The full text of the letter is as follows:

Amid the daily soaring revolutionary enthusiasm and fighting spirit of the working people across the country, who have turned out in support of the great fighting programmes put forward by the Eighth Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Eighth Congress of the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea has been convened.

This congress is very meaningful in fully demonstrating the revolutionary character and united strength of our working class who are rallied firmly behind the WPK and ensuring that the trade union members make redoubled efforts in promoting the all-people advance for a fresh upsurge in socialist construction.

Convinced that this congress will constitute a turning point in bringing about innovation and development in the union's work in response to the unanimous desire of the working class and other trade union members to advance faster towards a great, new victory of socialism and a new life, I, in the name of the Party Central Committee, extend warm congratulations to the congress.

I also extend militant greetings to the working class and other trade union members who are performing feats of labour on all fronts of socialist construction in hearty response to the fighting line and policies of the new stage advanced by the Party.

There are no trustworthy and proud working class elsewhere in the world other than ours who loyally support the Party's cause by invariably carrying forward their glorious fighting traditions and revolutionary spirit though the era has changed and one generation is being replaced by another continuously with the passage of time.

During the arduous struggle over the last five years, all the working class and other trade union members, cherishing in their hearts the trust of the Party Central Committee that gave them the valuable title of the heroic working class of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, rendered an outstanding contribution to opening up the our-state-first era by displaying their unexcelled patriotic devotion.

Even in the face of the worst-ever difficulties in recent years, the country's national strength and prestige have been enhanced rapidly and our internal force for the development and a leap forward of our revolution has been strengthened remarkably. This is ascribable to the ennobling loyalty and heroic struggle of the workers and all other working people across the country, who have absolutely supported the Party's ideas, lines, plans and determinations and implemented them death-defyingly.

Gaining strength and courage from the image of the working class who have steadfastly and firmly trusted our Party only always with one mind and followed it faithfully, it could decide without hesitation on the major matters of self-respect in national defence and unfold in a big way the projects it had aspired to do for national prosperity and people's happiness.

Our working class and other trade union members, cherishing the faith that the Party's lines and policies are a truth and science and lead to victory, have set up proud creations and achieved successes by making painstaking efforts on the arduous road of pushing forward the two fronts simultaneously, at the sites of ushering in a golden age of construction and at the outposts of making our economy self-supporting and Juche-oriented. These are invaluable assets which enable us today to advance towards higher goals and ideals.

After reviewing and analyzing the situation of the economic work over the last five years in a comprehensive way, the Eighth Congress of the WPK set the goals of a new stage aimed at putting the country's economy on a track of normal development by readjusting and reinforcing it.

We must not only create solid foundations for reactivating the overall national economy and improving the people's standard of living during this five-year plan period but make a great leap forward every five years. In this way, in the near future we can definitely guarantee the self-respect and prosperity of our state and build a powerful socialist country, in which our people enjoy a cultured and rich life to their heart's content. This means that our socialist construction have developed from the stage of defending and preserving itself to a new phase of innovation and transformation, a new era that requires an extraordinary speed of growth.

The era of a great turn, the era of a fresh great upsurge, demands that the working class and other trade union members, the masters of creation and construction, mindful of the important mission and duties they have assumed before the times and revolution, rise up and demonstrate their fighting efficiency to the maximum.

All the working class and other trade union members, as their predecessors did in the postwar reconstruction period and the Chollima days, must make intensive and devoted efforts at the sites of production and construction and at the posts of scientific research and civilization creation, racing against time. Only then can we bring about great innovations in socialist construction and turn our people's ideals and dreams into reality by the time set by the Party and on the stage desired by it.

Our working class should carry forward in today's revolutionary advance the spirit and mettle of their predecessors in the postwar reconstruction period and the Chollima days who, filled with extraordinary revolutionary enthusiasm to advance faster towards socialism and communism true to the call of the Party and the leader, rejected passivity and conservatism, and worked legendary miracles in the history of our economic construction on the strength of mass heroism.

The central task facing the trade unions at the present stage is to train the working class and other trade union members into the working people who have undergone revolutionary and communist transformation and who, mindful of the mission and duties they have assumed before the Party, revolution and times, work with devotion in the struggle for achieving a fresh victory of socialism.

The trade unions should orient all types of their work into training the working class and other trade union members of our generation into vanguard fighters possessed of loyalty to the Party, the spirit of boundless devotion to the country and revolution, the spirit of organization, fighting efficiency and united strength, and bring about a radical turn in their work. In this way, they can demonstrate their fighting efficiency in the revolutionary advance of a new era.

The first task facing the trade unions is to firmly prepare the working class and all other trade union members as possessors of the communist faith who fight with a conviction in the bright future of our style of socialism.

Their extraordinary passion and endeavour devoted to the revolution is an outcome of the conviction in the justness and future of their cause. Only when their faith in the victory of socialism and the future is unshakable can they set bold far-reaching ambitions and ideals in any adversity and work full of confidence and optimism.

We are waging an arduous struggle now when everything is lacking, but the rich and worthwhile socialist life which everyone will lead without anything to envy is never something of the distant future.

It is important to give the people a correct understanding of socialism we plan to build.

The powerful country, the socialist society, we are aspiring after is a society in which all the people live a comfortable and harmonious life in good health and without any worries about food, clothing and housing, a people-oriented society in which the communist traits and virtues of all the people sharing pleasure and sorrow while helping and leading one another forward. All the activities of our Party are oriented and subordinated to bringing this happy society into reality at an earlier date.

Trade union organizations should explain to the working class and other trade union members the sincere mind and will of our Party and the advantages of our style of socialism in depth so that they can devote themselves to the accomplishment of the socialist cause for the happiness of their own and of their posterity.

They should accurately convey to all their members the Party's documents which clarify the guidelines for the building of our style of socialism and the gist of its ideas and policies presented at each period. In this way, they can ensure that they are well aware of what the Party intends to do and what they are supposed to do.

In educating their members about our Party's ideas and leadership for the country's prosperity and people's happiness and the validity and vitality of its policies, they should refer to the miraculous victories and sea changes achieved in socialist construction so that the education can be persuasive. By doing so, they should encourage the working class and other trade union members to make redoubled efforts with the conviction in the greatness of our Party and the conviction that we can get stronger and wealthier when we follow its instructions.

In particular, they should inform them in detail of the renewed struggle objectives for socialist construction advanced by the Party's Eighth Congress, the scientific accuracy of their realization and the on-going gigantic undertakings intended for the substantial wellbeing of the people, so as to make all of them visualize the appearance of their country about to be changed beyond recognition and turn out as one in the efforts for implementing the decisions of the Party congress. What is important is to encourage our working class and other trade union members to cherish the Party's trust in and expectations of them deeply in mind and shoulder the heaviest burden in the vanguard of the struggle for a fresh victory in the revolution.

It is essential to ensure that they learn from the firm confidence in and optimism about the victory of socialism, which their predecessors in the days of postwar reconstruction and great Chollima upsurge cherished.

Unlike their preceding generations, the working class and other trade union members of these days have not experienced the fierce war nor the arduous struggle of building the country from scratch.

Our working class of those days built a socialist industrial state from nothing under difficult circumstances as they were convinced that they could surely create a new life because they were led by Comrade Kim Il Sung and that victory and happiness was in store for them when they follow only the road indicated by him.

It is important to clearly inform the working class and other trade union members of the proud history of building our style of socialism which their forerunners pioneered at the cost of their sweat and blood, and thus ensure that the contemporary working class stoutly inherit the faith of the preceding generations, prototypes of loyalty to the Party and the leader, as their ideological lifeline, not as something they learn from textbooks.

It is necessary to encourage them to give play to the communist traits and noble virtues of unhesitatingly sacrificing themselves for the sake of society, the collective and fellow people in today's advance, holding higher the slogan "One for all, all for one!" which was held in the Chollima era, and find the value and worth of genuine life in contributing to the country's prosperity and people's happiness with their creative work.

The second task facing the trade unions is to firmly prepare the working class and other trade union members to be vanguard fighters of self-reliance and standard-bearers of creation who creditably play their role as the country's "eldest sons" and advance unit in implementing the five-year plan set forth by the Party.

The campaign for implementing the new five-year plan is a very crucial and responsible struggle for providing a jumping board for a leap forward in the efforts for the future development of our state and sustained improvement of the people's living standards, and the era of great upsurge is created by the millions of the working people who rise up with a firm confidence in their strength.

Trade union organizations should bring home to the working class and other trade union members the truth that the process of implementing the five-year plan is a sweeping revolution in building up the self-sufficient socialist economy and the future development of the Juche-based industry can be achieved only in our own way and by our own strength.

They should encourage them to resolutely reject proclivity to import and reliance on others and firmly maintain the principle of producing everything needed for economic construction and people's living with our own raw and other materials, through our own efforts and by our own technology. They should ensure that the implementation of the five-year plan is reviewed with the useful and valuable creations of self-reliance that can proudly be called things of our own making.

Trade union organizations on the economic front should see to it that the fighting spirit in the periods of postwar reconstruction and great Chollima upsurge, when the production of major industrial goods increased many times over in a short span of time amid the shortage of everything and thereby skipping several centuries which had taken others to do so, is highly displayed in the current general onward march.

Mindful of their heavy responsibility they have assumed for the coming 100 years for the state, the working class and other trade union members in the sectors of metallurgical and chemical industries, which are buttresses of our economy, should make decisive breakthroughs in putting their industries on the Juche basis just as their preceding generations were the first to hold the banner of the Chollima movement.

It is necessary to proactively inspire the working class and other trade union members in the key industries including power generation, coal and ore mining, machine building, and rail transport to carry out the Party's strategy of readjustment and reinforcement exactly so as to hit the targets of the five-year plan ahead of schedule while laying strong foundations for regularized production.

Trade union organizations in the construction sector should propel the working class and other trade union members to build a larger number of people's ideal streets and villages in which the Juche-oriented aesthetic idea is embodied, based on our-style designs and our own materials. And those in the light-industry sector, one of the two major fronts of revolution, should encourage the masses to regard tapping locally-available raw and other materials resources and recycling as a crucial task and produce essential consumer goods in such a way that they are favoured by the people.

The working class and other trade union members in the munitions industry, by exerting themselves again in the indomitable spirit which they displayed while blazing the trail in developing our style of cutting-edge weapons, should make a proactive contribution to raising our defence industry onto a new, higher stage of development.

A shortcut to the implementation of the new five-year plan should be opened on the strength of science and technology.

Trade union organizations in the sector of science and technology should encourage scientists and technicians to cherish their weighty mission and honour as guides of self-reliance and pioneers in building a prosperous country, and exert themselves to the maximum in the struggle to put the national economy on a Juche-oriented, modern and scientific basis.

Innovation in the economic sector, in the true sense of the word, is possible only when the producer masses become the masters of science and technology. Trade union organizations should ensure that all their members take part in the efforts for presenting inventions, technical innovations and new creative ideas, and are respected as worker inventors and treasures of their factories, who make valuable contributions to modernizing production lines and increasing labour effectiveness.

Trade union organizations should thoroughly implement the Party's policy of making all the people well-versed in science and technology and establish a climate of studying to prepare the working class and other trade union members to be intelligent workers armed with modern science and technology.

They should see to it that all their members study hard regarding the sci-tech dissemination area as a college campus in their working places, so as to raise their level of technological knowledge and become well-informed of the world trend of development.

In heightening the enthusiasm for patriotism and struggle of all the people through the creation of civilization of our style, the trade union organizations on the cultural front including education, public health and art and literature have a very big role to play.

They should encourage their members on this front to make active contributions to raising the revolutionary enthusiasm and fighting spirit of our people with their devoted efforts in the era of our-state-first principle.

The trade union members in the field of education and public health should devote their pure conscience and tireless efforts to developing education and public health, the images of our socialist system.

Those in the field of art and literature should thoroughly implement the Party's idea and policy of art and literature and create a large number of masterpieces that suit the emotional and aesthetic feelings of our people to enrich the cultural treasure house of the era of the Workers' Party.

Trade union organizations should give full play to the might of mass heroism and collectivism on all fronts of socialist construction by organizing and conducting mass movements briskly.

The trade unions should make the working sites seethe with creation of new standards and records and continue to stoke the atmosphere of collective emulation drive to learn from others and overtake them by effectively conducting mass movements including the socialist emulation drive among fields, units, workshops and workteams, the movement to create model lathes following the example of Lathe No. 26 and the mass technical innovation drive.

They should make the atmosphere, in which shifts, workteams and factories share experiences and advance shoulder to shoulder while helping one another, become commonplace and life itself in the process of the socialist emulation drive.

They should turn the entire process of mass movements into that of ideological mobilization and motivation aimed at stimulating enthusiasm and a sense of competition among the masses, by setting their proper goals and stages, fairly and correctly grasping and reviewing their attainment and giving due appraisal.

They should implant in the hearts of the working class and other trade union members the feeling of attachment to labour and to their jobs and workplaces.

Love of labour is immediately love of one's country and a conviction in the future.

Trade union organizations should educate the working class and other trade union members to bear deep in mind that our dream of building a powerful country can come true and they can carve out a brighter future only when they devote their sincere sweats and efforts regarding labour as the most honourable.

In our society, where all the people are its masters, there cannot be any discrimination among jobs, and each and every one of them is a revolutionary and patriotic post which is indispensable and must be defended for the country and for themselves.

Trade union organizations, through steady education aimed at making the working class and other trade union members feel attached to their factories and jobs, should lead them to regard their factories and workplaces as an inseparable part of their life and work hard to achieve happiness for themselves and their offspring and contribute to the development of the country.

They should give wide publicity to the technicians and skilled workers who have kept working conscientiously at their jobs for several decades, commend them appropriately, and make sure that the phenomena of discriminating jobs are not revealed among their members.

The third task facing the trade unions is to prepare the working class and other trade union members as socialist civilization incarnate, who are possessed of ennobling moral traits and high cultural attainment.

Trade union organizations should encourage the working class to become role models in society in terms of the moral and cultural aspects as well as the revolutionary character and militant temperament in conformity with the Party's intention to build a communist society by dint of morality and culture of the working class.

They should ensure that the working class and other trade union members embody the communist view on morality and establish a sound, revolutionary moral climate of the era of struggle, the era of continuous advance and leap forward. They should always show their concern on leading their members to observe the rules of etiquette, public decency and social order voluntarily and demonstrate the traits befitting the working class in their attire and other aspects of outward appearances. They should also see to it that the working class and other trade union members give full play to the communist traits of helping and leading one another forward by devoting their all unsparingly for the sake of society, the collective and comrades, thus promoting harmony of the collective and achieving a genuine comradely unity.

In particular, a great effort must be directed to encouraging them to emulate the ennobling spiritual world of the people in the era of Chollima. Putting before themselves the question, "The era of Chollima and me" all of them should be encouraged to live and work to feel no remorse, always thinking about what they have done for the good of their comrades and collectives, whether they have ever caused inconveniences to them for their own sake and what they will do for their comrades and for the strengthening of the might of their collectives.

Trade union organizations should briskly organize education through artistic and literary works and various political and cultural activities among their members, so as to heighten their political and cultural standards and creative enthusiasm. They should ensure that all their members not only do their work in an effective and responsible way but also read many books, be prepared to make motivational speeches full of vigour of the working class in front of others and take active part in the artistic and sports activities. Various cultural and sports activities including mass cultural and artistic activities and mass sports games should be organized on a regular basis, so that all the theatres of great upsurge, which are seething with socialist construction, overflow with optimism and emotion, militant spirit and delight of the working class and the whole society is vibrant with a bright and cheerful atmosphere all the time.

Trade union organizations should ensure that the working class and other trade union members efficiently conduct the work of establishing a cultured way of production and life and taking loving care of their equipment. By doing so, they can make it their habit to lay out the inside and outside of their workplaces as they would do their own houses, keep them in a neat and cultured way and maintain their machines as dearly as they would do their own skin.

They should make sure that the working class and other trade union members intensify the struggle against anti-socialist and non-socialist practices which threaten our ideology, system, morality and culture.

It is only when the working class, who have a strong sense of principle and hate injustice more than anybody else, stand in the vanguard of the struggle against all kinds of negative practices that the original features of our style of socialism can be consolidated and the work of transforming the whole society on revolutionary and communist lines further accelerated.

They should bring home to them the truth that the struggle against the anti-socialist and non-socialist practices is a do-or-die battle to defend the working-class purity and lifeline of our style of socialism. This is in order to rouse all of them to the intensive clean-up operation against such practices. It is important to well inform them of the forms of expression, danger and harmful effects of these practices and incessantly awaken them to leave no room in their minds for even a smallest non-working class element to infiltrate, and lead them not to ignore such practices which are manifested in their surroundings but wage an uncompromising struggle against them and resolutely smash them.

Trade union organizations should constantly pay close attention to the work and life of their members and take strict measures for their education in advance to prevent the slightest alien tendency. They should not regard the practices of gnawing away at the interests of their units and collectives on the plea of the difficult living conditions as something tolerable, but strongly combat such practices to overcome them.

The trade union organizations in units of exceptional character in their work should further intensify education and control of their members so that they can observe the socialist principles more willingly. In this way they can never allow the unsound practices to sprout even in the slightest degree among their members.

The working class and other trade union members should perform with credit the vanguard role in the new grand revolutionary march by heightening their revolutionary spirit, sense of organization, might of unity and fighting efficiency. To this end, a radical turn is needed in the work of the trade unions.

The trade unions have failed so far to display their original features as mass political organizations of the working class and merely maintained the status quo without vigour. It is because they have failed to properly conduct the work of strengthening themselves.

They should carry out in a responsible manner their tasks as organizations in charge of ideological education as required by the times and the developing reality so as to fully discharge their duties in the struggle for ushering in a new era of fresh upsurge in socialist construction.

They should launch a vigorous ideological campaign, regarding it as their priority task to imbue themselves with the Party's revolutionary ideology.

Trade union organizations should regularly and effectively operate the system of education, including study sessions and public lectures, and step up the five-point education in an offensive way in various forms and by various methods with the main emphasis put on education in the revolutionary traditions and loyalty. They should apply various methods and means of education including meetings with labour innovators of the preceding generations, lectures by the itinerary trade union lecturers, trade union publications, radio programmes and multimedia presentations, and continue to uncover and actively employ other highly effective forms and methods of education. They should spruce up the rooms of culture and information as befits bases of ideological education, furnish them with necessary educational aids and run them in a well-planned way.

There are neither designated areas nor hard and fast rules or stereotypes for ideological education. It should be done on the way to and back from work, before getting to work and during the break and in such a diverse and effective way that it can touch the heartstrings of the masses. Then, the whole course of labour and life will become a process of bringing the Party's policies home to them. They should correct such deviations as resting content with conveying the educational materials from the higher organizations to lower ones or filling up numbers in ideological education work, and direct their efforts to informing their members of what they want to know by associating it with the present reality, thus turning the whole process of education into genuine political work that moves their feelings and hearts.

They should make exacting demands on their members to value their organizations and strictly observe the organizational discipline.

By imbuing their members with a correct viewpoint on the organization, they should ensure that all of them respect the dignity of their organizations and regard it as not only an obligation but also a matter of conscience and pride to work and live by relying on them. They should discover, develop and give prominence to the buds of positive examples noticeable among their members, and should guide and care for them lest they take a wrong step in their life. Then, they will be very grateful to their organizations and keenly impressed by their value.

It is important to regularize and standardize the organizational life.

Trade union organizations should regard it as an iron rule to conduct the organizational life review sessions, regular general membership meetings, giving assignments and reviewing their implementation on the set dates without fail. They should ensure that the political and ideological level of the organizational life review sessions is improved, criticism and self-criticism are intensified and the course of fulfilling their assignments contributes to elevating the members' political consciousness and carrying out their revolutionary tasks.

Mindful of the fact that even a step of concession or compromise in arranging and guiding the organizational life of their members can be the starting point of their politico-ideological degeneration, trade union organizations should steadily raise the level of their revolutionary training through the organizational life. In particular, they should intensify organizational control over the members who live or work separated from their organizations, including those who have been seconded to construction, those who work away from their units and those whose work involves many trips, so that they are not left outside the organizational life. They should solve without delay the problem of those who are divorced from them or have not registered with them, and make sure that not a single member lives at their will outside the system of the organizational life.

The main link in the whole chain of efforts for improving and strengthening trade union work is to enhance the role of its primary organizations.

As a firm-rooted tree can stand unperturbed in the face of any storm, so trade union work can become effective only when its primary organizations, which can be likened to the roots of the trade unions, play their role properly.

For the primary organizations and the trade unions as a whole to be strengthened, all the primary officials should be prepared as versatile persons possessed of practical abilities, and the hard core of the unions.

The primary officials of the trade unions should be well-qualified so that they can explain to their members the essence of the Party's ideas, lines and policies efficiently, be well-versed in their jobs and well-acquainted with the practical work of their organizations. By learning from the Party's method of working among the masses and approaching their members with sincerity, they should become political workers whom they follow and respect from the bottom of their hearts.

It is necessary to arrange in a planned way and execute in an effective way various types of work including a workshop and presentation of experiences aimed at improving their qualifications. Officials in higher echelons should go down among the primary organizations regularly, guiding meetings, personally executing the operation of study rooms for chairpersons of primary units, and teaching them the methods of preparing reports to meeting and action plans. By doing so, they can improve their qualifications.

The trade unions should effectively organize and wage a campaign for winning the title of Model Organization of Loyalty, so as to steadily increase the ranks of Model Primary Trade Union Committees of Loyalty and Model Primary Trade Union Units of Loyalty.

It should regard it as an important task to put forward the units which are associated with the leadership achievements of the Party as models in the work of winning the title of the Model Organization of Loyalty and to generalize their experiences, and conduct this work in the direction of fanning the enthusiasm for winning the title.

It should form its primary organizations on a rational basis, and take measures for establishing a well-knit system of controlling and guiding these organizations.

It should examine the organizational structures of its primary organizations in an overall way and correct mistakes in time so that the members do not feel difficulties in their organizational life and production activities.

It should also put its efforts to establishing a double organizational life guidance system so as to ensure that the work of conveying the Party's policies is not delayed and the directives and assignments of its higher organizations reach their subordinate organizations in time.

It should establish throughout itself a revolutionary style of work that brims over with the mettle of the working class.

All its officials should always engage in their work actively with the working-class courage, fortitude, determination and fighting spirit, get rid of defeatism and self-preservation, and push ahead with their work in a creative and enterprising manner.

They should apply in their work the sincere style of work of always studying how to innovate the organization's work in keeping with the requirements of the reality that demands development and innovation and the working-class temperament and mettle of carrying any undertaking through to completion once they are determined to do it, so that the whole union seethes with the work of carrying out the ideas and lines of the Party and pulsate with the spirit of innovation and advance.

With fervent comradeship and human feeling, they should take care of the trade union members in their work and life as their own elder brothers or sisters would do.

They should be efficient in the work of sincerely taking care of and helping those who work with devotion for the sake of the country and fellow people, including those who always work hard at production sites keeping back the difficulties in their life and mental agony and without caring for their own household affairs and those who have been seconded to the major construction sites for a long time.

They should ensure that the working class and other trade union members achieve unity in thinking and behaviour for their collectives and comrades and are close-knit by bonds of human feeling so that they can create miraculous feats through a collective strength in implementing the Party's policies.

Party organizations at all levels should give importance to and actively support the trade union work.

Only when they give Party-oriented assistance to the trade union work and lead it properly, can trade union organizations play their roles to the full and advance in a vigorous manner.

Mindful of the fact that their indifference to the trade union work will result in weakening the organizing abilities and fighting efficiency of trade union organizations, they should give a correct policy-oriented guidance to the work.

It is important for them to build up the ranks of trade union officials.

They should build up the ranks with people who are loyal to the Party and staunch in their revolutionary faith, enterprising people who have been trained in field labour, and people who are prepared politically and practically and are popular among the masses.

They should provide trade union officials with proper conditions so that they can work according to their terms of reference, and put them forward and throw their weight behind them so that they can do their work with a sense of honour. They should ensure that such deviations as seconding trade union officials to other work or assigning public work to trade union organizations and thus hampering trade union work are eliminated.

They should do away with the tendency of ignoring trade union organizations and shouldering their work over themselves, place trust in the organizations and members, and give important tasks and wide publicity to them, so as to enhance their sense of independence and creativity.

In today's advance for opening up an era of fresh upsurge in socialist construction, our Party places great trust in the revolutionary character and combat efficiency of the working class and other trade union members who are loyal to the Party's leadership and have inherited the traditions of heroic struggle.

I am convinced that the whole working class and all other trade union members will advance more courageously, bringing about great transformations on all fronts of socialist construction through a vigorous struggle for creation and construction.