The grand realities in which the Korean people are building a great, prosperous and powerful socialist nation with the might of close unity of the leader, the Party, the army and the people, frustrating the moves of the imperialists, have been brought by the wise leadership of the peerlessly great persons who put forth the programme of great national unity long ago and carried it forward.

President Kim Il Sung convened the historical Donggang meeting on May 5, Juche 25 (1936) and founded the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland, the first organization of the anti-Japanese national united front in Korea.

The ARF grew into a pan-national organization with a membership of hundreds of thousands in a brief time since its formation and it powerfully backed the victory of the anti-Japanese armed struggle by mobilizing broad masses in rendering active aid, material and military, to the Korean People's Revolutionary Army.

Thanks to the tradition of great national unity established by the President, the Korean people could turn out as one man in the building of a new country in the complicated situation after the liberation, those with strength giving strength, those with knowledge dedicating knowledge and those with money donating money, to successfully carry out an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution, and worked the political and military miracle in the Fatherland Liberation War against the U.S. imperialist aggressors through an all-people death-defying war of resistance.

The President convened the historical April north-south joint conference and put forward the programme of national reunification and great national unity. In the later period, he advanced the three principles of national reunification -- independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity -- and the Ten-Point Programme of the Great Unity of the Whole Nation for the Reunification of the Country, thus providing the great programme of national unity and reunification, and pushed vigorously ahead with the reunification movement on the track of national independence.

The President's idea of great national unity and the great tradition of revolutionary unity established by him and his feats in this are being carried forward by General Secretary Kim Jong Il on a new, higher level today.

He saw to it that the historic June 15 north-south joint declaration and the October 4 declaration, its practical programme, were made public, thereby opening up a bright vista for bringing earlier the reunification of the country with the concerted efforts of the whole nation.

Under the leadership of Kim Jong Il, the Korean people will certainly accomplish the historic cause of national reunification, holding aloft the banner of great national unity.