His father Kim Hyong Jik, an indomitable revolutionary fighter, passed away in an alien land with a grudge of a ruined nation on June 5, 1926, leaving two pistols for his son. While leading the anti-Japanese national liberation movement in Korea, he drew a conclusion that one should fight with arms in hands against the armed enemy.

True to his father’s instruction, Kim Il Sung made up his mind to win back his lost country through armed struggle.

On October 17, 1926 he formed the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU), a vanguard organization of the revolution for national liberation and class emancipation, under the ideal of anti-imperialism, independence and sovereignty, and put forward its fighting programme.

This programme presupposed the idea of armed struggle.

As mentioned above, the Songun idea traces its origin back to the two pistols of Kim Hyong Jik and the programme of the DIU.

Kim Il Sung held the meeting of the leading cadres of the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League at Jinmyong School in Kalun, China between late June and early July in 1930 and delivered a report titled “The Path of the Korean Revolution”, setting forth the revolutionary line of anti-Japanese armed struggle, an embodiment of the Songun idea.

In the final analysis, the Kalun Meeting can be said to be a historic meeting that proclaimed the creation of the Juche idea and the Songun idea, its embodiment.

The Songun idea calls for giving foremost importance to military affairs and placing them before anything else in the revolutionary struggle, and building up the driving force of the revolution with the revolutionary army as the hard core and main force and pushing ahead with the revolutionary movement by relying on the leading role of the revolutionary army.

Kim Il Sung led the Korean revolution to victory under the banner of Songun.

He founded the Korean Revolutionary Army, a political and paramilitary organization, on July 6, 1930 as a part of the preparation for armed struggle, and organized the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army (later reorganized into the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army) on April 25, 1932.

The founding of the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army signaled the start of Kim Il Sung’s Songun revolutionary leadership.

In those days when the preceding theory on the position and role of the party in the revolutionary struggle was regarded as absolute, it was an established practice to found the party before the army and wage the revolutionary struggle under the guidance of the former.

However, Kim Il Sung organized the anti-Japanese armed ranks in view of the practical requirements of the Korean revolution and achieved Korea’s liberation on August 15, 1945 and then founded the Workers’ Party of Korea on October 10 in the same year.

He brought up the backbone of a regular armed force at Pyongyang Institute, the Central Security Officers School and the Security Officers Training Centres for training military and political cadres, and reorganized the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army into the Korean People’s Army in February 1948.

He gave priority to the building of a regular armed force, with the result that the Korean people could successfully push forward the affairs for building a new country as a whole under complicated situation after Korea’s liberation and emerged victorious in the three-year-long Fatherland Liberation War by defeating the armed invasion of the US imperialists.

The first ordnance factory was erected in new-born Korea in June 1947 in line with his far-sighted plan of building a self-supporting defence industry. Modern automatic weapons manufactured at this factory took a lion’s share in the military equipment of the KPA and made great contributions to the victory in the Fatherland Liberation War.

In the early 1960s modern revisionists that appeared in the international communist movement were raising a clamour about “peaceful co-existence” and “arms reduction”, much frightened by the imperialists’ moves for provoking a new war.

Kim Il Sung called the 5th Plenary Meeting of the 4th WPK Central Committee, where he laid down a strategic policy of simultaneously carrying on economic and defence construction and saw to it that spurs was given to building up the military capabilities of the country under the slogan of “A rifle in one hand, a hammer or a sickle in the other!” As a result, the self-reliant defence capacity of the DPRK was reinforced and great strides were made in socialist construction.

President Kim Il Sung provided a sure guarantee for carrying forward the revolutionary cause of Juche on the principle of Songun.

He put forth the task of further strengthening the KPA in political and military aspects at the enlarged meeting of the 20th Plenary Meeting of the 6th KPA Party Committee held in December 1979 and stressed the need to firmly establish the system of the WPK’s leadership, the system of General Kim Jong Il’s leadership, within the KPA. He also made sure that a radical turn was brought about in establishing the system of General Kim Jong Il’s leadership over the army in June 1982, in particular.

Later on December 24, 1991, General Kim Jong Il was appointed Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army at the 19th Plenary Meeting of the 6th WPK Central Committee. On April 9, 1993 he was elected Chairman of the National Defence Commission at the 5th Session of the 9th Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK.

Indeed, President Kim Il Sung performed immortal exploits for the country and the revolution by consistently administering the Songun revolutionary leadership during the whole period of leading the Korean revolution.

Today the President’s Songun idea is being carried forward brilliantly by General Kim Jong Il. It serves as an all-powerful treasured sword for safeguarding the sovereignty of the country and the destiny of socialism and opening up a bright prospect for the building of a great, prosperous and powerful nation by frustrating every move of the US imperialists to isolate and stifle the DPRK.

The revolutionary cause of Juche, which was pioneered and has been advanced under the banner of Songun, will emerge victorious forever.