Ladies and gentlemen,
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I take the floor with great emotion, gratitude and sense of unconditional support to the Korean people.
July 8 this year coincides with the 20th anniversary of the death of President Kim Il Sung. Twenty years flew by already since he passed away.
However, he is always in the heart of the people as an outstanding leader representing the 20th century.
Author of the Juche idea and Songun, President Kim Il Sung, was a grand master of ideology and theory who made an era of independence and secured the victorious advance of the cause of independence.
Already in his teens he embarked on the struggle for liberating the country from the occupation of the Japanese imperialists and freeing the people from the colonial yoke. Blazing a new path for the Korean revolution he created the ideas of Juche and Songun. He organized and led an armed struggle against Japanese imperialists for fifteen years under the banner of Songun to fulfill the historic cause of the liberation of Korea.
He founded the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the first people’s democratic state in the East.
During the Korean war he inflicted the United States swollen with being a “superpower” in the world a heavy defeat first in the history. After the war he built on the ruins a socialist country, independent in politics, self-supporting in the economy and capable of defending itself.
The reality in the DPRK which decorated the 20th century with victories and glory clearly demonstrated the validity, truthfulness and unbreakable vitality of the ideas of Juche and Songun.
The ideas of Juche and Songun were rapidly spread to the five continents of the world. The progressive peoples could march with confidence towards the brilliant future of the independence era, making the ideas a valuable weapon guaranteeing the victory of the cause of independence. President Kim Il Sung embraces common people with his attractive warm humanity.
He devoted his all to the wellbeing of the people with his motto “The people are my God”. Thanks to his devotional efforts the DPRK took all the popular measures such as free education and medical service and abolition of all the taxes and turned into a blessed land where all help each other.
His humanity is not limited to the Korean people alone. His noble character and personality moved many people of the world.
This magnanimity conceived many legendary stories.
During his visit to the DPRK Emile Tompapa, director of the Radio Broadcasting Station of Guinea was confined to bed with serious illness. As his ailment grew worse, President Kim Il Sung, personally concerning for his health, saw to take emergency measures, and finally brought him back to life.
Former Prime Minister of Austria Bruno Kreisky suffered a paralysis of his leg in his later years. This time too President Kim Il Sung sent him excellent Korean doctors to cure it completely.
The ex-President of Portugal Francisco Da Costa Gomes said that President Kim Il Sung was a great man who moved the world with his high virtue.
President Kim Il Sung received people with great magnanimity. In his lifetime he met 70,000 personages from the world political and social circles and mass media and men and women from all walks of life. All who met him felt admiration for him and praised him as a great man. Among them are Stalin of the former USSR, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai of China, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Sukarno of Indonesia, Tito of former Yugoslavia, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, Francois Mitterrand of France, Kanemaru Shin of Japan, Luise Rinser of Germany and many other heads of states and celebrities.
The former US President Jimmy Carter affirmed: “President Kim Il Sung is an eminent person, a genuine synthesis of the most reputed American Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.”
A man of large caliber with a sense of noble internationalist obligation, President Kim Il Sung gave material and spiritual assistance to the peoples in their struggle for national liberation or for opposing imperialism and for the construction of a new society in African and many other countries throughout the world.
Though he is now deceased, his ideas and exploits will go down, giving brilliant light like the sun.
The Korean people will always have him laid in state in the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and look up to him as their permanent President down to the generations to come.
Even after he passed away, many heads of state, personages and international organizations continue to award him orders, medals and honorary titles and send presents to him.
President Kim Il Sung will always live in the heart of the world people as the sun. ***
Prof. Hessou Kohovi
Chairman of the Benin-Korea Social Gathering “Long live General Kim Jong Il”
Chairman of the Benin National Committee for Study of Juche Idea
