The full text of the letter reads:

I extend warm congratulations to all the teaching staff and students of Kim Il Sung University who are greeting the meaningful 70th anniversary of its founding in the historic period, when a general offensive is in full swing to build a powerful socialist country according to the bright blueprint unfolded by the Seventh Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea.

Kim Il Sung University is the central base for training national cadres and the highest institute of Juche-based science and education.

The history of the university is the one of the shining victory of the Juche-oriented ideas and theories of the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on education and their outstanding leadership; it is also the one resplendent with the patriotic and faithful service of all its teaching staff, students and graduates who have worked devotedly for the victorious advance of the revolutionary cause and the prosperity of their country, cherishing infinite loyalty to the Party and the leaders.

Regarding education, training of native cadres, as the most important of all national affairs that has a bearing on the destiny of the country and nation, Comrade Kim Il Sung had the university built first even in the difficult and complex situation that prevailed after the country's liberation. The founding of this university marked the beginning of a new history of a Juche-based and people-oriented higher education for training the people's sons and daughters into dependable pillars of a new Korea, into native cadres, and it opened a wide road for building a prosperous and independent people's state by relying on our native cadres.

In every period and at every stage of the revolution and construction, including the difficult days of building a new country and the trying days of the Fatherland Liberation War, Comrade Kim Il Sung indicated the road the university should follow and led it at every step so that it could train a large number of excellent native cadres demanded by the Party and the revolution. Thanks to his wise leadership and uncommon care, a solid foundation was laid for developing it into a model university in training talented revolutionaries and the Ryongnam Hill area into a world-class university area.

Comrade Kim Jong Il, always with close concern for the work of the university, wisely led it so that it could creditably perform the mission and tasks it had assumed for the times and the revolution.

Having made a historic determination on Ryongnam Hill in his early days, he energetically led the university to establish the Juche orientation in its educational work, and had it developed into the university of Comrade Kim Il Sung, whose lifeblood is faithfulness to the leader, and into the highest institute of Juche-based science and education. Etched in the hearts of our people including the teaching staff and students of the university is the august image of the great General, who unfolded the plan of building it into one of the most prestigious universities in the world and, despite the mental and physical fatigue accumulated on the road of the Songun revolution, put his heart and soul into creating world-standard educational conditions and environment for the university.

The great leaders were, indeed, founders and builders of the university and benevolent fathers and mentors of its teaching staff and students, and the university is the university of the leaders both in name and in reality, which was born and developed under their warm care.

There are many famous universities in the world proud of their long history and time-honoured traditions, but Kim Il Sung University is the only one that is glorious with the great name of the Sun revered by the world and is brilliant with the imperishable leadership exploits of the national leaders.

Our Party pays close concern to defending and honouring for all ages the imperishable revolutionary exploits performed by the great leaders for the development of the university and to further developing it into a most prestigious university in line with the requirements of the times and the developing revolution.

Since its founding, the university has played the pivotal role in training national cadres and developing the country's science and technology under the leadership of the great leaders and the Party.

In line with the Party's education policy, the educationists and scientists of the university have trained a great number of talented revolutionaries, politically and ideologically sound and scientifically and technologically prepared; they have also proved the validity of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism and Party policy, given wide publicity to them and wonderfully resolved the scientific and technological problems arising in developing the economy and culture and in consolidating the national defence capability, thus making a positive contribution to victoriously advancing the revolutionary cause of Juche.

In every grim decade of our revolution its students have defended the Party and the leaders staunchly and stood in the vanguard of death-defyingly executing the Party's plans and intentions.

Its graduates, cherishing the great political trust and expectation of the Party and the leaders, have worked with devotion for the development of our Party and Republic, and are now performing their responsibilities and basic duty as the core of the Party and the revolution, as the vanguard fighters, at the major sites of the construction of a powerful socialist country.

Invariably following the Party with a single mind along the road of loyalty and patriotism, the university has produced the dependable hard core of the Party and the state and many competent specialists in several fields, who will creditably carry forward the revolutionary cause of Juche to completion, and forcefully propelled the building of a powerful socialist country by achieving fruitful results in scientific research. This constitutes an outstanding exploit the university has performed for the country and the revolution.

While striving hard to implement the instructions the great leaders gave in their lifetime, the university has trained excellent educational and scientific personnel including academicians, professors and doctors, particularly young scientists of a new generation who have won recognition from the world scientific circles; colleges, faculties and departments have been incorporated into it as appropriate to the appearance of a university; educational equipment have been upgraded and put on a highly IT footing, and well-equipped bases built for manufacturing cutting-edge products. In this way foundations have been laid for building it up into one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Today the Ryongnam Hill area has been turned into a large university area centred on the bronze statues of Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. A witness to history that comprehends the great leaders' imperishable exploits for developing the Juche-oriented education and science and building a thriving country and eloquently proves the validity of our Party's idea and line of prioritizing education and talents, the area shines brilliantly as the sacred place where the dawn of final victory in the Juche revolution is being ushered in.

On behalf of the Workers' Party of Korea and the government of the Republic I extend warm thanks to all the teaching staff, students and graduates of Kim Il Sung University who, fully conscious of their heavy responsibility and mission for the Party and the revolution, the country and the people, have displayed lofty loyalty and patriotic devotion over the past seven decades, rendering great services to developing the university and implementing the revolutionary cause of Juche.

Today the university is faced with an ennobling task for making a positive contribution to carrying out the cause of modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism by training a greater number of talented revolutionaries who are faithful to the Party and the revolution and have high practical abilities and forcefully propelling the building of a powerful socialist country with successful research results in cutting-edge science as demanded by the new era of the Juche revolution.

In order for the university to creditably perform the mission and duty it has assumed for the times and the revolution, it should be developed into the university of the great leaders for all ages.

To ensure that it invariably maintains its revolutionary character and original features as the university of the leaders and develop it into the university of the great leaders that keeps up its prestige in the eyes of the world?this is the general direction for building up Kim Il Sung University in the new era of the Juche revolution.

The university should be steadfast in defending its proud history and tradition of regarding loyalty to the Party and the leader as its lifeblood, and glorify them generation after generation and century after century.

The great leaders' undying exploits and instructions are the lasting foundation and guideline for building up Kim Il Sung University. The university should maintain the great leaders' Juche-oriented ideas, theories and instructions on education as its permanent programme and apply them to its overall work in a thoroughgoing way, thus realizing the leaders' plan and desire for making it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Loyalty to the Party's ideology and leadership is the lifeblood of Kim Il Sung University. The university should intensify the work of establishing the Party's unified leadership system to turn itself into a crystallization of conviction and loyalty, with which it faithfully supports the Party's ideology and leadership and keeps pace with the Party Central Committee all the time. By steadily carrying forward its glorious tradition as the university of the great leaders, it should ensure that the whole campus overflows with the revolutionary spirit of defending the Party Central Committee and implementing Party policy to the death.

It is essential to develop it into one of the most prestigious universities in the world as befits the dignified, revolutionary university of the great leaders.

An important task for doing so is to bring education in close combination with scientific research and put the main emphasis on training creative talents and developing cutting-edge scientific theories and technologies.

The university should improve the content of education, teaching methods, education system and management of teaching in conformity with the characteristics of the most prestigious universities.

It should do so by setting clear-cut objectives for training talents at all the educational stages, ranging from regular and postgraduate courses to research institutes.

While prioritizing political and ideological subjects, it should improve the teaching of other subjects by adhering to Party policy and encouraging theoretical explanation in plain language, so as to fully guarantee the politico-ideological character of the content of education. It should make an overall review of the teaching programmes for all subjects and update them on the principle of ensuring their practicability, comprehensiveness and modernity, and compile world-class textbooks in our own way.

Kim Il Sung University should set an example for all other universities of the country to follow in introducing innovative teaching methods.

It should train the students into positive learners and explorers by developing and perfecting the heuristic teaching method of our style in line with the requirements of the times, and conduct education in close combination with scientific research and practical activities. It should create processes, means, methods and forms of teaching to suit the realities of our country and the characteristic features of relevant subjects, and actively apply them. It is important to proactively enlist the students in the regular course as well as the postgraduate course in scientific research, increase the proportion of experiments, internships and skills training in the direction of improving their application abilities, and set up a scientific method of evaluating the practical abilities of the students with a focus on their application abilities.

It should organize teaching units in a reasonable way, and ensure that the students receive lectures from top-notch teachers in the university or the country through various forms and methods of education. It should properly fix the hours of teaching by teachers, making it a principle that highly-qualified, authoritative teachers and researchers give main lectures on their subjects.

The education system, management of teaching and educational administration should be improved.

It should establish a well-regulated continuous education system, ranging from regular course to postgraduate course, and ensure that the genius education system set up by General Kim Jong Il pays off in practice.

In conformity with its character as a university, it should develop new colleges, faculties and departments for training personnel talented in cutting-edge and other major fields like aerospace technology and chemical industry, and develop new branches of cross-disciplinary sciences in line with the trend of the comprehensive development of science and the demands of the country's socio-economic development, and bring up outstanding talents for these fields.

The university should develop its faculties and departments with a certain level of foundations and attainments so that they can become capable of securing world supremacy, and launch a dynamic campaign in which one overtakes and learns from others so as to increase the ranks of such faculties and departments.

A rational system and order for educational administration should be established on the principle of ensuring smooth progress of teaching and scientific research by teachers and researchers, and of edification of students.

Departments should be strengthened into academic centres of relevant sectors, into authoritative research units, in which teaching is closely combined with scientific research.

Kim Il Sung University should build up its distance education college into a nationwide online educational base of social sciences and increase the number of its courses and students to develop it into a large-scale college, thus making a tangible contribution to implementing our Party's policy of making all the people well-versed in science and technology.

The university should adopt decisive steps to strengthen the forces of science and education that are capable of building itself up into a most prestigious university.

The main forces, who are directly responsible for doing so, are its forces of science and education centred on teachers and researchers.

The university should train on a long-term basis reserve scientists and educationists for every discipline to strengthen these forces in terms of both quality and quantity, and ensure that their lineage is carried forward stoutly. It should direct its great efforts to the work of the institutes of social and natural sciences so as to ensure that their research fellows achieve outstanding successes in their research projects in cutting-edge branches and, in this course, grow to be world-class scholars.

The university should vigorously conduct scientific research and become a pacesetter in realizing the integration of education, scientific research and production.

In scientific research, it should focus on satisfactorily resolving the theoretical and practical, scientific and technological problems arising in building a powerful socialist country, developing the sector of basic sciences and pushing back the frontiers of science and technology.

The sector of social sciences should add eternal glory to the immortal revolutionary careers and achievements of the great leaders, and explain and verify the originality, truthfulness, veracity and vitality of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism and the Party's lines and policies in a deep-going way and give wide publicity to them. The sector of natural sciences should make a positive contribution to solving the scientific and technological problems including those related with food and energy that are urgently needed in developing the national economy and consolidating the national defence capability. The sectors of basic sciences and cutting-edge science and technology should present research results with a world competitive edge.

What is important in building the university into a most prestigious one is to achieve the integration of education, scientific research and production.

True to the instructions Comrade Kim Jong Il gave in his lifetime, the university should consolidate the successes it gained in building the bases for conducting research into cutting-edge technology and developing intellectual products, and at the same time, build more of such bases and update technical service, so as to proactively apply them to education, and contribute to setting up cutting-edge industries in the country.

It should push ahead purposefully with the work of building itself up as a hub of international academic exchange.

The university should regularly organize international academic seminars by discipline or of a comprehensive nature, and expand joint research with prestigious universities and research institutes in other countries.

It should ensure that its excellent academic papers are presented to authoritative international seminars and contributed to international academic journals. The Bulletin of Kim Il Sung University should be designated as a specialized academic periodical of the country and developed into a world-famous one. The bulletin and books of the university including textbooks and reference books should be edited to be weighty, so that they can be used in other countries as well as in itself and throughout our country.

It should enrol many foreign students and give them regular, postgraduate and internship courses in Korean and other special disciplines; it should also send its students, postgraduates in particular, abroad for further education.

Its teachers and researchers should decisively enhance their sense of responsibility and role, and its students should heighten their zeal for learning.

The teachers and researchers are career revolutionaries training the hard core of the revolution and world-level talents. Today, when the university is charging forward to beat the world, they have assumed a very heavy responsibility and duty for the Party and the country.

They should keep the Party's revolutionary ideas and theories as an article of their firm faith and be possessed of an ennobling view of the rising generations, sound mental and moral traits and pure conscience becoming teachers. They should be loyalists to the Party and the revolution, strong in ideology and faith, before being teachers and scientists. No matter how excellent their practical abilities may be, teachers and researchers devoid of strong faith cannot make a genuine contribution to the Party and the revolution. Fully aware that they are responsible for the future of the country, they should devote their all to teaching and scientific research.

Their qualifications are represented in their students' academic abilities and achievements in their scientific research. They should raise a hot wind of improving their qualifications and competing for better practical abilities so as to prepare themselves as model teachers and authoritative, world-class scholars whom no one can rival in their major fields.

They should become genuine educationists who teach the students through their personal examples and enjoy the love and respect of officials and working people as well as their students for their great practical abilities, ennobling traits and outstanding achievements.

Students at Kim Il Sung University are reserve hardcore talents who will become leading officials of the revolution responsible for the important sectors and posts in the building of a powerful socialist country, the backbone in the struggle for the victory of the Juche revolution.

They should become true revolutionaries who cherish the great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism as an article of their faith and talented revolutionaries of the Juche type, creative talents who are possessed of the intellectual abilities with which to beat the world and of lofty and highly-civilized cultural attainments.

Keeping in mind the autographic propositions of the great General Kim Jong Il embossed on the front wall of the lobby in the university's e-library, all the students of the university should study hard with a high ambition to become the backbone of the revolution, competent personnel in the new century, who will add brilliance to Kim Il Sung's nation, Kim Jong Il's Korea, before the eyes of the world. Fully aware that they themselves hold the key to success in their university days, they should improve themselves spiritually and morally, and save every minute to broaden and enrich their knowledge and apply it to practice.

We are competing with the world, and it is the students of Kim Il Sung University that must stand at the centre of this competition. They should fully demonstrate the dignity and honour of Kim Il Sung University by blazing the trail for the development of cutting-edge science with the ambition of challenging the world, competing with the world and beating the world with their brains.

The university should make sure that all aspects of university life, like giving education, conducting activities in political organizations and establishing discipline, are geared to and subordinated to raising the wind among students of learning and improving their academic performance.

The Party and the state should direct efforts to developing Kim Il Sung University into one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

To develop the university as such is a task which our Party prioritizes these days.

The Science and Education Department and other relevant departments of the Party Central Committee and the Pyongyang Municipal Party Committee should exert themselves to carry on this work as intended by the great General and the Party, and the sectors and units concerned should take a deep interest in the university work and help it proactively.

The Cabinet and relevant organs should throw their full weight behind the work of developing Kim Il Sung University into a base for scientific and technological research, in which education, scientific research and production are integrated. They should supply the university with necessary modern apparatuses for experiment and internship, printing equipment and teaching aids and furnishings on a top priority basis, and properly help it build up its internship and supply service bases so that its educational conditions and environment can reach the world standards. Measures should be taken by the state to improve the educational and scientific research conditions at the university and the living conditions of its teaching staff and students.

The university should work out a strategy and targets for developing itself into one of the most prestigious universities in the world on the principle of self-reliance and self-development and on a scientific and realistic basis to meet our actual conditions and the world trend, and carry them out one by one. In doing so, it should reject sycophancy, dogmatism and imitation and, when adopting the good experience of others, it should not confine itself to adopting them, but strive to attain a higher level. It should not turn to someone else for help, but renovate its teaching and scientific research facilities, develop equipment and instruments for experiment and internship and build up its supply service base by relying on its own efforts and technology.

The university area is located near the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are preserved in their lifetime appearance, and it is a large revolutionary site, all of which are associated with the leadership of the great leaders. The teaching staff and students of the university should devote their unstained loyalty and patriotism to developing their university into an unparalleled, excellent base for education and edification, into the highest institute of science and education and keeping it neat and tidy.

The Party committees of Kim Il Sung University and its colleges should improve their functions and role.

These Party committees should keep it as their lifeline to carry out the instructions of the great leaders and defend and exalt the brilliance of their leadership exploits. As everything at the university is associated with their leadership exploits, all the teaching staff and students should be encouraged to have a deep understanding of these exploits at every moment of their life in the campus and seek the worth of life in maintaining and exalting the brilliance of the exploits.

They should bolster up policy-oriented guidance, or political guidance, so that all affairs including educational administration aspire to implementing the great leaders' instructions and the Party's line and policies of education. In particular, they should direct a great effort to developing the university into a most prestigious one with confidence and on a long-term basis true to the intention of the Party.

Holding fast to the theory of our Party on prioritizing ideology, they should launch among the teaching staff and students a dynamic and substantial campaign for the five-point education with the stress on the education in the greatness of the leaders. In this way, they can train all of them into people with indomitable ideological and spiritual qualities, ardent patriots, vanguard fighters for their class and persons with a noble sense of morality.

They should build up the ranks of teachers and researchers and organize and guide their Party life scrupulously to suit the features characteristic of intellectuals, so as to give full play to the spiritual strength of all the teachers, researchers and leading officials of the university.

Work with students constitutes an important undertaking which the Party committees of the university should prioritize and to which they should pay special concern. They should intensify their guidance of students in their organizational and ideological activities so as to encourage them to study hard and help them acquire the revolutionary spirit and the sense of organization and discipline. They should properly lead the youth league organizations to carry on the work with students in a creative and proactive way with the main stress on applying the study-first principle in a thoroughgoing way. They should ensure that the principle of prioritizing merit is observed in recruiting students, so that those who are qualified and promising are enrolled in the university.

All officials should oppose abuses of power, bureaucratism and corruption and maintain it as revolutionary ethics inherent in them and revolutionary Party climate to make selfless, devoted efforts for the teaching staff and students. They should also intensify ideological education and ideological struggle to strictly prevent all manner of non-socialist practices and practices that tarnish the reputation of the socialist education system from being revealed among the teaching staff and students.

It is important to enhance the role of the university council and the university Party guidance committee.

They should deal with important issues arising in improving education and scientific research at the university and its colleges and developing the university into one of the most prestigious universities in the world. They should organize the work of developing the university into a most prestigious university under a long-term plan and with methodology so that its colleges, faculties and departments will make competitive efforts to surpass the major indexes of the most prestigious universities in the world.

The university council should be formed not only with officials of the university and its colleges but also with leading officials of the Party, the state and important units so as to enhance the authority of the council and heighten the national and social interest in the university work.

Our Party and people expect a great deal from Kim Il Sung University.

When the university dynamically advances to beat the world full of confidence and vitality, the day of final victory in the Juche revolution will come earlier.

I firmly believe that, true to the intention of the Party Central Committee, all the teachers, researchers, officials and other staff members and students of Kim Il Sung University will fully discharge the noble mission and duty they have assumed for the times and the revolution by adding eternal brilliance to it as the university of the great leaders and proudly raising it to the front rank of the most prestigious universities in the world.