The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un paid a congratulatory visit to the DPRK Ministry of National Defence on the occasion of the 76th founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) and made a significant speech to congratulate the officers and men of the heroic KPA.

The full text of the speech is as follows:

Officers of the Ministry of National Defence, the highest command organ of the armed forces of our Republic, and non-commissioned officers and men present here, celebrating in grand style the founding anniversary of our glorious army,

Trustworthy officers and men of the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th corps, who are devoting themselves now to defending the frontline on the border of our country,

Officers and men of the Pyongyang-defending corps, who are reliably performing their honourable mission of defending the capital city,

Officers and men of all the other corps and mechanized infantry, tank and armoured units, who are firmly defending the territory and waters in the eastern and western regions of the country,

Officers and men of the 12th Corps on the northern border and the Border Guards,

Courageous officers and men of our other services,

All other officers and men of the Korean People’s Army,

On the 76th anniversary of the founding of the KPA, a proud holiday of our state and our people, I extend warm congratulations and greetings of encouragement to you.

Availing myself of this meaningful opportunity, I offer my heartfelt tribute to the revolutionary forerunners, the KPA martyrs and the respected war veterans, who glorified the initial days and decades of great victories in the history of building the Juche-oriented army with imperishable feats of meritorious service and miracles.

My warm thanks also go to all the people including soldiers’ families across the country, who are absolutely supporting our Party’s cause of building a powerful army.

As I stand here, I cannot find enough words to express my thanks to the officers and men of our army, who are making more painstaking efforts than anybody else shouldering greater tasks day after day, and to appreciate their outstanding feats.

Whenever I recall the words People’s Army, my heart grows warm and I feel moved as I am reminded of its heroic image.

It has indeed been glorious 76 years for the army, which tell numerous tales and which are filled with victories and feats though there have been manifold trials.

It would be endless to recount the great feats it has performed for the people’s safety and wellbeing while defending the most righteous ideas and cause, faithfully shouldering the sacred mission the times and history entrusted to it from the first days after its founding to this day, and the uncountable feats it has performed in those days.

The most brilliant feat our army has performed in its history of heroic struggle is that it has remained boundlessly faithful to its inherent mission of defending sovereignty and thus reliably safeguarded the right to independence and dignity of the country and the people and ensured their peace and stability in the face of military threats and blackmail by the imperialists and the danger of war.

Our revolution wrote an unheard-of chapter in history, in which the cause of founding an army was accomplished before the founding of a state. This was because sovereignty itself is something that can be defended and exercised only by means of revolutionary violence capable of frustrating imperialist tyranny, in other words, only when one wins the fight against it.

Our People’s Army was a gain our people achieved through their protracted struggle to win back their lost rights to existence and development, freedom and rights, and its most important and sacred mission was to firmly defend sovereignty which had not to be deprived or violated again.

Shouldering the historic duty of safeguarding the national sovereignty, which could never be defended easily, it has undauntedly hewn out for the long 76 years the arduous path of fierce political struggle, class struggle, of deciding who prevails over whom.

While following the untrodden path decade after decade, our People’s Army service personnel have performed countless battle feats and other heroic achievements at the cost of their blood and lives.

As our People’s Army has resolutely foiled all manner of challenges and threats by the hostile forces wherever our national sovereignty is exercised, reliably defending the fences of the country, the security, rights and interests of the country and people and the ideas and cause of the Party could be thoroughly safeguarded. And thanks to its ennobling sacrifice and history of heroic victory, our people, with state power firmly in their hands, could strongly exercise their rights in the political, military, economic, cultural and diplomatic fields and effect a great turn in building a prosperous country with a powerful army.

The absolute might, prestige and dignity our state has won as we see now are based on the valuable feats and victories our People’s Army has achieved at the cost of blood, sweat and sacrifice.

Our Party’s objective in aspiring to a more powerful and prosperous state is to win back and squarely exercise all its rights to independence, and the foremost task here is to obtain the eternal security of the state for sure.

To this end, we must possess absolute might which defies any provocation, might strong enough to control the enemy.

After reviewing the history of division and confrontation of our nation recently, our Party and government designated the puppet Republic of Korea as our most dangerous and first enemy state and invariable archenemy that stands in our way, and decided it as our state policy to occupy and subjugate its territory in time of emergency. This is an absolutely right measure for our state’s eternal security and its peace and stability in the future.

By doing so, we have ridden ourselves on our own initiative of the fetters of unrealistic developments, in which we, taken captive by the rhetorical expression fellow compatriots, had to endeavour for dialogue and cooperation, even if they were for form’s sake, with the ROK puppets, who are scheming to bring down the government of our Republic and dreaming of unification through absorption. As we have clearly defined the puppet ROK as a state hostile to us, we are legally entitled to strike and annihilate it at any moment if it dares to provoke us. And now we can defend the prestige of our country as an independent and sovereign state, a socialist state, and deal with our surrounding environment in a more thoroughgoing way to attain our national interest while building up our military strength and maintaining a harder-line stand for response.

This policy switch and our staunch attitude towards the enemy were decisions of weighty importance, which could be made as we have the army fully prepared in terms of both the will to defend the national sovereignty and the military and technical potentials.

It is an everyday occurrence in the present world that national sovereignty and territory are violated ruthlessly and bloodshed takes place owing to the imperialists’ policy of supremacy and violent moves of aggression. In this situation it is our revolutionary armed forces alone led by the Workers’ Party of Korea, which are honourably defending the dignity of the country and the people while achieving undeniable victory at every stage of the anti-imperialist confrontation.

The chapters of the glorious history of the Republic’s armed forces, which have been developed and strengthened into an invincible army and firmly safeguarded the security and sovereignty of our state, have always been written together with the chapters of their gigantic creation and construction for the country and the people.

Our country and people always feel thankful to the army for its painstaking efforts and celebrate the army founding day as their own national holiday. This is because the People’s Army has performed remarkable exploits greater than others could manage to do not only in defending national sovereignty but also in building socialism and promoting the people’s welfare.

The loyal and reliable ranks that share weal and woe with the Party, readily accept its orders and directives whether they are military missions or economic tasks, and always carry them out without any delay and in the most perfect and thoroughgoing way–this is our People’s Army.

Long explanations have never been necessary for our soldiers.

Our army reads by heart the Party’s worries without the help of any explanation and, aware of the arrival of historic moments when it has to come forth, goes without hesitation to the theatres of struggle, where it has to experience greater hardships.

All the colours of our army units have these not so long letters For the Eternal Prosperity of the Country and Safety of the People, but the role and mission entrusted by these letters were weighty, and inscribed on these colours were not only military feats.

In the protracted course from the first days of building the country anew on the ruins after the war until today, socialist construction has been a primary revolutionary task, as important as defending the sovereignty of the country, for the People’s Army, and this task has never been lightened or deferred in any harsh and severe circumstances.

The metallurgical-industry bases and coal and ore mines, which constitute the foundation of the national economy, the railways and roads, which constitute the artery of the country, and the crop fields, irrigation waterways and reclaimed tidelands which serve the promotion of the people’s living–all the development and creative projects conducted throughout the country are associated with the exploits of our army.

The spirits of the times, which would remain in history forever, and the monumental structures set up on the strength of these spirits have all been created by the People’s Army.

Our officers and men have devoted with no regrets all the precious things of their life–dignity, glory, honour and happiness–true to the proud name People’s Army.

Following the genuine and beautiful traces that our army left with revolutionary and steadfast mettle and patriotic enthusiasm, the appearance of our country has been transformed, cradles of people’s life have been created, and a happy laughter of the people has resounded.

Last year alone, our service personnel were forerunners in performing great feats in making breakthroughs on all fronts and in all theatres, ranging from housing construction projects, which were conducted in a three-dimensional manner in the capital city, Komdok area and various other parts of the country, to the construction projects for irrigation and border barricades and the struggle to increase grain production and to recover from natural disasters.

All our generals, officers and their wives, and men took the lead in overcoming the food shortage created on the outset of the year by cutting their rations; they carried out without fail the tasks the Party entrusted to them by waging a more progressive and offensive struggle, thus recording the year as the most glorious one in the history of the army’s development full of legendary feats and miracles.

But for the outstanding role and contribution of the People’s Army, we could not have reviewed the work of last year with pride or created a definitely favourable situation for comprehensive rejuvenation, as full of high spirits and confidence as today.

The year 2023 can be called an epitome and a most brilliant page of the long-standing and glorious history of victory written by our country and people on the strength of the vanguard role of the army, which is elite in ideology and the most powerful in fighting efficiency.

Now our army has launched the unprecedentedly sacred and gigantic struggle of ten-year revolution to radically transform the regional industry in response to the call of the Party, and its honourable colours are fluttering vigorously, calling for a fresh upswing of revolution throughout the country.

These colours, permeated with the red soul and innumerable feats of the People’s Army soldiers, add more brilliance and force to our fluttering national flag and present before our eyes how the future will be transformed.

It is a source of great pride and immense strength for our Party that it has an army in which it can place the greatest trust and to which it can entrust the vanguard role of the revolution in peaceful and good times and in the days when the country goes through harsh trials.

Even though they took greatest pains, with their belts always tightened, on the two fronts of national defence and socialist construction, the faithful officers and men of the People’s Army have exerted themselves single-heartedly and without any vacillation, cherishing the outlook on the revolution and life that they have nothing to desire but a praise from their Supreme Commander and regard the pride of being one mind with him as a source of their greatest happiness. I always gain great strength and courage from them.

The heroic struggle of our army left in history the truth that only the state and people, which advance with their army in the vanguard of the revolution, can achieve steadfast and continuous development and prosperity in the face of every manner of challenges and crises.

Availing myself of this meaningful opportunity, I, on behalf of the Central Committee of our Party and the government of our Republic and along with the hearts of all the people, would like to extend once again congratulations and thanks to all the service personnel of the heroic KPA on the occasion of the army founding day.

Comrades,

Lying above all those feats and achievements associated with your painstaking efforts are the nation’s dignity you have to safeguard with your lives and the people’s ideals you have to attain at any cost.

The WPK, which has assumed an absolute mission for the country and people, will always rely on the bravery and faithfulness of the revolutionary armed forces and hasten the advent of bright future of our Republic with you.

However grave the situation is and however manifold the difficulties are on our way, we feel assured as long as we have the army, and however formidable and gigantic the revolutionary tasks are, we feel confident of the coming victory as long as the army undertakes to perform them–this is the feeling of the people of this country.

You should live up to their trust and, through your strenuous struggle and its perfect result, thoroughly defend their faith that Party policy is immediately a science and reality.

Comrades,

Our army should have greater strength and prevent war and safeguard peace without fail with this invincible strength.

Peace is not something to be begged for or bartered for through negotiations.

Across our border, the mutations, having seized power, are now running amok with war hysteria and threatening the security of our state with their guns levelled at us.

Let us remember once again that war breaks out without advertising in advance.

We should always be ready for war.

If the enemy dares to have recourse to armed force against our state, we will make a bold decision to change history and enlist all the super-powerful means in our hands unhesitatingly so as to annihilate the enemy.

Comrades,

All the service personnel, who have always supported the Party’s ideas and cause in the vanguard, should reliably defend the inviolable sovereignty of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, our glorious motherland, and the honour of the Korean people with staunch revolutionary faith, steadfast patriotism, unparalleled heroism and mettle and devoted service, and demonstrate to the full the spiritual characteristics and stamina of the KPA in the ongoing sacred struggle to hasten the comprehensive development of a prosperous country.

Our Party, state and people with invincible ranks, elite revolutionary armed forces, will always emerge victorious.

For the eternal prosperity of our country and safety of our people, let us fight vigorously with great confidence in and optimism for a great fresh victory, sharing the mind and intention.

Eternal glory to our proud revolutionary armed forces!

Long live the heroic Korean People’s Army!