Awarding this highest honor prize to the leader is an expression of the DPRK people's boundless loyalty to him.

Kim Jong Il showed the road ahead of the Korean revolution and the times with his encyclopedic ideas and theories and ushered in the golden age of building socialist culture in Korea.

He strengthened the party, army and state under the banner of modeling the whole society on the Juche idea and brought about a great heyday of prosperity, unprecedented in the nation's history of 5 000 years.

He developed in depth the immortal Juche idea, the Songun (military-first) idea into the guiding idea in the era of independence. And he propelled the drive to put the national economy on a Juche-oriented, modern and scientific basis by setting priority to science and technology as one of the three mainstays in the building of a powerful nation.

The leader brought about not only a great heyday of literature and art in the era of Songun but also a fresh turn in building socialist culture such as education, health service, media and sports.

Kim Jong Il had already been awarded the prize in Juche 62 (1973).

The prize was instituted in March 1972.