People's Father

President Kim Il Sung, who was endowed with love for the people, dedicated his whole life to the well-being of the people.

From the first days of building a new country the President, who had liberated the country from the Japanese imperialists’ military occupation (August 15, 1945), set up the people as the most dignified and powerful beings and worked hard to provide them with a happy life.

He made the Workers’ Party of Korea a genuine people’s guide and their protector which assumes responsibility for the people’s destiny and takes care of them. He also made the state power the people’s servant which formulates all lines and policies with top priority to the interests of the people and carries them out and the householder in charge of the people’s standard of living.

He made the people who had been maltreated and oppressed in the past the masters of land, factory and the country, went among the people to discuss state affairs with them and bring their wisdom and strength into action, thereby training them into the motive force of the revolution with independent ideological consciousness and creative ability.

In these days ordinary workers, farmers and intellectuals were elected deputies to the organs of power at all levels, including the Supreme People’s Assembly, and grew up into officials of the Party and state and into renowned scientists and artistes and Heroes.

The Korean people came to lead the most worthwhile life and attain the greatest honour in the world in the embrace of the President, who took responsibility for the destiny of all the people and took care of them.

The President raised the improvement of the people’s standard of living as the WPK’s supreme principle in its activities and took various measures to make the people lead an affluent and civilized life.

The President always paid deep attention to improving the people’s standard of living, ranging from the problems of food, clothing and housing to trifling daily necessaries, inquired into every detail of the families whenever he visited the factory, fishing and agrarian villages. He made sure that the problems of food and clothing were fully solved by increasing systematically the production of food, meat, seafoods, silk fabrics and other various consumer goods. He also ensured that a great number of modern apartment houses were built in the towns to distribute them free to factory and office workers and modern dwelling houses and welfare service amenities were built with state funds in the cooperative farms to make the farmers lead a happy life, feeling no envy at the urbanites. In the meantime, he took positive measures to systematically increase wages and reduce prices of commodities in keeping with the developing realities. In the 1970s he took an epochal step to free the people from all kinds of taxes.

The President saw to it that the universal 11-year compulsory education system was enforced, following the free compulsory primary and secondary education system, and that extracurricular educational centres, including the Grand People’s Study House and schoolchildren’s palaces, were built up for everyone to learn to their heart’s content.

He saw to it that the system of universal free medical service was enforced in the trying period of the Fatherland Liberation War (June 1950–July 1953) to make the people enjoy a long life in good health. Fine centres for cultural life were created and the production of goods for cultural use increased to make the people become the creators and enjoyers of socialist culture and enjoy to the full the benefits of modern civilization.

Indeed, President Kim Il Sung was the people’s father, who found his greatest joy in the joy of the people and accomplished his lifelong cause of providing the people with happy life.

Full of strong yearning for the President, the Korean people are pushing ahead with the advance of great leap forward to build a thriving nation, upholding the Songun-based revolutionary leadership of Kim Jong Il, who is working hard to carry the President’s wish into reality.

Article written by Ryu Jong Hyok.