I am very pleased to visit China again at warm invitation of Comrade General Secretary Hu Jintao and have meaningful meetings with you and other Chinese comrades.

Allow me to express, first of all, my profound thanks to you for having arranged this grand banquet for us and made such excellent speech despite your very tight schedule.

I would like to express, at the same time, gratitude to you for having organized detailed and meticulous itineraries for our visits to Dalian and Tianjin. My thanks also go to comrades in Beijing and local areas for having warmly greeted and accorded cordial hospitality to us.

We came to your country in this beautiful season when it greeted spring after standing heaviest snowfall and bitterest cold in several decades. We toured northeastern China which we had long wished to see, keenly feeling the friendship of the fraternal Chinese people warmer than spring sunshine, the gift of nature.

During our visit we saw for ourselves fresh world-startling changes brought about by the people in northeastern China in political, economic, cultural and all other fields, pursuant to the strategy to develop the northeastern region, an old industrial base, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China with you as its general secretary.

We were deeply impressed particularly by the new appearance of Dalian and Tianjin which have undergone a remarkable change after doing away with the centuries-old backwardness; these cities were once harshly exploited and trampled down after being reduced to settlements of the imperialist powers and theatres of scrambles for expanding the sphere of their influence in the 19th century.

Witnessing the stirring reality in which hundreds of millions of Chinese people, who had been subject to all sorts of contempt and insult in the past, are now building a rich and powerful socialist country in the vast land of China full of energy, we came to know well that the policies of the Communist Party of China are very just ones suited to the actual conditions of China and they are fully displaying their vitalities wherever one goes in China.

These eye-opening events taking place in socialist China at present once again prove the truth that "There Is No New China without the Communist Party" just as one can know from the song of the same title.

The fact that everything goes well in China, our fraternal neighbor, hardens the faith that socialism chosen and defended by us is sure to triumph.

It is our firm belief that the fraternal Chinese people will unite closer around the CPC Central Committee with you Comrade Hu Jintao as its general secretary and thoroughly embody the spirit of the 17th Congress of the CPC, guided by the Deng Xiaoping's theory, the important thought of "three represents" and the scientific outlook on development under the uplifted great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics and thus build a harmoniously developed socialist society and certainly achieve the complete reunification of the whole country.

We sincerely hope that they will thoroughly implement the tasks set forth at the 3rd Session of the 11th National People's Congress for the present to fully attain this year the goal of economic and social development envisaged in the period of the 11th Five-Year Plan, maintain stable and sustained economic development, and successfully host the Shanghai World Expo that opened with splendor and the forthcoming Guangzhou Asian Games and thus demonstrate once again the national power of prospering China before the whole world.

Touring this time northeastern China, which bears historic witness to the DPRK-China friendship, we could realize once again the value of DPRK-China friendship, the common wealth of the two countries which President Kim Il Sung provided while waging the hard-fought anti-Japanese struggle together with Chinese revolutionaries of the elder generation in his early years and bequeathed to us.

We are very grateful to the collective leadership of the Chinese party for having paid deep attention to boosting the friendly relations with the DPRK while consistently attaching importance to the bilateral relations from a strategic point of view and rendered sincere support and encouragement to the socialist cause of the Korean people.

The traditional DPRK-China relations of friendship that stood all tests of history century after century have powerfully encouraged the peoples of the two countries in their efforts to accomplish the socialist cause and made great contributions to protecting peace and stability in Northeast Asia including the Korean Peninsula and, furthermore, in the rest of the world.

Our two countries fixed last year as "year of DPRK-China friendship", the first of its kind in history, and successfully organized visits of high-level delegations and significant events, powerfully demonstrating the unbreakable DPRK-China friendship internally and externally.

I am pleased that the DPRK-China friendship deeply enshrined by the two peoples has steadily grown stronger. I am very satisfied with the fact that my visit to China, in particular, provided a good occasion in further deepening the trust between the two countries and boosting the mutual understanding.

Our Party and government will as ever make every possible effort to inject fresh vitality into boosting the DPRK-China friendship, the common treasure, in all fields.