"To Bring about a Great Revolutionary Upswing in Socialist Construction" --- Dermot Hudson, Chairman of the Juche Idea Study Group of Englad and Association for the Study of Songun Politics in the UK, Editor-in-Chief of the Red Banner of Songun theoritical e-journal
December 13th 2006 was the anniversary of the historic speech by the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung entitled 'To Bring about a Great Revolutionary Upswing in Socialist Construction' made to a plenary meeting of the central committee of the Workers Party of Korea.this was at a time when the Korean revolution was undergoing a grim test,facing challenges from home and abroad.The US and other imperialists had run wild to destroy the socialist countries and suppress national liberation movements. As the great leader comrade Kim il Sung said;
"Not long ago the imperialists headed by the US imperialists put up the Zionists as their shock brigade and unleashed a savage war of aggression against the Arab people.In Hungary they incited their agents to a riot against the government" (Kim Il Sung "On Juche In Our Revolution" vol 1 page 179).
Moreover it was at this time that modern revisionism appeared in the international communist movement and the socialist bloc.Within the WPK counter-revolutionary factional elements reared their heads backed by the revisionists and great power chauvinists attempted to challenge the leadership and undermine the DPRK from within, in particular they opposed the line of building an independent national economy and socialist industrialization. Lastly the Syngman Rhee fascist puppet clique ,egged on by the US imperialists, trumpeted about a 'march north' and sent many spies and saboteurs into north Korea. On top of all these external and internal attempts to derail socialism in the DPRK they had only barely rehabilated the country from the war damage.
At the meeting he set forth the revolutionary policy calling on all the Party members and other people to brace themselves up and effect a dramatic upswing in building socialism.He called for total industrial output value to be increased by 21 per cent in the first year of the 5 year plan.He also called for an instensification of the struggle against class enemies explaining that they were "building socialism amongst a harsh class struggle.In the northern half of the Republic there remain quite a few landlords deprived of their lands by us, capitalists deprived of their factories and pro Japanese elements and traitors to the nation expelled from power organs.On the other hand the spies, saboteurs and wreckers of US imperialism and the Syngham Rheeites are unceasing infiltrating from south Korea. They are working hard to seize every opportunity to destroy our revolutionary gains,foil our socialist construction ,overthrown our socialist system and restore the old exploitative system".
Then he went down to the workers in Kangson Steel(the Chollima Steel Complex of today) and aroused their ardent patriotic zeal, thus ushering in the new history of Chollima march.Chollima is a legendary Korean flying horse which can cover many miles in one bound.The great leader comrade Kim Il Sung explained that the WPK relied on and trusted the working class alone. He called on the steel workers to produce an additional 20,000 tons of steel from the rolling mill which only had a capacity of 60,000 tons.The workers inspired by his teaching, buckled down,introduced innovations and worked hard performing the miracle of producing not 70,000 tons of steel,not 90,000 tons of steel but 120,000 tons of steel -a 100% increase ! This miracle was repeated all over the country and in all fields. Construction workers in Pyongyang created the 'Pyongyang speed' in which a flat was built every 14 minutes ! The growth in industrial output hit 40% and grew by an average of 36% per year between 1957 to 1960.Thus the DPRK became the 'Chollima country
Leader Kim Jong Il has seen to it that the history of socialist construction in the DPRK has been constantly carried forward as a history of a great revolutionary upswing, true to Kim Il Sung's blueprint of building a prosperous powerful country, and has recorded every decade of the revolution and construction as a heroic epic. Kim Jong Il's energetic leadership finds it traces in the course of the advance in the 1970s and the 1980s when the Koreans rushed forward like the wind by adding speed to the gallop of Chollima and in the three revolution red flag movement, a new higher stage of the Chollima work-team movement, which serves as a powerful driving force for building a great prosperous powerful nation.
It is a significant historic exploit performed by him that he energetically led the work to glorify the tradition of the great revolutionary surge in the days of the "Arduous March" and the forced march.
The history of building socialism in the DPRK in which the Koreans have written the heroic epic of the great revolutionary upswing for many years is a history of the tested leadership of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The New Year editorial of the DPRK press for 2007 calls for building the DPRK economy by its own efforts and resources.
All the people will turn out and set off a raging storm of leaping progress in every field and domain of socialist construction like the people who upheld the spirit of the historic plenary meeting in 1956
