High-level EU delegation to visit DPRK
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- A high-level delegation of the European Union led by Joran Persson, President of the European Council and Prime Minister of Sweden, Javier Solana, high representative for common foreign and security policy of the EU, and Chris Patten, commissioner for external relations of the European commission, will shortly visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
S. Korean police assailed by Hanchongryon
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- The South Korean Federation of University Student Councils (Hanchongryon) on April 23 issued a statement as regards South Korean police's walking away Pae Min Gyun, chairman of the general student council of Konkuk University, according to a news report.
The statement said that the police action is aimed to bar the Hanchongryon's struggle to check the increase of registration fee and secure educational finance from enlisting support from broad segments of people and gaining in scope and strength.
The statement branded the police's illegal arrest of a deputy to Hanchongryon for the mere reason that he is a member of the "enemy-benefitting organization" as an intolerable anti-reunification action and demanded the police authorities release Pae at once and punish those responsible for it and make an official apology for it.
Inaugural declaration of young workers society for democracy issued
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- The young workers society for democracy in the new century issued an inaugural declaration in South Korea on April 17, according to a news report.
The declaration said that the young workers will hold high the flag of independence against the U.S. in order to drive out the U.S. imperialists, the root cause of all evils in South Korea.
It will hold high the flag for social democracy to shatter the anti-reunification plots of the fascist repressive group and the conservative forces seeking for the continued division of the country, disorganize the "intelligence service" and abolish the "security law", the declaration said.
"We will hold aloft the flag of the struggle for reunification to enable the Korean nation to live in an eternally prosperous society," it said, calling upon the workers to take the lead in the struggle for achieving national reunification.
DPRK paddlers prove successful
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- Paddlers of the DPRK placed second in the women's team event at the 46th World Table-Tennis Championship which is being held in Osaka, Japan.
They competed with the Chinese paddlers in the final after defeating the South Korean counterparts in the semi-finals.
KCNA on S. Korean national defence minister's diatribe against DPRK
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- Kim Tong Sin, minister of national defence of South Korea, at the National Assembly interpellation on April 25, asserted that there should be a clear conception of the principal enemy as "North Korea is a force posing potential and direct threat."
This is an extremely malignant anti-DPRK diatribe aimed to drive the inter-Korean relations to confrontation as it is contrary to the spirit of the north-south joint declaration which calls for settling the issue of national reunification by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation.
As far as the logic of "principal enemy" is concerned, there is no reason to talk about this now that the joint declaration is in the process of its implementation because the logic is nothing but a product of the old era when the successive south Korean military authorities including those in the period of military dictatorship incited confrontation with the north.
Some forces in South Korea are persistently clinging to the concept of confrontation, going against the trend of the times and the desire of fellow countrymen. This goes to prove that they are anti-national forces who are displeased with the efforts for inter-Korean reconciliation and reunification.
This was proved by the "reception, staging, onward movement and integration" exercise staged by the South Korean military authorities together with the U.S. bellicose elements.
It is nobody's secret that the recent military exercise was staged under the simulated conditions of a real war to mount a preemptive attack on the DPRK according to the "operation plan 5027-98", a scenario of the second Korean war of aggression.
This logic of "the principal enemy" was touted again by the South Korean military quarters, timed to coincide with South Korean troops' participation in such dangerous military exercise. The DPRK can never remain a passive onlooker to this grave anti-national, anti-reunification remark intended to cool down the inter-Korean relations developing in favour of reconciliation, unity and reunification, quite contrary to the spirit of the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration.
Korea's reunification called for
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- The International Liaison Committee for Reunification and Peace in Korea (CILRECO) called upon all the political parties and organizations, international organizations and progressive people who love peace and justice and other peace-loving forces of the world to have a deep understanding of the gravity of the new situation prevailing on the Korean peninsula and immediately stop the united states and the South Korean bellicose elements from doing new military provocations and upon the international community to take urgent steps to discharge its responsibility for actively promoting peace and reunification in this region and ensuring world peace and security.
The CILRECO said this in an extraordinary appeal to the world progressive forces and peace-loving forces on April 23.
The appeal said that the joint military exercise staged by the united states and the South Korean military authorities is a wanton violation of the DPRK-U.S. agreed framework and a grave provocation seeking to vitiate an atmosphere of detente and reunification on the Korean peninsula which had been created with much effort after the inter-Korean summit meeting in particular.
It dismissed the behaviour of the South Korean authorities who launched the war exercise against the DPRK, together with the united states, as a grave perfidy to the north-south joint declaration.
Rodong Sinmun on 100 days of Bush administration
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- Rodong Sinmun today in a signed article on 100 days of Bush's office says that since the day he took office he has betrayed his true colours as a fanatic advocate of the policy of strength as he has been keen on aggression and war, harassment of peace and world domination.
This nature of Bush is evidenced by the fact that he took an undisguised belligerent attitude to pursue an aggressive and strong-arm foreign policy backed by strength, the article observes, and continues:
What he said in his inaugural address disclosed his ulterior intention to put U.S.-style strong-arm order into practice and signified his first step as he put spurs to arms race and arms buildup.
The Bush administration has drastically increased military expenditure and stepped up its adventurous development and production of nuclear weapons in a bid to hold military hegemony through the establishment of the "missile defense" system.
The U.S. true nature as a rogue state has been brought into bolder relief since the emergence of the Bush administration. The Bush ruling quarters seek to contain such big countries as China and Russia and put the world under their unchallenged domination.
Bush's true colours as a harasser of peace also found a vivid manifestation in the fact that he supported the reactionary forces contrary to the desire of those people to see the peaceful settlement of regional disputes.
The Bush administration's hawkish, aggressive and belligerent nature was strikingly manifested in its policy towards the DPRK in particular.
The ulterior aim of the administration's hard-line policy towards the DPRK is to cool down the DPRK-U.S. relations, push them to the state of acute confrontation and stifle the DPRK by force of arms.
Its reactionary domestic and foreign policy resulted in harassing peace and security and increasing the danger of war in different parts of the world. Bush's arbitrary practice was a major factor of it. What is dangerous is the fact that his arbitrary practice is fully reflected in his administration's foreign policy and this seriously affects the international relations.
It is due to the U.S. indeed that the world has hardly seen even a single tranquil and peaceful day over the last 100 days.
Greetings to Queen of Netherlands
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- Kim Yong Nam, President of the presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, sent a message of greetings on April 27 to Queen Beatrix of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on the occasion of its national day.
The message expressed the belief that the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries would grow stronger in political, economic, cultural and other fields in the common interests of the two peoples.
It wished greater success to her in her work and health and happiness to her and her family.
Mangyongdae visited by endless stream of people
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- Mangyongdae now in spring is visited by a ceaseless stream of Korean and foreign visitors these days. Their number reaches over 10,000 a day.
Mangyongdae, situated about 12 km southwest of the center of Pyongyang, is the time-honoured place where President Kim Il Sung was born and spent his childhood.
Korean people built the area into a revolutionary site with boundless respect and reverence for the president.
There are the president's native home, the Mangyongdae Revolutionary Museum, triumphant return ferry, study site, Sunhwa School, etc.
The president got out of the Mangyongdae gate when he was 14 and waged the great anti-Japanese war to achieve the cause of national liberation and returned to this historical home after 20 years.
The monument at the triumphant return ferry on the Sunhwa River tells the anecdote of the day.
Visitors can learn about the president's revolutionary career and exploits of struggle of his family members comprehensively and systematically at the Mangyongdae Revolutionary Museum.
The president, who embarked upon the road of revolution in his teens and liberated the fatherland in his thirties, defeated the U.S. imperialists who boasted of being strongest in the world in his forties and built a powerful socialist country on this land. he performed immortal exploits for the global peace and human cause of independence.
So, Mangyongdae is known as a time-honoured place always visited not only by Koreans but world revolutionary people who deeply venerate President Kim Il Sung.
Japan's distortion of history under fire
Pyongyang, April 30 (KCNA) -- The spokesman for the DPRK Committee for Investigation into the Damage Done by the Japanese Imperialists During Their Occupation of Korea today released a statement condemning the Japanese government for approving some time ago history textbooks, in which historical facts are falsified, despite strong opposition of the Asian people and persistently working to make a retrogressive revision of the textbooks.
The statement says:
It is an undeniable historical fact that after illegally occupying Korea, Japan harshly plundered it of material and cultural treasures, forcibly took away a great number of young and middle-aged Korean people for hard labour and as cannon fodder for a war of aggression and forced many Korean women into sexual slavery, maltreating and brutally killing them.
Japan's aggression and plunder brought tremendous disasters and losses to other Asian people, too.
Japan's moves to twist the content of its history textbooks, accordingly, prove that the Japanese government has not got rid of its mode of thinking and ambition for domination in the era of militarism when it looked down upon the Korean and other Asian people.
The Japanese government is poised to use the twisted history textbooks in the education of the younger generation. It was against this backdrop that there are dangerous developments in Japan= a Japanese university professor said that "the history of comfort women was a history of toilet" and scores of dietmen visited the Yasukuni Shrine in groups.
This goes to prove that Japan, far from drawing a lesson and repenting of its crime-woven history, is making reckless efforts to gratify at any cost the ambition to dominate Asia it failed to do in the past.
The issue of history textbooks can never be an internal issue of Japan.
With no desperate efforts can Japan twist or erase its shameful crime-woven history. it can never evade its legal and moral responsibility for its past crimes.
The Korean people will never forget the misfortune and sufferings the Japanese imperialists imposed upon them, but certainly make Japan pay a very high price for them.
The Japanese authorities should apologize for their distortion of history in textbooks, which is an insult to the Koreans and other Asian nations, and own responsibility for the ensuing consequences.
We solemnly call upon the Asian people and world conscience to struggle in unity against Japan's undisguised moves to distort history and revive militarism.