 Kim Jong Il inspected the Tabaksol Company, which was a historic milestone in realizing Songun politics on a fuller, higher level. Every time he inspected KPA units, he told officers that during the Fatherland Liberation War the KPA combatants had fought bravely to the last drop of their blood to carry out the order of Kim Il Sung. He urged them not to allow the enemy to touch even a tree or a blade of grass of Korea or to intrude 0.001mm of the Korean territory which the KPA combatants had defended at the cost of their blood.
In 1998 the US imperialists were going berserk again attempting to start a war against the DPRK while labelling the Korean artificial satellite launched in the year as a ballistic missile and arguing about the “suspicious underground nuclear facility” of the DPRK. At that time they put containment operations against the DPRK into practice while threatening the country with “revenge” for their defeat in the Korean war and releasing contents of “Operations Plan 5027,” a plan of a second Korean war, in a third country’s publication.
The confrontation between the DPRK and the US that had been heated around the launch of the Korean satellite returned to the brink of war. Who would bend to the other’s will? Korea was in the focus of the world attention. In November 1998 Kim Jong Il, just before seeing a performance of a KPA unit’s artistic motivational group, told KPA commanding officers that the US imperialists seemed to be advertising their war plan all across the world to depress the Koreans’ spirit. He instructed them to expose the aggressive moves by issuing a statement of the KPA General Staff spokesman. On December 2, 1998 a statement was released which declared that the Korean revolutionary forces would answer the challenge of the US with an annihilating blow without any mercy. The announcement shook the world. Thereupon, the US imperialists became dumb with consternation while the Japanese reactionaries and south Korean bellicose elements became intent on straightening out the situation with their hearts in their mouths.
Later according to a proposal of the US, the DPRK-US talks took place again in New York from February 17 to March 16, 1999, which had been in deadlock. The US that had used to argue for “military measures” on the pretext of “suspicious underground nuclear facility” before the statement of the KPA General Staff spokesman released, did not dare to come up with such a measure. Thus, the US had no other choice but to agree on positive proposal of the DPRK to replace the US’s forcible inspection with a visit to the DPRK on the latter’s invitation on condition that the US paid a certain fee for the visit. In May 1999, after the talks finished, the US visited Kumchang-ri to see the local underground structure, which it had advertised as an underground nuclear facility, only after it brought Korea hundreds of thousands of tons of grains for the fee. Thus, the matter of the “suspicious underground nuclear facility” ended up in victory of the DPRK.
Article: Sim Chol Yong