Present there were officials of the said associations and other personages of various strata and families of those related to the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle.

Present there on invitation were the DPRK ambassador to China and staff members of his embassy.

Speeches were made at the meeting.

Shen Weiping, vice-president of the China Association for International Friendly Contact, expressed conviction that the Korean people would register greater successes without fail by making steady redoubled efforts along the road indicated by Kim Jong Il.

Last year was a year of great significance in Sino-DPRK relations, he said, expressing his resolution to make a positive contribution to deepening and boosting the Sino-DPRK friendly and cooperative relations in the spirit of "inheriting the tradition, facing up to the future, building good-neighborly friendship and strengthening cooperation" this year with the 60th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People's Volunteers into the Korean front, the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea and other occasions as momentums.

DPRK Ambassador to China Choe Jin Su referred to the fact that Kim Jong Il is providing field guidance to the work in various fields of the national economy, making an endless forced march despite blizzard from the outset of the new year with his firm will to bring about a decisive turn in improving the people's standard of living this year.

He said that the DPRK would make positive efforts this year, too, to steadily boost the traditional friendship between the DPRK and China generation after generation.

Meanwhile, a friendly meeting was held by the Liaoning Provincial Association for International Friendly Contact on Feb. 3.