The founding of the KPA on February 8, Juche 37 (1948) made it possible for the Korean people to create a new happy life on the land defended by their regular army for the first time in history.

President Kim Il Sung, who led the great anti-Japanese war to victory, set the army building as one of the three tasks for building a new country, along with the founding of the party and the state after Korea's liberation and wisely led the struggle to found a powerful national army capable of defending the country and nation and protecting the gains of the revolution.

It was not easy to build modern regular armed forces under the situation where everything was destroyed and there was no experience and foundation due to the Japanese imperialists' colonial rule. There were also obstructionists who were talking about the "prematurity" of building a regular army.

But the President settled all problems in the interests of the Korean revolution with a firm will that we should build a regular revolutionary army by our own efforts. He saw to it that such bases for training military and political cadres including the Pyongyang Institute, the Central Security Officers Training School and the Security Officers Training Centre were built. And he dispatched revolutionary fighters trained in the flames of the anti-Japanese war to play a leading role in building the parent units of all services and arms.

Under his energetic guidance, the army, navy and air forces and various arms and special units including tank, artillery, engineer and communications were organized and the foundations of the independent ordnance industry capable of producing and supplying such military hardware as submachine guns, mortars, hand-grenades, shells and bullets were laid. Thus, the regular revolutionary armed forces were found in less than three years after the country's liberation.

The great cause of building the army by dint of self-reliance was accomplished from scratch and, after all, the DPRK could defend the sovereignty and dignity of the country reliably from the first day of its foundation.