Preparatory committees formed
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- Preparatory committees were formed in different countries to celebrate the 57th birthday of General Secretary Kim Jong Il.
A meeting was held in Warsaw on January 16 to inaugurate a Polish preparatory committee.
The first vice-chairman of the central committee of the Poland-Korea Association was elected chairman of the preparatory committee.
An organising committee for celebrating the 57th birthday of Kim Jong Il was inaugurated in Russia on January 19.
O. Shenin, chairman of the Council of the Union of Communist Parties-the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was elected chairman of the organising committee.
Japanese reactionaries' anti-DPRK campaign
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- Japanese ambassadors to Middle East countries held a three-day annual meeting in Tokyo till January 21 to inveigle these nations into an anti-DPRK campaign, according to a news report.
At the meeting, they agreed on "necessity of warning the Middle East countries not to cooperate with the DPRK" in developing missiles.
An official of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the result of the meeting at a press conference.
It proves that the Japanese reactionaries are trying to internationalise the anti-DPRK campaign this year over the "issue of development of missiles" in concert with the United States.
U.S. scheme to deploy "ABM" systems
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Cohen and chairman of joint chiefs of staff Shelton officially announced on Jan. 20 that the United States would start the deployment of "Anti-Ballistic Missile" systems in the year 2000, according to a news report.
According to it, 6.6 billion dollars needed for the deployment will be included in the draft budget for 2000.
They said that this announcement is particularly related to the DPRK's "missile launch" last year and that ballistic missile threat to the U.S. mainland is becoming real.
The moves show how frantically the U.S. hawks are trying to unleash a war of aggression on the DPRK by stepping up the modernisation of the U.S. armed forces, insisting that the DPRK launched a "missile," not an artificial satellite.
Anti-north military confab at "Chongwadae"
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- The chief executive of South Korea called a "central meeting for joint defense" at "Chongwadae" on Thursday with over 200 anti-Communist fanatics, according to a radio report from Seoul.
Among those present were "Ministers of State," bosses of the army, prosecution, police and the "Agency for National Security Planning", local administrators and representatives of venal press organs.
At the meeting, he clamoured about non-existent "threat of southward invasion" and ordered the organs at all levels to step up war preparations against the north, including "maintenance of full readiness," "unified army commanding system" and "efficiency of operations."
Arrogant and hypocritic state of union address@=KCNA commentary =
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- U.S. President Clinton in his state of the union address on January 19 said, "we must increase our efforts to restrain the spread of nuclear weapons and missiles, from North Korea to India and Pakistan".
His remarks, a cock-and-bull sophism of distorting the historical fact, are congruous with the argument of the arrogant and hypocritic foreign policy of the conservative hard-liners who dislike the end of the Cold War.
It is none other than the United States who manufactured for the first time on the planet the nuclear weapons of mass destruction and used them against humankind, causing a nuclear holocaust.
According to data available at the U.S. Brookings Institution, the United States has channelled a total of 5,800 billion U.S. dollars into developing nuclear weapons since the year 1940 and is annually spending 35 billion U.S. dollars after the end of the Cold War.
This amount is as much as 29 percent of the U.S. military expenditures and 11 percent of the total government expenses for 52 years from 1940 to 1992. During the period, the United States has developed and manufactured about 700,000 nuclear warheads.
U.S. nuclear weapons are deployed in every part of the world, the U.S. nuclear aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines are constantly moving in oceans and are openly anchoring at such a country as Japan.
This proves that it is none other than the United States that should restrain the proliferation of the nuclear weapons for human peace and the security of this planet.
Such being the case, does the United States have the qualification and face to talk about "restraint" against somebody?
U.S. "human rights" standards cannot work@= KCNA commentary =
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- The United States, meddling in human rights situations of some countries, recently attempted to give public opinion impressions that "human rights" have not been ensured in the DPRK.
The U.S. unjust behaviour of slandering the DPRK over the "human rights issue" is an intervention in the internal affairs of the DPRK and an encroachment upon the Korean style socialist system.
The DPRK cannot but categorically refute the "outlook on human rights" of the United States which slanders the DPRK in an "annual report on human rights" every year.
The United States is employing the "human rights issue" as a major means to put political pressure upon those countries that are trying to take the road of independence and that are disobedient to it.
As is known, there is no "human rights issue" in the DPRK in which the whole country forms a big harmonious family.
The Workers' Party and the government of Korea are pursuing a policy of providing people with genuine freedom, rights and happy life, the policy which respects their human rights most.
Under the anthropocentric Korean style socialist system all citizens of the DPRK enjoy equal rights in all sectors of state and social life, and the rights are guaranteed by law.
The reality eloquently shows that the "human rights issue" raised by the U.S. is nonsensical.
In an attempt to give impressions that there is "human rights issue" in the DPRK, the U.S. is alleging that human rights are in "miserable conditions and people's independent views are "repressed" in the DPRK. What they seek in this is to disintegrate the interior of the DPRK.
In actuality, the U.S. has no face to slander anybody over the "human rights issue".
The United States is the very place in which the human rights are violated and trampled upon most severely.
Murder is committed every 24 minutes, raping every five minutes and violence every 18 seconds in the United States.
The current U.S. President himself admitted it and published a statement that there are a lot of things to do.
The United States would be well advised to review its own human rights situation before appreciating or slandering human rights situations of other countries.
DPRK is not fearful of nuclear showdown
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- Warmongers at home and abroad recently met and made public a "joint statement," crying for "nuclear punishment" against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Describing the "statement" as tantamount to a declaration of war, Rodong Sinmun today says it indicates that the second Korean War they are preparing for will be a nuclear war.
It is the final goal of the U.S. warmongers to stifle the Korean socialist system with nuclear attacks, the daily says in a commentary. Unless they give up the goal, an armed conflict, that is a nuclear war, is unavoidable.
The daily continues: The United States, which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has not yet been hit by a single shell over the past five decades or so. But the situation is different now. If the United States attempts to inflict a nuclear holocaust on the DPRK, its mainland will never be left unharmed, either.
S. Korean trade union enters general strike
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- The Trade Union of Dae Woo Electronics Co., Ltd. entered a total strike at all working places on January 19 for the right to existence, according to a South Korean newspaper.
Trade unions of the company branches in Kumi, Kwangju, Inchon, Kuro, Puphyong and other areas and its clerks' emergency measure committee held ceremonies for starting strikes at workplaces and vowed to conduct a joint struggle including the struggle for the withdrawal of the authorities-imposed "exchange of key entities."
According to it, over 4,000 workers of the Kumi Factory stopped all work on the same day.
Booklet on DPRK's Joint New Year Editorial published in S. Korea
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- Members of a society for having a correct understanding of the north published a booklet on the Joint New Year Editorial of the north, the Seoul-based radio Voice of National Salvation quoted the Seoul city committee of the National Democratic Front of South Korea as saying.
The booklet, titled "Great Blueprint," carries the full text of the Joint New Year Editorial. It says that the editorial described this year as a year of great turn and general onward march for building a powerful nation and unfolded a great blueprint for arousing all the people to the march.
The north led by Marshal Kim Jong Il, the sun of the nation, is the beacon of hope and true fatherland of the people in the south, it says, calling upon all the South Korean people to have a correct understanding of the north and provide a new heyday for national reunification through reconciliation and great unity between the north and south this year, too.
Dangerous move against DPRK
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi openly cried at a general meeting of the Liberal-Democratic diet that, as a bill on "new guidelines for Japan-U.S. defense cooperation" was already presented to both houses, it should be passed at a regular diet meeting at any cost, according to a news report.
The chairman of the Diet Measure Committee of the Party said that a special committee on the bill would be formed to deliberate on it.
At a plenary session of the House of Representatives on January 20, Obuchi expressed again the stand of the Japanese government that it is not necessary for the diet to give an advance approval for a main action plan related to activities of the "self-defence forces" which will be conducted in case of emergency around Japan according to the guidelines.
He also expressed his ambition to strengthen military overseas expansion under the signboard of "cooperating the UN peacekeeping activities" by revising the law on troop dispatch overseas so as to lift the ban on participation of the "self-defence forces" in military operations abroad.
It fully reflects the active war moves of the Japanese reactionaries to lay, through the regular diet session, a legal foundation to carry out the new guidelines, a war document with the DPRK as the first target, and realise the ambition to stage a comeback to the Korean peninsula at any cost.
Ceaseless war confabs against DPRK
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- The South Korean authorities at a "central meeting for joint defense" on Jan. 21 said that they will keep "full readiness" and raise "efficiency of operations" allegedly to cope with the north's "possible provocation" and "infiltration".
Commenting on this, Rodong Sinmun says in a commentary today: What they seek in this is to invent an excuse for unleashing a war against the north.
The South Korean chief executive is summoning military bosses to "Chongwadae" almost every day to have war confabs.
And he is inciting a fever of war against the north, touring forefront units of the "ROK" army.
Now that the U.S. and the South Korean authorities have made it a fait accompli to stifle the DPRK militarily, outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula is a matter of time.
We are not afraid of war but merciless to provokers. If the enemies finally ignite a war despite our repeated warnings, they will be annihilated.
Immortal banner of socialist movement
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- Anil Gupta, editor in chief of the Indian Paper Indian and World Event, on January 17 issued a statement on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the publication of the General Secretary Kim Jong Il's work "the Historical Lesson in Building Socialism and the General Line of Our Party".
He said that the work is a monumental work of great importance indicating the way to reorganise the socialist movement of the present times on a new basis and lead the socialist cause to a constant upsurge.
In the work, Kim Jong Il analysed and summed up the historical course of the socialist movement in a comprehensive way and indicated a correct way to build socialism and communism, he said, adding: The work is evoking a storm of response from among the world revolutionary people as it is consistent with boundless loyalty to the socialist cause.
It is now serving as an immortal banner of the socialist movement.
Film show on 49th Indian National Day
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- A film show was held here on Friday on the occasion of the 49th National Day of the Republic of India.
Invited to the show were Indian Ambassador to Korea Jagjit Singh Sapra and embassy officials.
Present were Choe Jong Hwan, vice-chairman of the committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and vice-chairman of the DPRK-India Friendship Association, and citizens.
Ssuk tea in wide use
Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- Ssuk (mugwort) tea is in wide use in Korea as a folk medicine good for curing heart diseases.
Mugwort has long been used by the Koreans for medical purposes.
Ssuk is efficacious for curing lumbago, arthritis, cough, colic, hemorrhoids, etc.
It has recently been proved that Ssuk cures cardialgia, breath scantiness and steno-cardia, typical cases for the elderly people.
The leaf contains vitamins A, B1, B2, C as well as colin, iron, calcium, phosphor and other mineral elements.