On the 70th Anniversary of Victory in Fatherland Liberation War: DPRK
President Kim Il Sung waving back to the cheering people at the square where the military parade was held to celebrate the war victory
-Kim Il Sung Defeats Two Imperialist Powers
Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), the eternal President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, created a model of national liberation struggle in colonies by defeating two imperialist powers in his generation.
Creating a Model of Guerrilla Warfare
Korea was under Japan’s military occupation from 1905 to 1945.
Having declared an all-out war against Japan, a newly-emerging military power that was hell-bent on overseas expansion, Kim Il Sung advanced the line of armed struggle centred on guerrilla warfare.
There had been recorded many wars, large and small, in the human history, but none, in which guerrillas defeated regular armed forces. This being the case, there had been no theory for national liberation struggle in colonies centred on guerrilla warfare, nor any military commander who had earned fame through guerrilla warfare.
The original military strategic idea of launching an anti-Japanese armed struggle with guerrilla warfare as the major tactic was put forward at a meeting held in Mingyuegou, northeast China, in December 1931.
Until then, regular warfare and guerrilla warfare had been known as two forms of armed struggle; the former had been recognized as the main mode and the latter as a temporary and auxiliary mode.
Proceeding from the concrete reality of his country, in which he could expect no state backing nor assistance from regular armed forces, Kim Il Sung defined guerrilla warfare by a standing revolutionary army as the major form of armed struggle, and organized the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army, the first revolutionary armed force of the Korean people, on April 25, 1932, declaring a war against Japan to win back his country.
The major guarantee he regarded in achieving victory in the guerrilla warfare was a skilful application of guerrilla tactics.
In order to annihilate the Korean guerrillas, the Japanese imperialists enlisted huge armed forces, and employed all the experiences and tactics they had applied and accumulated, like violent attack and tenacious pursuit, combing, deployment at vantage points, and encircling and destroying.
Kim Il Sung, on his part, adroitly employed a variety of tactics and art of command, which could not be found in any military manual nor used in any previous wars, always putting the enemy, who had been boasting about their numerical and technical superiority, on the defensive and dealing fatal blows at them.
At last Korea was liberated on August 15, 1945.
Recollecting those days, a policeman of the Longjing Police Station in Yanji County, Jiandao Province of the then Manchukuo, wrote, “At that time we called the guerrillas ‘a drop in the ocean,’ but they were everywhere, be it a mountain or a plain. It was not because they were large in number but because General Kim Il Sung employed such mysterious tactics.”
Creating a Miracle in the History of Modern Wars
The Korean war (1950-1953) was the largest in scale and the fiercest as a modern war fought for the first time after the Second World War. A miracle was wrought in this war, a miracle noteworthy in the human history of war–the United States, which had never been defeated in its 100-year history of aggression and which had been boasting of being the “strongest” in the world, suffered an ignominious defeat, whereas the DPRK, which had been liberated from Japanese colonial rule five years before and which had its own regular armed forces only two years before, emerged victorious by destroying the allied imperialist forces, who had pounced upon a country as the UN forces for the first time in history.
That a small, newly-independent country could confront the allied imperialist forces led by the United States, a victor in the Second World War, was something that could never be imagined. That was why when the news about the outbreak of the Korean war was reported, many people in the world predicted the “clear end” of the war as they believed the United States’ haughty remarks that the fate of north Korea would “end in 72 hours.”
However, beyond all their expectations, the Korean people defeated them, and their country came to be called heroic Korea.
It was Kim Il Sung who led this heroic Korea. Through brilliant military wisdom, unexcelled pluck and outstanding art of military command, he led all the operations and battles on the overall front.
The war ended in the Korean people’s victory on July 27, 1953.
The human history, spanning thousands of years, has recorded many famous generals who left their names after defeating a strong enemy, but none like Kim Il Sung, who declared in his teens a war against the aggressors, and defeated two imperialist powers in his thirties and then in his early forties.
-Legendary Tales of the Victorious War and 70 Years Later
July 27, 2023 marks the 70th anniversary of the victory of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953). The victory is etched in the world history of war.
Legendary Tales of the Victorious War
In 1950 the Korean war, the fiercest war since the Second World War, broke out.
At that time no one ever thought that the DPRK, founded two years before, would defeat the United States, which had been boasting of being the “strongest” in the world with a history of victory in 110 wars since its founding.
As the world media described, the war was a confrontation between rifle and atomic bomb.
But the result of the war turned out to be the opposite. The DPRK, a small country in the East, created a miracle by defeating the multinational forces, which pounced upon a country in the name of the United Nations for the first time in the world.
After switching over to an immediate counteroffensive, the Korean People’s Amy drove the enemy to the end of south Korea within a little over a month.
On the other hand, the United States hurled into the Korean front its forces armed with the latest weapons–one-third of its ground force, one-fifth of its air force, most of its Pacific Fleet–as well as the troops of 15 of its vassal states, south Korean puppet army and even the remnants of the former Japanese army; the military budget during the war totalled USD164 billion. This notwithstanding, it sustained a loss nearly 2.3 times greater than that it had suffered in the four-year war in the Pacific, and signed an armistice agreement.
By defeating the enemy, who were superior in terms of number of troops and technical equipment, by dint of their ideological and spiritual, strategic and tactical superiority, the Korean people defended the freedom and independence of their country and frustrated the US attempt to dominate the world with the Korean peninsula as a springboard, defending global peace and security.
Mark Clark, commander of the US Far East Command who had signed the armistice agreement, said that the north Korean army could win victory thanks to outstanding command of General Kim Il Sung, who had achieved great exploits in the resistance of many years against the Japanese army until the defeat of Japan in the Second World War.
70 Years Later
Seventy years have elapsed since ceasefire was achieved on the Korean peninsula. But the peninsula still remains as one of the hottest spots in the world.
After the armistice agreement was reached, the United States implemented none of the items of the agreement and tenaciously pursued a hostile policy against the DPRK, driving the situation on the peninsula to the brink of war. It deployed nukes in south Korea, imposing undisguised and direct nuclear threat on the DPRK.
Entering the 21st century, it has put the DPRK on the list of targets of its preemptive nuclear strike, and staged nuclear war games every year in the areas near the country by mobilizing large forces including its strategic nuclear assets.
A country without an effective self-defence capability will inevitably be at the mercy of external military threats and, worse still, be unable to safeguard the existence of its own and of its people. This is an immutable law shown by the human history.
Over the past 70 years after the war, the DPRK had to overcome manifold difficulties in developing its economy and improving the living standards of its people because of the long-drawn-out military threat, sanctions and blockade.
The best option for the DPRK for both durable peace and further acceleration of building itself into a powerful socialist country was the line of simultaneously promoting economic construction and building up its nuclear forces.
The line of simultaneously promoting the two fronts was put forward at the March 2013 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.
True to the new strategic line, the defence scientists displayed their indomitable will in developing strategic weapon systems of their own style.
Within a few years the DPRK manufactured innovative versions of ICBM, thus making its military strength irreversible.
In April last ICBM of Hwasongpho-18 type made its appearance, demonstrating the level of development of the country’s strategic forces.
Display of military equipment at military parades held every year in the country is a proof of its military strength which the others could not belittle.
With this, the DPRK could frustrate the machinations of the hostile forces, who were trying to drag it to their arms race by aggravating the situation on the Korean peninsula, and speed up its economic construction.
This can be testified by the demonstration of the potential of its self-supporting economy, like setting up structures that reflect its people’s dreams and ideals and opening a new era of rural rejuvenation amidst severe difficulties like harsh sanctions, global healthcare crisis and successive natural disasters.
In the present world, where confrontation of strength is the order of the day, the country’s sovereignty and dignity and genuine peace can be assured only by an overwhelming defence capability–this is the creed of Kim Jong Un, President of the State Affairs of the DPRK.
In April last year in the speech at the military parade held in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army, Kim Jong Un said: We should continuously grow stronger; there is no satisfaction or accomplishment in cultivating strength for defending ourselves, and, whoever we confront, our military supremacy should be more secure.
The 70-year-long postwar history of the DPRK, in which it defended its sovereignty and dignity and the safety and happiness of its people, further highlights the meaning of the 70th anniversary of victory in the war in the 1950s.
-Monument to the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War
On July 27, 1953, the Korean people emerged victorious in the Korean war (1950-1953) by defeating the allied imperialist forces led by the US that had boasted of being the “strongest” in the world, and thus defended the freedom and independence of their country. Their victory thwarted the ambition of the United States for world domination by using the Korean peninsula as a springboard, and safeguarded global peace and security.
For the purpose of commemorating the day for ever, the Monument to the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War was built in July 1993 in Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of victory in the war.