Full text of a letter to the teaching staff and students of Kim Il Sung University on the 70th Anniversary of its founding.
I extend warm congratulations to all the teaching staff and students of Kim Il Sung University who are greeting the meaningful 70th anniversary of its founding at this historic time when a general offensive is in full swing to build a powerful socialist country according to the bright blueprint unfolded by the Seventh Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
Kim Il Sung University is the central base for training national cadres and the highest institute of Juche-based science and education.
The history of the university is a history of the shining victory of the Juche-oriented ideas and theories of the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on education and their outstanding leadership; it is also a history resplendent with the patriotic and faithful service of all its teaching staff, students and graduates who have worked with devotion for the victorious advance of the revolutionary cause and the prosperity of their country, cherishing infinite loyalty to the Party and the leaders.
Regarding education, the training of native cadres, as the most important of all national affairs since it has a bearing on the destiny of the country and nation, Comrade Kim Il Sung had the university built as a priority even in the difficult and complex situation that prevailed after the country’s liberation. The founding of this university marked the beginning of a new history of Juche-based and people-oriented higher education for training the people’s sons and daughters into dependable pillars of a new Korea, into native cadres, and it opened broad prospects for building a prosperous and independent people’s state by relying on our native cadres.
In every period and at every stage of the revolution and construction, including the difficult days of building a new country and the trying days of the Fatherland Liberation War, Comrade Kim Il Sung indicated the road the university should follow and led it at every step so that it could train large numbers of the fine native cadres needed by the Party and the revolution. Thanks to his wise leadership and uncommon care, a solid foundation was laid for developing it into a model university in training talented revolutionaries, and for transforming the Ryongnam Hill area into a world-class university district.
Comrade Kim Jong Il always showed close concern for the work of the university, and he wisely led it so that it could creditably perform the mission and tasks it had assumed before the times and the revolution.
Remembering the historic resolve he made on Ryongnam Hill in his early days, he energetically led the university to establish the Juche orientation in its educational work, and had it developed into the university of Comrade Kim Il Sung the lifeblood of which is faithfulness to the leader, into the highest institute of Juche-based science and education. Etched on the hearts of our people, including the teaching staff and students of the university, is the august image of the great General, who unfolded the plan of building it into one of the most prestigious universities in the world and, despite the mental and physical fatigue he accumulated on the road of the Songun revolution, put his heart and soul into creating world-class educational conditions and a world-class environment for the university.
The great leaders were, indeed, founders and builders of the university and benevolent fathers and mentors of its teaching staff and students, and the university, which was born and developed under their warm care, is the university of the leaders both in name and in reality.
There are many famous universities in the world that are proud of their long history and time-honoured traditions, but Kim Il Sung University is the only one that glories in the great name of the Sun revered by the world and shines with the imperishable leadership exploits of the national leaders.
Our Party pays close concern to defending and honouring for all ages the imperishable revolutionary exploits performed by the great leaders for the development of the university and to developing it further into a most prestigious university in line with the requirements of the times and the developing revolution.
Since its founding, the university has, under the leadership of the great leaders and the Party, played the pivotal role in training national cadres and developing the country’s science and technology.
In line with the Party’s education policy, the teachers and scientists at the university have trained large numbers of talented revolutionaries who are politically and ideologically sound and scientifically and technologically prepared; they have also proved the validity of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism and Party policy, given wide publicity to them and found wonderful solutions to the scientific and technological problems arising in developing the economy and culture and in consolidating our national defence capability. In this way they have made a positive contribution to advancing the revolutionary cause of Juche to victory.
In every grim decade of our revolution its students have defended the Party and the leaders staunchly and stood in the vanguard and defied death in executing the Party’s plans and intentions.
Its graduates, cherishing the great political trust and expectations of the Party and the leaders, have worked with devotion for the development of our Party and Republic. They are now performing their responsibilities and basic duty as the core of the Party and the revolution, as the vanguard fighters, at the major sites where a powerful socialist country is being built.
Invariably following the Party with a single mind along the road of loyalty and patriotism, the university has produced the dependable hard core of the Party and the state as well as many competent specialists in several fields, who will creditably carry forward the revolutionary cause of Juche to completion. It has forcefully propelled the building of a powerful socialist country by achieving fruitful results in scientific research. This constitutes an outstanding exploit performed by the university for the country and the revolution.
While striving hard to implement the instructions the great leaders gave in their lifetime, the university has trained some outstanding educational and scientific personnel, including academicians, professors and doctors, and particularly young scientists of a new generation who have won recognition in world scientific circles; colleges, faculties and departments have been incorporated into it as appropriate for a university; its educational equipment has been upgraded and put on a high-level IT footing, and well-equipped bases have been built for manufacturing cutting-edge products. In this way the foundations have been laid for building it up into one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Today the Ryongnam Hill area has been turned into a vast university district centred on the bronze statues of Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. As a witness to history that comprehends the great leaders’ imperishable exploits in developing Juche-oriented education and science and building a thriving country and eloquently proves the validity of our Party’s idea and line on prioritizing education and talents, the district shines brilliantly as the sacred place where the dawn of final victory in the Juche revolution is being ushered in.
On behalf of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the government of the Republic I extend warm thanks to all the teaching staff, students and graduates of Kim Il Sung University who, fully conscious of the heavy responsibility and mission they are bearing for the Party and the revolution, the country and the people, have displayed noble loyalty and patriotic devotion over the past seven decades, rendering great service to developing the university and implementing the revolutionary cause of Juche.
Today the university is faced with the ennobling task of making a positive contribution to carrying out the cause of modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism by training a greater number of talented revolutionaries who are faithful to the Party and the revolution and have excellent practical abilities. It is also charged with forcefully propelling the building of a powerful socialist country through successful research accomplishments in cutting-edge science, as demanded by the new era of the Juche revolution.
If the university is to perform with credit the mission and duty it has assumed before the times and the revolution, it should be developed as the eternal university of the great leaders.
To ensure that it invariably maintains its revolutionary character and original features as the university of the leaders and to develop itself into the university of the great leaders that maintains its prestige in the eyes of the world–this is the general direction for developing Kim Il Sung University in the new era of the Juche revolution.
The university should be steadfast in defending its proud history and tradition of regarding loyalty to the Party and the leader as its lifeblood, and it should glorify them generation after generation, century after century.
The great leaders’ undying exploits and instructions are the lasting foundation and guideline for developing Kim Il Sung University. The university should maintain the great leaders’ Juche-oriented ideas, theories and instructions on education as its permanent programme and apply them comprehensively in its overall work. In this way it can realize the leaders’ plan and desire for making it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Loyalty to the Party’s ideology and leadership is the lifeblood of Kim Il Sung University. The university should, by intensifying the work of establishing the Party’s unified leadership system, turn itself into the epitome of conviction and loyalty which faithfully supports the Party’s ideology and leadership and keeps pace with the Party Central Committee at all times. By steadily carrying forward its glorious tradition as the university of the great leaders, it should ensure that the whole campus brims over with the revolutionary spirit of defending the Party Central Committee and implementing Party policy to the death.
It is essential to develop the university into one of the most prestigious universities in the world as befits the dignified, revolutionary university of the great leaders.
A key task in this regard is to combine education closely with scientific research and put the main emphasis on training creative talents and developing cutting-edge scientific theories and technologies.
The university should improve the content of its education, its teaching methods, its education system and its teaching management in conformity with the characteristics of the most prestigious universities.
It should do this by setting clear-cut objectives for training talents at every stage of education, ranging from regular and postgraduate courses to research.
While prioritizing political and ideological subjects, it should improve the teaching of other subjects by adhering to Party policy and encouraging theoretical explanation in plain language. In this way it can fully guarantee the politico-ideological character of the content of education. It should conduct an overall review of the teaching programmes for all subjects and update them on the principle of ensuring their practicability, comprehensiveness and modernity, and compile world-class textbooks of our own.
Kim Il Sung University should set an example for all the other universities in the country in introducing innovative teaching methods.
It should train its students into positive learners and researchers by developing and perfecting a heuristic teaching method of our style in line with the requirements of the times, and conduct education in close combination with scientific research and practical activities. It should create processes, means, methods and forms of teaching to suit the reality of our country and the characteristics of the relevant subjects, and actively apply them. It is important to proactively enlist the students in regular courses as well as postgraduate courses in scientific research, increase the proportion of experiments, internships and skills training in the direction of improving their applicability, and set up a scientific method of evaluating the practical abilities of students with the focus on their application capability.
It should organize teaching units in a logical way, and ensure that students receive lectures from leading teachers at the university and from across the country through various forms and methods of education. It should fix reasonable teaching hours for the teachers, based on the principle that highly-qualified, authoritative teachers and researchers give the main lectures on their respective subjects.
The education system, teaching management and educational administration should be improved.
The university should establish a well-regulated continuous education system, ranging from regular to postgraduate courses, and ensure that the genius education system established by General Kim Jong Il proves its worth in practice.
In conformity with its character as a university, it should develop new colleges, faculties and departments for training personnel who are talented in cutting-edge and other major fields such as aerospace technology and the chemical industry. It should also develop new branches of cross-disciplinary sciences in line with the trend of the comprehensive development of science and the demands of the country’s socio-economic development, and nurture outstanding talents for these fields.
The university should develop its faculties and departments with a certain level of foundations and with particular attainments so that they become capable of securing world supremacy, and it should launch a dynamic campaign in which one overtakes and learns from others so as to increase the number of these faculties and departments.
A rational system and order for educational administration should be established on the principle of ensuring the smooth progress of teaching and scientific research by teachers and researchers, and of the edification of students.
Departments should be strengthened into academic centres for relevant sectors, into authoritative research units, in which teaching is closely combined with scientific research.
Kim Il Sung University should build up its distance education college into a nationwide online educational base for the social sciences and increase the number of its courses and students so as to develop it into a large-scale college. In this way the university can make a tangible contribution to implementing our Party’s policy of making all the people well-versed in science and technology.
The university should take decisive steps to strengthen the forces of science and education that are capable of building it up into a most prestigious university.
The main forces, who are directly responsible for doing so, are its forces of science and education centred on its teachers and researchers.
The university should train on a long-term basis reserve scientists and educationists for every discipline so as to strengthen these forces in terms of both quality and quantity, and it should ensure that their legacy is carried forward. It should direct great efforts to the work of the institutes of social and natural sciences so as to ensure that their research fellows make outstanding achievements in their research projects in cutting-edge branches and, in the course of this, grow to be world-class scholars.
The university should be vigorous in conducting scientific research and become a pacesetter in realizing the integration of education, scientific research and production.
In scientific research, it should focus on satisfactorily resolving the theoretical and practical, scientific and technological problems arising in building a powerful socialist country, on developing the sector of basic sciences and on pushing back the frontiers of science and technology.
The social sciences sector should add eternal glory to the immortal revolutionary careers and achievements of the great leaders, explain and verify the originality, truthfulness, veracity and vitality of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism and the Party’s lines and policies in a deep-going way, and give wide publicity to them. The natural sciences sector should make a positive contribution to solving the scientific and technological problems, including those related to food and energy, that are pressing matters in developing the national economy and consolidating our national defence capability. The sectors of basic sciences and cutting-edge science and technology should present research results with a world competitive edge.
It is important in building the university up into a most prestigious one to achieve the integration of education, scientific research and production.
True to the instructions Comrade Kim Jong Il gave in his lifetime, the university should consolidate the successes it has gained in building the bases for conducting research into cutting-edge technology and developing intellectual products, and at the same time, build more of such bases and update its technical services, so as to apply them proactively to education, and contribute to setting up cutting-edge industries in the country.
It should push ahead purposefully with the work of building itself up as a hub of international academic exchange.
The university should organize regular international academic seminars, either by discipline or of a comprehensive nature, and expand its joint research with leading universities and research institutes in other countries.
It should ensure that its most outstanding academic papers are presented at authoritative international seminars and submitted for publication in international academic journals. The Bulletin of Kim Il Sung University should be designated as a specialist academic periodical of the country and developed into a world-famous one. The bulletin and books published by the university, including textbooks and reference books, should be authoritative enough, for them to be used in other countries as well as by itself and throughout our country.
It should enrol many foreign students and give them regular, postgraduate and internship courses in Korean and other specialist disciplines; it should also send its students, postgraduates in particular, abroad for further study.
Its teachers and researchers should decisively enhance their sense of responsibility and role, and its students should heighten their zeal for learning.
The university’s teachers and researchers are career revolutionaries who are training the hard core of the revolution, world-class talents. Today, when the university is charging forward to beat the world, they have assumed a very heavy responsibility and duty before the Party and the country.
They should keep the Party’s revolutionary ideas and theories as an article of their firm faith and be possessed of an ennobling view on the rising generation, sound mental and moral traits and pure conscience as teachers. They should be loyalists to the Party and the revolution who are strong in ideology and faith, before being teachers and scientists. No matter how excellent their practical abilities may be, teachers and researchers who are devoid of strong faith cannot make a genuine contribution to the Party and the revolution. Fully aware that they bear the responsibility for the future of the country, they should devote their all to teaching and scientific research.
Their qualifications are represented in their students’ academic abilities and their own achievements in scientific research. They should raise a hot wind of improving their qualifications and competing to raise their practical abilities so as to develop themselves as model teachers and authoritative, world-class scholars without rival in their field.
They should become genuine educationists who teach their students through their personal examples and enjoy the love and respect of officials and the working people as well as their students for their great practical abilities, ennobling traits and outstanding achievements.
The students of Kim Il Sung University are reserve hardcore talents who will become leading officials of the revolution responsible for the key sectors and posts in the building of a powerful socialist country, the backbone in the struggle for the victory of the Juche revolution.
They should become true revolutionaries who cherish the great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism as an article of their faith. They should be talented revolutionaries of the Juche type, creative talents, who are possessed of the intellectual ability to beat the world, as well as of lofty and highly-civilized cultural attainments.
Keeping in mind the proposition of the great General Kim Jong Il inscribed on the front wall of the lobby in the university’s e-library, all the students at the university should study hard with a high ambition to become the backbone of the revolution, competent personnel in the new century, who will add brilliance to Kim Il Sung’s nation, Kim Jong Il’s Korea, before the eyes of the world. Fully aware that they themselves hold the key to success in their university days, they should improve themselves spiritually and morally, and use every minute to broaden and enrich their knowledge and apply it in practice.
We are competing with the world, and it is the students of Kim Il Sung University who must stand at the forefront of this competition. They should fully demonstrate the dignity and honour of Kim Il Sung University by blazing a trail for the development of cutting-edge science with the ambition of challenging the world, competing with the world and beating the world with their brain-power.
The university should make sure that all aspects of university life, including the provision of education, activities in political organizations and the establishment of discipline, are geared and subordinated to raising among the students a wind of learning and improving their academic performance.
The Party and the state should direct efforts to developing Kim Il Sung University into one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
To develop the university as such is a task which our Party is now prioritizing.
The Science and Education Department and other relevant departments of the Party Central Committee and the Pyongyang Municipal Party Committee should exert themselves to carry out this work as intended by the great General and the Party, and the sectors and units concerned should take a deep interest in the work of the university and help it proactively.
The Cabinet and relevant organs should throw their full weight behind the work of developing Kim Il Sung University into a base for scientific and technological research, in which education, scientific research and production are integrated. They should supply the university with the modern apparatuses it needs for experiment and internship, printing equipment and teaching aids and furnishings as a top priority, and properly help it build up its internship and supply service bases so that its educational conditions and environment reach the world standard. Measures should be adopted by the state to improve the educational and scientific research conditions at the university and the living conditions of its teaching staff and students.
The university should work out and implement strategies and attain one by one targets for developing itself into one of the most prestigious universities in the world on the principle of self-reliance and self-development and on a scientific and realistic basis in accordance with our actual conditions and the world trend. In doing so, it should reject sycophancy, dogmatism and imitation and, when following the good experience of others, it should not confine itself simply to adopting them, but strive to attain a higher level. It should not turn to others for help, but renovate its teaching and scientific research facilities, develop its equipment and instruments for experiment and internship and build up its supply service base by relying on its own efforts and technology.
The university district is located near the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are preserved in their lifetime appearance, and as a large revolutionary site, it is heavily associated with the leadership of the great leaders. The teaching staff and students of the university should devote their unstained loyalty and patriotism to developing their university into an unrivalled, excellent base for education and edification, into the highest institute of science and education, and keeping it neat and tidy.
The Party committees of Kim Il Sung University and its colleges should improve their functions and role.
These Party committees should maintain, as their lifeline, carrying out the instructions of the great leaders and defending and exalting the brilliance of their leadership exploits. As everything at the university is associated with their leadership exploits, all the teaching staff and students should be encouraged to have a deep understanding of these exploits throughout their life on campus and seek the worth of life in maintaining and exalting their brilliance.
They should bolster up policy-oriented guidance, or political guidance, so that all affairs, including educational administration, are focused on implementing the great leaders’ instructions and the Party’s line and policies on education. In particular, they should direct great efforts to developing the university into a most prestigious one with confidence and on a long-term basis, true to the intentions of the Party.
Holding fast to the theory of our Party on prioritizing ideology, they should launch among the teaching staff and students a dynamic and substantial campaign for carrying out the five-point education programme, with the stress on education in the greatness of the leaders. In this way, they can all be trained into people with indomitable ideological and spiritual qualities, into ardent patriots, vanguard fighters for their class, and people with a noble sense of morality.
They should build up the ranks of teachers and researchers and organize and guide their Party life scrupulously to suit the characteristics of intellectuals. In this way they can give full play to the spiritual strength of all the teachers, researchers and leading officials at the university.
Work with students constitutes an important undertaking which the Party committees of the university should prioritize and to which they should pay special attention. They should intensify their guidance to the students in their organizational and ideological activities so as to encourage them to study hard, and they should help them to acquire the revolutionary spirit and a sense of organization and discipline. They should lead the youth league organizations to conduct their work with the students in a creative and proactive way, with the main stress on comprehensively applying the study-first principle. They should ensure that the principle of prioritizing merit is observed in recruiting students, so that those who are qualified and promising are enrolled at the university.
All officials should oppose the abuse of power, bureaucratism and corruption and maintain it as their revolutionary ethics inherent in themselves and the revolutionary Party climate to make selfless, devoted efforts on behalf of the teaching staff and students. They should also intensify ideological education and the ideological struggle for strictly preventing all manner of non-socialist practices and practices that tarnish the reputation of the socialist education system from revealing themselves among the teaching staff and students.
It is important to enhance the role of the university council and the university Party guidance committee.
They should deal with important issues arising in improving education and scientific research at the university and its colleges and in developing the university into one of the most prestigious universities in the world. They should organize the work of developing the university into a prestigious university under a long-term plan and based on a methodology so that its colleges, faculties and departments compete to surpass the major indexes of the world’s most prestigious universities.
The university council should be formed not only of officials from the university and its colleges but also of leading officials of the Party, the state and key units. This will enhance the authority of the council and heighten national and social interest in the university’s work.
Our Party and people expect a great deal of Kim Il Sung University.
When the university dynamically advances to beat the world, filled with confidence and vitality, the day of final victory in the Juche revolution will come earlier.
I firmly believe that, true to the intentions of the Party Central Committee, all the teachers, researchers, officials and other staff members and students at Kim Il Sung University will fully discharge the noble mission and duty they have assumed before the times and the revolution by adding eternal brilliance to it as the university of the great leaders and proudly raising it to the front rank of the most prestigious universities in the world.
