The message said that last year was a year to be specially recorded in the Korean nation's history of 5 000 years during which the fresh atmosphere of a great revolutionary surge raged throughout the country and historic events of knocking on the gate to a great prosperous and powerful country were registered thanks to the guerrilla-style forced march of high intensity made by Kim Jong Il.

It praised Kim Jong Il as the master of creation and the peerlessly great man who is always winning victories and working miracles with his far-sighted wisdom and iron will and as the protector of all Koreans' destinies and the tender-hearted father who leads the officials of Chongryon and Koreans in Japan to join the people in the homeland in accomplishing the revolutionary cause of Juche.

The message expressed the determination to glorify this year as a year of decisive leap in ushering in a new heyday of Chongryon and the movement of Koreans in Japan at any cost by 2012 marking the centenary of birth of President Kim Il Sung.

We will conduct more vigorous external activities to urge the Japanese authorities' switchover in their hostile policy toward the DPRK and the improvement of the DPRK-Japan relations, and launch on a mass scale the powerful struggle for getting such Japan's unjust "sanctions" as ban on the entry of ship "Mangyongbong-92" into its ports lifted and denouncing their political crackdown and inhumane oppression of Chongryon and Korean residents in Japan, it said.

It also expressed the resolve to further strengthen the national unity among the Koreans in Japan under the idea of "By our nation itself" and bring about a new turn in the struggle for adhering to and implementing the June 15 joint declaration and the October 4 declaration.