Depending on Foreign Forces Is Way to National Ruin: Kim Jong Il

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Chairman Kim Jong Il made a talk to students at Kim Il Sung University on April 5, 1961, emphasizing that worshipping big powers and depending on foreign forces is the way to national ruin.

The full text of his talk “Worshipping Big Powers and Depending on Foreign Forces Is the Way to National Ruin” is as follows:

 

In the course of discussing the harm done by the worship of big powers recently, the students insisted that the policy of extreme dependence on foreign forces and the factional strife among the feudal rulers of the Ri dynasty ruined the country. This view is quite right. We should always remember that worshipping big powers and depending on foreign forces is the way to national ruin.

Sycophancy to the great powers blemishes people’s national pride, self-respect and spirit of independence and paralyzes them ideologically and mentally. For people to cherish the spirit of national independence and their self-respect is an important matter that has a bearing on the destiny of the nation. A nation without national pride and confidence in victory may go to ruin, but a nation which cherishes them is invincible. The spirit of national independence is the spirit of living by one’s own efforts in accordance with the will and demands of one’s own nation without being shackled to or relying on other nations, while national self-respect is the feeling of ardent love for and pride in the wisdom and strength of one’s own country and nation and all the excellent things of one’s own nation. Only those who possess the spirit of national independence and national self-respect can become true patriots who ardently love their own country and nation and devote themselves heart and soul to the prosperity of their own country. The spirit of national independence and national self-respect is a major source of the ideological and spiritual inspiration that induces people to glorify the honour and dignity of their own nation. If people lose the spirit of independence, national pride and self-respect, the nation will suffer from an ideological and mental malady. Evidently, a nation that is paralyzed ideologically cannot defend itself from the intervention and aggression by foreign forces. Sycophancy and dependence on foreign forces is ideological poison which leads a country and nation to ruin, as it prevents people from displaying their strength to the full.

To believe in one’s own strength and to adopt the attitude of carrying out everything by one’s own efforts is a prerequisite for achieving the independence and prosperity of one’s own country. If one depends on foreign forces without believing in one’s own strength, one can neither win the independence of one’s country nor successfully build a new society.

Those who are steeped in sycophancy and dependence on foreign forces do not believe in and rely on the strength of their nation; instead, they try to resolve all problems by trusting and depending on big powers. They try to win the independence of their country by relying on the strength of big powers and to build a new society by getting help from others. They slight the strength of their own people instead of thinking of unifying that strength. The country and nation that does not trust its own strength or give play to it becomes enervated. It cannot win its independence, nor can it maintain that independence for long, even should it gain it. If a country relies on foreign forces it can go to ruin even if it has inexhaustible strength, because it fails to make effective use of it.

Those steeped deeply in sycophancy and dependence on foreign forces may be reduced to tools of the great-power chauvinists and to traitors who sell out the interests of their country and nation. Sycophancy is inseparably linked with betrayal. Those who have fallen prey to sycophancy try their best to curry favour with big powers–this is the first step towards betraying one’s country. Having lost their principles they gradually begin to ingratiate themselves with big countries by sacrificing the interests of their country and nation; if this malady is allowed to develop, they may even go so far as to commit the crime of selling out their country and nation.

Looking back, foreign aggressors, the imperialists in particular, have pursued the policy of using the sycophants and traitors in other countries as guides facilitating their aggressive ambitions. If one is steeped in sycophancy and clings to dependence on foreign forces, one may be relegated to the status of guide and stooge of aggressors. If such sycophants and traitors are rampant in a country, it will inevitably go to ruin.

The past history of our country teaches us the serious lesson that if one clings to sycophancy and dependence on foreign forces, the interests of one’s country and nation are infringed upon, and ultimately the country may collapse.

The era when the Korean nation was strongest in its history was that of Koguryo. Koguryo was a powerful state with a vast territory in East Asia and a large population. It nearly achieved the unification of the Three Kingdoms, and repulsed the invasion by foreign forces, thus defending its honour. Koguryo earned renown as a powerful country because its people did not worship big powers.

It was from the mid-7th century onwards that sycophancy began to exert a harmful influence on our country. The rulers of Silla took the road of depending on foreign forces in their attempts to overthrow the powerful Koguryo and expand their territory with the help of a big power. Kim Chun Chu of Silla went to Tang China, and agreed with its rulers to bring in its army, based on the understanding that after the downfall of Koguryo the vast area of Koguryo north of the Taedong River would be transferred to Tang. Later, the Silla authorities took one foolish step after another to curry favour with the Tang rulers and committed the crime of repeatedly dispatching envoys to request the Tang troops.

Owing to the act of dependence on foreign forces committed by the Silla rulers Koguryo, once a powerful country, crumbled and the unification of the Three Kingdoms, which had been strongly pursued by Koguryo, failed to be realized. And the grave situation was created in which the whole country and the whole nation, including Koguryo, Paekje and even Silla itself, could have been swallowed up by foreign forces. To overcome the national crisis resulting from the policy of dependence on foreign forces pursued by the rulers of Silla, the people of the Three Kingdoms had to fight a long-drawn-out bloody struggle, enduring great material and manpower losses. The fallout from this policy was not confined to this. According to historical records, after the downfall of Paekje and Koguryo a large number of their people were abducted and taken to other countries and the ringleaders in this tragedy were none other than the rulers of Silla. We should never forget the grave fallout from the policy pursued by them, and should draw a serious lesson from it.

It was during the five hundred years of Ri dynasty rule that sycophancy was most rampant, reaching its extreme in the last days of the dynasty.

With the gradual decline of the nation’s strength and the infiltration of the feudal-Confucian idea, worship of big powers raised its head higher. The feudal-Confucian idea, which was prevalent in the days of the dynasty, was blindly worshipped by the nobility. The feudal-Confucian idea preached that a small country was obliged to serve a big country and this was a “great obligation” and natural duty to be observed by the small country. As the ruling circles worshipped this idea which openly preached sycophancy, sycophancy inevitably struck deep root in their minds. The word sadae (worship of the big–Tr.) has its origins in the Confucian Canon. It is by no means fortuitous that the enlightenment campaigners of the modern age lamented that our people were so deeply steeped in the Confucian idea that they knew only about the big countries and nothing of their country from a young age and in the end lost the spirit of loving their country.

The feudal rulers of the Ri dynasty cared nothing about the things of their own; instead, they worshipped the culture of other countries blindly and conducted humiliating diplomacy. In the course of this, worship of big powers was ingrained in their minds, and it degraded to sycophantic capitulationism in the modern age.

In the twilight of the Ri dynasty foreign aggressors, including the US and Japanese imperialists, stretched their tentacles of aggression into Korea and ran amok in an attempt to bring it under their domination. In this grave situation, in which the destiny of the country was at stake, the sycophantic feudal rulers did not think about driving out the foreign aggressors by their own efforts; instead they recklessly brought in the foreign aggressors in an attempt to sustain their own lives by clinging to them. They resorted to the preposterous theory that one enemy could be defeated by using another enemy; claiming that they were guarding against Japan, the incompetent feudal rulers entered into unequal treaties with the United States and other Western powers, thus opening the country to them, and attempted to check the Qing intervention and Japanese aggression by relying on Czarist Russia. This was as foolish as summoning a tiger to defeat a wolf and setting a wolf to guard sheep.

They even committed the crime of suppressing the anti-aggression, anti-feudal struggle of the Korean people and stifling the bourgeois reformist movement through the introduction of foreign forces. When the army launched a large-scale struggle against foreign aggression and feudalism in Seoul in 1882, Queen Min and her clique invited Qing troops to suppress them. When reformists including Kim Ok Gyun staged the Kapsin coup in 1884 for a bourgeois reform, they also put them down with the help of the Qing forces stationed in Seoul, and the Qing forces were also called on to fight the Kabo Peasant War. Availing themselves of the policy of dependence on foreign forces by the feudal rulers of the Ri dynasty, the Japanese imperialists hurled large forces into Korea, not only brutally suppressing the peasant forces but also capturing the royal palace and scuttling the Kabo Reform.

Owing to the feudal rulers’ policy of dependence on foreign forces, the modernization of the country faced grave difficulties, and Korea became a field for the imperialist powers to scramble for their sphere of influence.

The corrupt feudal rulers, with the backing of big countries, were split into pro-Qing, pro-Japanese, pro-US and pro-Russian factions; they indulged themselves in factional strife for power. Some moved from one side to another, replacing their masters according to the trend of the times. Queen Min, the kingpin of the reactionaries, was a dyed-in-the-wool worshipper of Qing, but as the influence of Qing began to wane after the Sino-Japanese war, she gradually leaned towards the forces of Czarist Russia. Notably, Ri Wan Yong turned coat from the pro-Qing faction to the pro-Russia faction and then to the pro-US faction, before finally becoming a heinous pro-Japanese traitor to the nation. After the failure of the Kabo Reform and the collapse of  the  Kim Hong Jip cabinet, the feudal government was effectively turned into a den of sycophantic traitors and a stage on which factions worshipped the great powers.

The imperialists contended in infiltrating their forces deeply into Korea by controlling and instigating various factions, during which the political disturbances reached an extreme and the country suffered from ceaseless turmoil. The attack on the royal palace and murder of Queen Min by the Japanese imperialists  and the pro-Japanese faction, the raid on the royal palace by the US imperialists and their Korean stooges, known as the Chunsaeng Gate incident, the removal of King Kojong to its legation by Czarist Russia and the pro-Russian faction, known as the royal moving to the Russian legation–all these are examples. When the royal palace was attacked successively, the queen cruelly murdered and the king, not an asylum seeker, detained in a foreign legation for a year, the country was inevitably ruined. The sovereignty of our country was trampled on and obliterated in the whirlwind of the imperialists’ scramble for spheres of influence and the acute rivalries among the factions that worshipped big countries.

Owing to the policy of extreme dependence on foreign forces and sycophancy to the big countries pursued by the feudal rulers and their factional strife, the country was plunged into catastrophe and, finally, was annexed by Japan in 1910.

The modern history of our country clearly shows that worshipping big countries and depending on foreign forces lead to national ruin.

The present reality in south Korea proves this truth more clearly. The successive rulers–Syngman Rhee and Chang Myon–have followed the colonial policy of the United States and resorted to traitorous acts. As a result, south Korea has been turned into an out-and-out colony and military base of the United States and a hell where fascism and terrorism are rampant and poverty and lightlessness prevail. Owing to the aggressive mechanisms of the US imperialists and the sycophantic and traitorous acts of the puppets in south Korea, national reunification, which all our compatriots are longing for so impatiently, is yet to be achieved and the tragedy of national division is continuing.

We should never forget the lesson from history that the worship of big countries and dependence on foreign forces are the way to national ruin, and should reject them categorically.

The worship of big countries has a long history in our country, which is sandwiched between big countries. Hence, this ideological malady has long caused great harm to the national liberation struggle, the communist movement and the construction of a new society.

From the first days when he set out on the road of revolution, the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung has opposed sycophancy and made strenuous efforts to establish a Juche orientation. In particular, in the period of postwar rehabilitation he put forward the policy of rejecting sycophancy and dogmatism and establishing a Juche orientation, and pushed ahead with the effort in a comprehensive way.

Thanks to the vigorous efforts our Party has made in this regard radical changes have been brought about in the ideological and mental lives of Party members and other working people. However, we cannot say that sycophancy has been eradicated completely.

Fully aware of the danger and harm posed by sycophancy, we should continue to make strenuous efforts to reject it and establish a Juche orientation, and should fight uncompromisingly against even the slightest expression of this ideological malady. 

 

 

 

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