The statement said that all the Koreans at home and abroad greeted the 41st anniversary of the historic July 4 joint statement.

President Kim Il Sung clarified the three principles of independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity and made sure that the July 4 joint statement reflecting the basic contents of the principles was published, a historic event which provided the Koreans with the great programme for reunification common to the nation and marked an occasion of a new turn in the efforts for national reunification, the statement noted.

Leader Kim Jong Il formulated the three principles of national reunification, the ten-point programme of the great unity of the whole nation and the proposal for founding the Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo advanced by Kim Il Sung as the three charters for national reunification and aroused all the Koreans to the struggle for carrying them out, it said.

It praised Kim Jong Il for providing the north-south summit, the first of its kind in the history of the nation's division, and adopting the June 15 joint declaration and the October 4 declaration, the programme for implementing it, thereby ushering in an epochal phase of the movement for national reunification.

The three principles of national reunification and the north-south joint declarations, their embodiment, are great programmes to be held fast to by the Korean nation till the day of reunification no matter how the situation may change, it noted, adding reunification, peace and prosperity lie in preserving and implementing them. It went on:

The south Korean present ruling forces have been hell-bent on the moves to ignite a war against the DPRK in league with foreign forces, a challenge to the unanimous desire for north-south dialogue and improved inter-Korean relations. They are snubbing the three principles of national reunification and the north-south joint declarations.

The General Association of Koreans in China and all Koreans in China will invariably regard the three principles of national reunification and the north-south joint declarations as the landmark for independent reunification, peace and prosperity and turn out as one in the patriotic struggle to resolutely shatter the moves of the south Korean ruling forces for confrontation with fellow countrymen as they are set to deny and obliterate the principles and declarations.