Esteemed Comrade General Secretary Kim Jong Il,

Dear comrades from Korea,

I, first of all, would like to warmly welcome the China visit of you, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, on behalf of the Chinese party, government and people.

Your two visits to China in less than four months are enough to show that you have attached a great importance to steadily consolidating and developing the traditional Sino-Korean friendship.

Just before, we made an in-depth exchange of views in a pleasant and outspoken atmosphere on crucial matters concerning the bilateral relations and those of mutual interests.

I believe that your current visit will surely mark an important occasion in invigorating exchange and cooperation between the two countries, promoting mutual understanding and trust and further developing the bilateral friendship and cooperation.

Contained in Sino-Korean friendship are lifelong efforts of the elder-generation revolutionaries of the two countries, the common ideal of socialism and an ardent expectation of the two peoples.

The Chinese party and government have always set great store by the traditional friendship between the two countries, defended and developed it on a strategic level, and regarded it as an unshakable policy to steadily consolidate and develop the friendship.

We will strive, together with the Korean comrades, to put the bilateral friendship and cooperation on a higher level in the new century.

A conference of the WPK will be held in Korea in the first half of September.

I, on behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, wish a signal success to the WPK conference.

Korea will celebrate the 65th anniversary of the WPK on October 10.

Over the past 65 years, the WPK has guided all the Korean people to make tremendous achievements in the socialist revolution and construction.

We, a friendly neighbor and a close comrade and friend of Korea, sincerely hope that the Korean people under the leadership of the WPK headed by you will greet the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung in 2012 by pursuing a way of development suitable to the conditions of their country and continuing making fresh and greater achievements in the historical course of the building of a thriving nation.