The letter said:

In this stirring period, when the service personnel and people worked a miracle of turning a misfortune into blessing on the front of rehabilitating the disaster-stricken northern areas in North Hamgyong Province true to the militant call of the Party and are flying the flag of the victorious 200-day campaign in many places of building a powerful socialist country, the Eighth Congress of the Union of Agricultural Workers of Korea is being held.

This congress will constitute an important occasion in honouring the imperishable exploits performed by the great leaders for the development of the UAWK and stepping up the building of a powerful socialist country by improving the role of its organizations under the Party's leadership.

I warmly congratulate the congress and extend militant greetings to those attending it and all other officials of the UAWK and agricultural workers.

The UAWK is a mass-based political organization of our socialist agricultural workers which was founded and has developed under the wise guidance of the great leaders, and a reliable transmission belt and peripheral organization of the Party.

The great Comrade Kim Il Sung, based on the unique idea and tradition of building a Juche-oriented peasants organization he created in the days of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle, founded a patriotic and revolutionary peasants union after the liberation of the country. He ensured that changes were brought about in resolving the problems of peasants and agriculture by implementing the historic agrarian reform and agricultural cooperativization and carrying on the socialist rural theses; and in step with the intensification of the revolution and construction, he saw to it that the peasants union was developed into the Union of Agricultural Workers of Korea.

The great Comrade Kim Jong Il provided energetic guidance to defend and honour Comrade Kim Il Sung's idea of and exploits in socialist rural construction and make UAWK organizations creditably perform their duties as organizations for ideological education. He ensured that the union held fast to carrying out the socialist rural theses as its central task and further improved the role of its organizations in the gigantic practical struggle for increasing agricultural production, realigning crop fields and building gravitational waterways.

The UAWK and agricultural workers, in support of the leadership of the Party and the leaders in every decade of the revolution, strived to consolidate the class position in the countryside and fulfil their responsibility and basic duty as masters of the agricultural front.

Peasants, who after the liberation of the country became the masters of their lands and their country under the benevolence of Comrade Kim Il Sung, launched the campaigns for increasing agricultural production and donating cereals out of patriotism, and thus faithfully supported the Party's line of nation building. In the grim days of the Fatherland Liberation War they fought self-sacrificingly even during indiscriminate bombing by enemy aircraft, so as to send the front larger amounts of food grains. In the difficult postwar days, following Comrade Kim Il Sung with firm trust in him, they carried out the Party's policy on agricultural cooperativization, and thus transformed the rural economy on the socialist lines in a short period and developed it remarkably; in this way, they confirmed through practice the advantages of the collective economy.

In the days of the Arduous March and forced march, the agricultural workers made tireless efforts to defend the socialist rural economic system and increase agricultural production without hesitating or vacillating in the face of the worst adversity and trials. UAWK organizations and agricultural workers raised a strong wind of collective competition in this year's 70-day campaign and 200-day campaign, and thus brought about a surge in production and achieved excellent results in crop and fruit production.

I extend warm thanks to the members of the UAWK and all other agricultural workers, who have worked with devotion, dedicating their unstained blood and sweats to the fields of the country out of loyalty and patriotism, to carry out the great leaders' idea on socialist rural construction and the Party's policy on agriculture.

Today the UAWK and agricultural workers are faced with the heavy and yet honourable task for making a contribution to hastening the final victory of the Juche-oriented socialist cause by carrying out the socialist rural theses true to the programme of modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism advanced at the Seventh Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea.

Agricultural workers, together with the working class, constitute the main force in building a powerful socialist country, and the agricultural front is now a major thrust area in building the country into a socialist economic giant. Only when agricultural workers are trained to be genuine masters of the socialist countryside through an improved role of the UAWK and the agricultural front achieves a great victory as intended by the Party, can our revolutionary position be consolidated rock-solid and the cause of building a powerful socialist country accomplished with success.

If the UAWK is to fulfil the noble mission and duties it has assumed for the times and the revolution, it should model itself on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.

Modelling itself on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism?this is the general objective and general fighting task of the UAWK. It should develop itself into an eternal organization of the great leaders and of the Party by preparing all its members as true Kimilsungists-Kimjongilists and conducting its building and activities as Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il did.

The UAWK should add further brilliance to the leadership exploits of the great leaders and faithfully support the Party's leadership.

It should hold up the great leaders as the Sun of Juche for all ages and honour their idea of and imperishable exploits in socialist rural construction down through the generations. It should regard their instructions as its guidelines and apply them in its building and activities in a thoroughgoing way.

Establishing a thoroughgoing system of the Party's unified leadership is the decisive guarantee for modelling the whole UAWK on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism. Only when such system is established in the UAWK can its organizations be developed into powerful and militant ones that share ideology with the Party Central Committee, breathe the same breath as it and keep pace with it and fully perform their revolutionary tasks.

They should establish revolutionary discipline and order by which they conduct all their work in line with the requirements of the Party's ideas and policies, report problems to the Party in time and deal with them according to its conclusion. They should create a revolutionary atmosphere of accepting the Party's ideas and lines as an absolute truth and death-defyingly implementing its policies in any difficult conditions and circumstances.

The UAWK should mobilize its organizations and agricultural workers to the effort for carrying out socialist rural theses.

The theses published by Comrade Kim Il Sung clearly explains the fundamental principles, tasks and ways for solving the socialist rural question, including the problem of carrying out the three revolutions?ideological, technological and cultural?in the countryside. It is our Party's programme for socialist rural construction to finally solve the rural question and the militant banner the UAWK should hold up consistently.

The UAWK should direct primary efforts to carrying out the ideological revolution in the countryside.

The ideological revolution in the countryside in the new era of the Juche revolution is a higher stage of ideological education, the work of transforming man, aimed at training all the agricultural workers into genuine Kimilsungists-Kimjongilists and Party's faithful agricultural workers in line with the requirements of modelling the whole society on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.

UAWK organizations should take the ideological education to train their members to be Kimilsungists-Kimjongilists as their main duty, and orient to it the contents and methods of ideological education.

They should intensify the five-point education, with the focus put on education in the greatness of the leaders, so as to train all their members into genuine rural revolutionaries and patriotic farmers possessed of boundless loyalty to the Party and the leaders, Kim Jong Il's patriotism, firm revolutionary faith, high class consciousness and ennobling moral traits.

They should conduct effective education to arm their members with the Party's agricultural policy. They should make sure that their members have a correct understanding of the Party's agricultural policies and its other policies set out in every period, as well as the Juche farming method. They should encourage their members to equip themselves with the revolutionary soldier spirit, the spirit of the Paektusan hero youth and the spirit of self-reliance and self-development and apply them in their practical work, thus creating new heroic miracles in the Mallima era.

They should strengthen the education in collectivism to make their members value the interests of society and the community more than their individual interests, take a sincere part in the collective life and communal labour and find the worth of genuine life in their society and community. They should encourage their members to learn from the ennobling self-sacrificing spirit of the farmer heroes in the Songun era who dedicated their lives without hesitation for the sake of their comrades and collectives, so that revolutionary comradeship and spirit of collective life of helping and caring for one another can pervade in their organizations.

They should steadily intensify ideological education and struggle among the agricultural workers to thwart the imperialists' moves for ideological and cultural infiltration so as to allow no room for the capitalist ideology and culture and alien lifestyle to infiltrate and to ensure that various kinds of outdated ideological remnants and non-socialist practices are not revealed among them.

They should conduct ideological education as suited to the preparedness of the agricultural workers and the specific situations in the rural areas. As agricultural work becomes different according to season, political and ideological education should be undertaken in different ways, in a brief and flexible way on the fields in the busy season and in an intensive and profound way in the slack season. They should conduct education in a planned and regular manner by means of the bases for ideological education.

The educational system established within the UAWK should be run efficiently, and the sense of responsibility and role of the lecturers for study sessions, public lecturers and expositors enhanced. The newspaper Nongop Kulloja and other publications should be responsive to Party policy and demands of the realities, and edited in keeping with the characteristics of the agricultural workers, so that they can become intimate companions of UAWK members and other agricultural workers. It is also necessary to prepare substantive materials for political work for every period, send them down to lower echelons in time and use them effectively.

UAWK organizations should push forward the technological and cultural revolutions in the countryside in line with the demands for building a sci-tech power and civilized nation.

Giving priority to the ideological revolution while pushing forward the technological and cultural revolutions is the basic way of accomplishing the Juche-oriented socialist cause by successfully building a powerful socialist country and ultimately solving the rural question.

Only when the technological revolution is carried on dynamically in the countryside, can the essential differences between agricultural labour and industrial labour be eliminated, the agricultural workers be freed from backbreaking and hard labour and a rapid increase be brought about in agricultural production.

UAWK organizations should regard the technological revolution as a vital demand for agricultural development and socialist rural construction and make a positive contribution to achieving a high level of irrigation, electrification, mechanization and application of agrochemicals in the rural economy. They should pay particular attention to the comprehensive mechanization of the rural economy, in order to radically raise the level of mechanization in farm work. They should vigorously conduct the movements for invention, technical conception and technical innovation for agricultural development, and make sure that the agricultural workers possess one or more techniques and know how to operate modern farm machines skilfully. The agricultural workers should be well-versed in agricultural science and technology and advanced farming methods and do all their farm work in a scientific and technological way. By doing so, they can become undertakers and masters of scientific farming.

Stepping up the cultural revolution in the countryside is one of the important tasks for building a civilized socialist nation.

The agricultural workers should be involved in the study-while-you-work system in line with the requirements of making all the people be well-versed in science and technology, and prepared as intelligent workers of a new era possessed of agricultural knowledge and science and technology. By effectively running the halls of culture in ri and agricultural sci-tech learning spaces in farms and workteams, the agricultural workers can acquire scientific and technological knowledge concerned with farming and other fields as befit masters of the cultured socialist countryside.

UAWK organizations should make sports mass-based and part of daily life in the countryside, so as to increase the ranks of model sports units and make the enthusiasm for sports prevail in the rural villages across the country. They should conduct various forms of mass-based cultural and artistic activities to make the songs of struggle and life ring out in the farm fields and encourage the agricultural workers to work and live in an optimistic way, filled with revolutionary enthusiasm.

UAWK members in the rural education and public health sectors should improve the level of education of rising generations and medical service by thoroughly implementing our Party's policies on education and public health.

UAWK organizations should lead their members and other agricultural workers to spruce up their villages and houses in a hygienic and cultured way, plant fruit trees at every house and cover the mountains around their villages with thick forests out of warm affection for their country and native lands, so as to turn the rural villages into civilized and beautiful socialist paradises.

They should enlist their members and other agricultural workers in the struggle to carry out the Party's agricultural policy, and thus effect a radical turn in agricultural production.

The agricultural front is an outpost in the battle for defending socialism. We must farm well and thus solve the problem of food for the people; only then can we defend our style of socialism and build a powerful socialist country successfully.

UAWK organizations and agricultural workers should attain by all means the agricultural production target set by the Seventh Party Congress and make our country rich in grains, vegetables, meat and fruits by bringing about a great innovation and great leap forward in agricultural production.

The masters of farming are farmers, and the key to increased agricultural production lies in inspiring the agricultural workers with enthusiasm for production. They should do all farm work in a scientific way and assiduously and meticulously as required by the Juche farming method from the standpoint of being masters responsible for filling the country's granaries, and execute the agricultural production plan without fail. The field responsibility system should be introduced as intended by the Party, so as to enhance the sense of responsibility and enthusiasm for production on the part of the agricultural workers.

UAWK organizations should carry out the Party's policy on scientific farming.

The present is an era of scientific farming, and agricultural production is guaranteed not by natural and climatic conditions but by agricultural science and technology.

To bring about a turn in agricultural production, it is imperative to breed many high-yielding, superior grain species and propagate them on a large scale by holding fast to the Party's policy on the seed revolution as the lifeline. Along with it, efforts should be concentrated on fully solving the scientific and technological problems arising in agricultural development such as studying and developing advanced farming techniques and methods and inventing and introducing high-performance farm machines and implements.

The agricultural sector should breed seeds and distribute crops correctly as suited to the features of relevant localities, manure and cultivate them on a scientific and technological basis, actively introduce advanced farming methods and establish the food production cycle, thus putting farming on a higher scientific and intensive footing. The sector should ensure that the validity and vitality of the Party's policy on scientific farming are manifested in practice frequently and vividly by increasing the number of farms, workteams and sub-workteams that conduct farming on the strength of science and technology and enjoy the benefits of science and technology.

UAWK members and other agricultural workers should take loving care of their lands and farm machines and implements.

Land is the basic means of production in agriculture, and farm machines and implements are weapons and combat equipment for agricultural workers. UAWK organizations should ensure that their members and other agricultural workers tend the farm fields as meticulously as they would do the gardens of their own houses, and treasure and take good care of farm machines and implements. UAWK members and other agricultural workers should be encouraged to produce a larger quantity of quality manure to apply it to paddy and non-paddy fields, and make the acidified fields fertile by spreading slaked lime on them, carpeting them with fresh soil and planting legumes on them. They should also be led to keep and maintain tractors and other farm machines and facilities for agricultural production properly, repair them in time and use them effectively.

UAWK organizations should launch mass movements vigorously among the agricultural workers.

Mass movements are powerful means for rousing the revolutionary enthusiasm and creativity of the agricultural workers and for boosting agricultural production through collective innovation. Vigorously launching mass movements in the rural areas is an important task assigned to UAWK organizations.

These organizations should widely organize and conduct mass movements including the socialist emulation drive, movement to create model lathes following the example of Lathe No. 26, mass technical innovation drive and various do-good-deeds movements so as to inspire the agricultural workers continuously with enthusiasm for production.

The farming sector should increase the ranks of model cooperative farms continuously by encouraging provinces, counties that produce large crops and cooperative farms to compete fiercely to increase unit-area yields.

The stockbreeding sector should launch a competition aimed at breeding more species of domestic animals, strong in viability and quick in gaining weight, propagating them widely and overfulfilling the meat, egg and milk production plans. The fruit-growing sector should conduct the competition with the focus put on producing delicious fruits in larger amounts by putting fruit farming on a higher scientific and intensive footing. Competitions should also be organized to increase the production of vegetables, potato and cash crops.

UAWK organizations should control and guide the mass movements efficiently. A fair judgment should be made on the results of the socialist competitions and their review and evaluation should be conducted in a meaningful way to make the mass movements undertakings of the agricultural workers themselves; then, the agricultural workers can exchange and learn good experiences they have gained while conducting these movements.

The UAWK should render an active contribution to the struggle for realizing the independent reunification of the country and global independence.

It should strive to implement the great leaders' instructions and the Party's line on national reunification. It should strengthen solidarity and collaboration with the progressive peasants unions in south Korea and render support to the peasants and other people in south Korea in their struggle for anti-US independence, democratization of society and national reunification.

It should defend the high international prestige of the great leaders and their achievements in external activities, steadfastly apply the ideals and principles of our Party's foreign policy and strengthen friendly exchanges, cooperation and solidarity with peasants organizations in various countries of the world, so as to contribute to creating an international environment favourable for our revolution.

It is imperative to build up UAWK organizations and improve their militant functions and role.

A revolutionary work system and discipline should be established in the UAWK.

UAWK organizations should establish throughout the union a well-regulated work system of moving as one under the unified leadership of the Party Central Committee and accepting the Party's lines and policies unconditionally and carrying them out and of planning their work by giving top priority to the implementation of their basic duty and controlling and guiding the efforts to this end in a responsible way. They should establish rigid discipline of working in line with the demands of the Rules of the union and ensure that their officials and members do not commit acts that violate the organizational discipline.

The Central Committee of the UAWK should plan the overall work of the union as intended by the Party and provide unified guidance over it, so as to make its organizations at all levels active, living bodies. It should conduct effective organizational and political work for implementing the great leaders' instructions and the Party's policies related with the union work, and provide scrupulous control and guidance to its organizations.

Provincial, city and county committees of the UAWK should hold as their main task the internal work aimed at strengthening the lower-echelon organizations organizationally and ideologically. They should establish a well-knit system of controlling and guiding these organizations, and go down to them and help them properly.

Primary organizations of the UAWK should be strengthened. To strengthen them, grass-roots organizations of the UAWK, is the basis and starting point for strengthening the union as a whole. UAWK organizations at all levels should render assistance to its primary organizations effectively as intended by the Party, so as to turn them all into organizations with high fighting efficiency. They should push forward the movement of creating model primary organizations and increase their ranks.

The whole of the UAWK should put the main emphasis on the work with its members, the essence of its work.

They should properly conduct the work with its core, active members and lead them to play the vanguard role in carrying out their revolutionary tasks and become models for the masses in all aspects. They should direct strenuous efforts to the work with the laggards. There is no person in the world who was born with bad qualities, nor is there a person who cannot be educated and transformed in our socialist society. They should look after more warmly those who trouble themselves inwardly with their prospects and living conditions and foster and promote their positive deeds, however negligible they may be, so as to transform them into progressive and active elements.

Organizational life should be intensified among UAWK members. UAWK organizations are the bases of political life for their members; through the organizational life, UAWK members are linked inseparably with the Party with an intention and feeling of kinship and are trained to be revolutionaries. Intensifying the organizational life among the agricultural workers is all the more important as they work scattered in many cases. UAWK organizations should improve the level of the organizational and ideological life of their members by providing guidance over their organizational life substantially with a proper methodology. They should ensure that all their members treasure their organizations, work and live by relying on their organizations and carry out the decisions and assignments of their organizations without fail. They should ensure that they take part in every gathering such as a meeting and study session.

UAWK officials should raise their own political and practical qualifications and improve their methods and style of work.

Whether the union work is conducted properly in line with the Party's intention or not depends on the political and practical qualifications, abilities and role of its officials. The officials should keep Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism as their steadfast faith, be well-versed in the agricultural policy of the Party, possess economic, scientific and technological knowledge and common knowledge of different sectors and have high cultural attainments. UAWK organizations should scrupulously organize the work of improving the qualifications of their officials by various methods like workshops, demonstration lectures and meetings for swapping experiences.

UAWK officials should learn from Comrade Kim Jong Il's methods of work and apply them in their work thoroughly. They should always go deep among the masses and, while working together with the union members on the field, explain to them the Party's policies and the scientific and technological problems and common knowledge for raising good crops.

They should be modest in front of the masses, mix themselves with them unceremoniously and make efforts to solve the problems arising among the union members. They should smell of earth and be exemplary in their speaking and behaviour for the union members.

They should eliminate formalism, expediency, clinging to the outdated way and laxity in their work, and establish a creative and enterprising style of work.

Party organizations should effectively guide and help UAWK organizations in their work.

Party organizations at all levels should direct their efforts to building up the ranks of UAWK officials. They should build these ranks with those who are loyal to the Party, have high political and practical qualifications, are tempered in the practical struggle and enjoy trust among the masses. They should pay close attention to educating these officials so that they can become doer-type officials who support the Party with high results in their work. They should grasp from among UAWK members who work at the production sites promising men and women as reserve officials for the UAWK, and train them systematically.

Party organizations should promptly inform UAWK organizations of the Party's policies and directives advanced in each period, control and guide their implementation; in particular, they should throw their weight behind them so that they can conduct various mass movements vigorously.

They should enhance the independence of UAWK organizations so that they can conduct their work boldly, creatively and on their own initiative with an attitude befitting masters. They should be bold in assigning tasks to the UAWK officials, help them carry out the tasks by relying on their own efforts and provide them with adequate conditions for their work. They should ensure that such practices as assigning burdensome social tasks to UAWK organizations and seconding their officials at random to other projects are not revealed.

It is the firm will of our Party to carry out its plan of socialist rural construction and successfully accomplish the Juche-oriented socialist cause by strengthening the UAWK and enhancing its militant functions and role, true to the noble intentions of the great leaders.

I am firmly convinced that UAWK organizations and all its members will perform with credit their honourable mission and duties in developing the UAWK and implementing the Juche-oriented socialist cause.