Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, on December 4 made an important speech "On Duty of Mothers for Their Families and Society" at the Fifth National Conference of Mothers:
Dear mothers,
On behalf of the Party Central Committee and the government of the Republic, I once again warmly congratulate the participants in the Fifth National Conference of Mothers and the mothers who received the Communist Mother Honour Prize at the conference.
I am very pleased that the conference of mothers is held with splendour at a proud time when the year 2023 is to be concluded with precious victories and epoch-making successes and that the whole country could extend greetings of thanks in chorus to the mothers who have made numerous exertions for many years.
In the glorious history of our country which advances by winning victories through all sorts of hardships, there are soldiers with arms, scientists with clear heads, devoted workers and diligent farmers.
But, on the highest peak of all of those glories and honours, there are always Korean women who are the best in the world, all the mothers of this country.
The credit for the brilliant today of our country goes to our mothers who are ordinary and simple and the strongest before any difficulties and have become the genuine models of always devoting themselves unhesitatingly to the road of patriotism as well as the roots for bringing up a large number of heroes in all parts of the country.
The period between the 4th and 5th national conferences of mothers coincides with the 10-odd years, the most arduous and grimmest period in the history of our Party and country.
Clearly imprinted in those trying days and months is the group of righteous and strong mothers who have overcome hardships, regarding all pains for the country and their children as pleasure, in order to be always upright before them.
Thanks to the mothers who endure obediently all sorts of difficulties and affliction, believing that anything our Party is determined to do is all right, we could decide on and push ahead with such grand undertakings as another great cause of nation-building, and all those projects could be crowned with successes by the devoted efforts of the mothers who became admirable assistants and faithful servants to their husbands and children.
But for mothers who have backed up the Party policies without a change of mind, reliably supported the arms of faith held by their sons and daughters and kindled the raging flames of patriotic movement throughout the country while enduring for scores of years the harshest trials that women of other countries could hardly stand even for a few days, we could not have continued to advance steadily and vigorously along the road of strengthening the national power.
When I hear the news of good deeds done by many youths who volunteered to work at difficult and labour-consuming worksites and devote themselves, including those young builders performing new miracles at the construction site for a new street in the Sopho area which is showing its magnificent appearance from day to day, I am thrilled to heart at the thought of our mothers who supported the good choice of their children and encouraged them heartily.
In fact, the mothers should be praised by the times only for the painstaking efforts and merits they have made while giving birth to many children and bringing them up in the days of insufficiency and difficulties and doing all sorts of troublesome work to take care of their husbands and parents-in-law.
But, with such great worries and work, our mothers are taking full responsibility for a post of the revolution, a part of socialist construction like men, and cultivating the freshness and beauty of our society with their thoughtfulness and kindness.
Mothers have been standing not only on the agricultural and light industrial fronts to which our Party attaches importance, but also on the scientific research bases and spark-flying construction sites. And the names of mothers can be found in the front ranks of patriotic meritorious persons who have stirred up the times and their love and affection can be felt in the strong breathing of the country which is overcoming the cold wind of trials and opening up a future with virtues and beautiful traits.
Their jewel-like patriotic mind and precious sweat shine in the bright laughter and happy tears of the great socialist family sharing difficulties and hardships with each other, and they can be deeply felt in the absolute strength and proud edifices of the Republic.
All of what we have had and are proud of at present -- all of those symbolizing the high prestige and mightiness of the Republic will remain forever along with the history made by the mothers of Korea with noble mind and the feats they have performed with resourceful and diligent efforts.
I would like to extend once again my warm thanks to all the mothers of the country who have become great strength to our Party in the grim annals of the revolution, as they always did in the past, and devoted their pure and ardent patriotism and loyalty to the prosperity of the country.
Respected mothers,
The future of a country and a nation is reflected first in the ideological and spiritual qualities of mothers and is built from the minds and hands of mothers.
Nearly one century has passed since our revolution was pioneered.
We can no longer see those mothers of anti-Japanese guerrilla origin who turned out in the sacred war for national liberation, leaving their beloved children under the eaves of other's house, and those mothers who dedicated all their children and even daughter-in-law to the revolution and who wrote epics of the Chollima era, holding aloft the communist slogan "One for all and all for one!". The generations, who have known about them only through videos and books, have become mothers now.
However, the beautiful mental world peculiar to the Korean mothers is being invariably carried forward and the history of noble life dedicated to the future is going on.
This is precious for the future of our Party and state just like lifeline and blood vessel.
If the mothers have a firm mind, the cornerstone of the country is solid, and if the spiritual world of mothers is noble, the baton of the revolution will be steadily carried forward and the nature of Korean-style socialism will remain unchanged.
We hold the conference of mothers with splendor as now because the future of Korea is shining brightly amid the steady inheritance of the proud history and tradition of mothers which have been carried forward generation after generation.
In the minds and appearances of mothers, we read the noble view of life that one's life is for younger generation and one's devoted efforts will result in a prosperous country where posterity will lead a happy life, and we are looking back upon the traces of their beautiful lives again.
Everyone has a mother and memories of childhood spent under her warm and benevolent care as well as of unforgettable images.
Among them, what children do not forget forever are their mothers' whole life of devotion, in which mothers had been always busy doing everything for their children but nothing for themselves, and the tears shed by mothers who were very happy to see their children do a good thing for the country or gave a whipping to their children when they did a sinful act even a bit.
Through their examples, mothers taught their children that the political integrity given by the Party is more precious than the physical life they gave, and that the life they devote is more valuable than the life they enjoy. Our younger generation realized the real meaning of life and patriotism in the teachings and appearances of the mothers before the books.
It is certain that a good child is to be grown up under the care of a good mother.
The generation, who were born and grew up under the care of such mothers, witnessing the traces of their mothers from aside and learning the real worth of life, hands over the baton of patriotism and loyalty to the next generation and that baton is handed down generation to generation. This is a law-governed historical process in which the future of our country is built.
Our mothers are, indeed, truly precious persons who link the new generation with the same blood of patriotism and are the first builders of the beautiful future.
Dear participants,
It is the primary revolutionary task to prepare well the younger generation to be the main force of our society and to hold up our powerful state.
As the first step is important in human life, family education takes the first place among family education, school education and social education, and the influence of mother is particularly important in family education.
For that reason, the Party has attached greater importance to the congress of the children’s union and the conference of mothers than other conferences, and the Party Central Committee directly organized this conference with deep care and much efforts.
Expecting that this conference will be a practical occasion for all mothers to be more deeply aware of their responsibility and duty before the family and society and successfully fulfill them, I would like to inform you of the important policies of the Party and government and to make some requests.
As you know, the economic situation of the country was difficult and the obstructive moves of the enemies were unprecedentedly vicious, but we have made countless changes incomparable with those we made ten-odd years ago and we are going to make a stubborn struggle with a higher ideal and goal in the future and thus make an unimaginable development after another ten years.
As all our people actually see, listen and feel, the major policies being pursued by our Party and government at present are the gigantic works to create better living conditions and more civilized living environments.
The most essential requirement of people’s life is the problems of food, clothing and housing. The struggle to implement the Party’s programme for the rural revolution in the new era is a historic cause of solving the food problem for the people in a perfect and sustained way in the near future and, at the same time, of modernizing the countryside, which had been a pronoun of centuries-old backwardness.
To accomplish this cause at an early date, the Party and the government offer the countryside lots of farm machines and farming supplies by mobilizing the important sector every year even in times of shortage and difficulties and, this year, launched large-scale projects to restore and perfect the irrigation facilities across the country, which had not been touched for decades, and thus made big stride in laying foundations for agricultural production.
At present, our agricultural sector is pushing ahead with the work to go over to the farming with focus on rice, wheat and barley, develop the animal husbandry and the fruit farming and build large-scale greenhouse farms. This work is for gratifying the desires of mothers who wish to provide their children and families with tasty and nutritious food all the time.
Saying that the reclamation of tidelands falls under the same category, he noted that President Kim Il Sung highlighted the need to reclaim the tideland on the west coast without fail in order to feed all the people with rice and that our army addressed itself to the project for reclamation of tideland in a bid to complete it in seven to eight years.
Though it is a hard and grand nature-remaking project, we should complete in our generation it to be flawless for all ages. Then, the future generations will benefit from it forever, without knowing what the lack of farmland and the food problem are like.
For the issue of raising children - the foremost concern of mothers - we have done not a few jobs and have a promising prospect.
Now I feel very fulfilled that our Party and government, with much efforts, managed to feed all the children of the country with dairy products everyday, fully provide all the schoolchildren with "Sonamu"-trademarked school bags, uniforms and things and give a facelift to children's palaces, camps and halls.
However, not content with this, we put forward a policy of making a great revolution in education and are striving for its implementation to ensure that our rising generations receive the best education under the best and advanced educational conditions and circumstances in the world during all school from kindergarten to university.
While putting titanic state efforts into establishing a new chemical industry and creating the production capacity of chemical fibre in order to satisfactorily settle the clothing problem for people, we actively encourage such development levers as an exhibition of advanced garments to develop in a more civilized way the costumes of all the people including mothers.
Recent years saw more gigantic construction projects than ever on a nation-wide scale, and what is most important here is to solve the housing problem for people at a high level.
Under the resolution of the Eighth WPK Congress, the project for building 50 000 flats in the capital city has been carried out for three years so that over 10 000 households of the capital moved into new houses every year. And modern rural houses fit for an ideal society have taken their shapes across the country from last year to be offered to agricultural workers one after another.
By carrying out a construction project to remodel the provincial, city and county seats to meet the requirements of modern civilization, we intend to bring about a new world where the whole country from the capital city to local areas and mountain villages has undergone radical changes.
And we plan to solve the problems of domestic water, cooking fuel, public transport, lift, heating for the citizens of the capital city first and, on this basis, satisfactorily tackle the necessary living problems including the problem of providing domestic water for local cities.
Noting that the important policies planned by the Party and the government at present include a project for building general hospitals equipped with modern, advanced medical service facilities in every provincial seat, he went on to say:
In addition, various important popular policies are on the table and I believe that if all these come to fruition, a truly fundamental change will be made in the life of our people.
All mothers should fulfill their responsibility and duty assumed before society and families with confidence in and optimism about the prospects of our socialist construction and a changed ideal society to come in the near future.
They have heavy mission to bring up their children to be pillars of socialist and communist construction and masters of future society.
The first step of a revolutionary is taken under the care of the mother and his true growth can be guaranteed by his mother's care.
No one can replace mothers for their position and duty.
If mothers fulfill their responsibility as educators, faster and more remarkable progress will be made in making the young people and all other members of the society communist persons.
First of all, mothers themselves should become communist mothers who have noble and beautiful moral qualities.
Unless a mother becomes a communist, it is impossible for her to bring up her sons and daughters as communists and transform the members of her family into revolutionaries.
There is a saying that if you want to judge a man, you should judge his mother, so there is a large difference between the outlooks on life and the world of the children who grow up under the care of mothers who devote themselves to the society and the collective and are willing to help those suffering pain, and of the children who grow up, seeing their mothers devote all energies to only their children and families.
So, the traits of all our mothers should be the virtues of helping others tide over their difficulties and sharing others' sorrow and the humanity of sharing their happiness with their neighbours and rejoicing at others' success as their own one.
The harmony of the families our mothers defend and tend also has a great effect on the growth of their children.
Mothers should always bear in mind that it is a great thing for the country to manage their household affairs carefully and promote the happiness and harmony of the families as housewives, and make an effort to become a meticulous mother, a grateful wife and a kind-hearted daughter-in-law.
If a mother truly wants her children to be fine persons, she should train her children consciously through the revolutionary struggle and the practice of socialist construction.
The posts for national defence and the sites of socialist construction are revolutionary universities which give the children valuable experiences of life that cannot be gained in the yard of their families and cultivate the spirit of loving their comrades and the collective and the will and ability to surmount the difficulties.
It will be mothers' greatest pleasure to see their children growing up as pillars of the country while realizing in the struggle and life how precious our Party and social system are.
With their inborn true feelings of flogging their kids with tears in their eyes to bring them up as honest persons, mothers should have no hesitation in making their beloved children work in the difficult and labour-consuming posts and workplaces.
For mothers, another important thing is to always pay deep attention to their mental and moral lives.
The children, who were well-mannered and innocent when they were young, grow up to be unmannered and become tainted with a bad thing if their mothers pay less attention to them who are older.
Mothers should give regular education to their children so that they can study and lead an organizational life well and lead a sound moral life not only when they are young but also after they have entered university and society.
Some mothers pay attention to their children's studies while neglecting their education in courtesy and morality, including the polite way of speaking, and their use of words and deeds different from our own style. Some other mothers think that they perform their responsibility as mothers when they bring their children up in a special way, providing special clothing for them.
The struggle against alien practices now intensifies in society. Only when mothers actively join in the struggle, can all such practices be eliminated.
Mothers should take an active part in socialist construction and exert a revolutionary influence on their children by setting practical examples.
Though the word working woman is an everyday word, it means the brilliant honour and clear expression of a communist woman who devotes herself to our cause with a firm confidence in the truthfulness and victory of the cause.
Mothers should go beyond the bounds of their homes and take an active part in public life to devote their sincere patriotic sweat and make innovations at factories and workplaces. By doing so, they should be socialist working women of whom their children are proud and live a worthwhile life under the love and trust of the collective.
They should also fully discharge their duty as citizens by actively doing good deeds that will contribute to the prosperity of the country, including assistance to the army and the grand construction sites.
It is important for mothers to know well about the acuity and cause of the present grave situation and the key to the great change under such circumstances, he said, stressing the need for mothers to have pride and self-esteem in the victory we have achieved and fully understand the validity and truth of our Party's policies which can never be denied with anything and thoroughly reject all the attempts and hypocrisy of the enemy.
He said that when all mothers clearly understand that it is patriotism to give birth to many children and do so positively, our cause of building a powerful socialist country can be hastened faster.
He called upon the Party organizations and working people's organizations including the women's union to positively lead and help mothers to fulfill their duties for families and society.
If children rely on their mother’s care, their mothers rely on the care of the organization.
The organization's constant warm care will be an encouragement to our mothers who have more troubles, worries and difficulties than others owing to incomplete living condition.
Our Party hopes that not a few special mothers but all mothers of the country would lead a worthwhile life in the same ranks towards communism.
Even though some mothers have led a humdrum or dishonourable life so far, they can emerge model mothers and innovators thanks to the sincere efforts of organizations in future and then it will be the great delight.
The Party organizations and women’s union organizations should organize and guide the work properly so that mass movements involving mothers become voluntary work based on patriotic enthusiasm and duty proper to a citizen.
Referring to the principled issues arising in expanding the ranks of communist mothers, he stressed that the Party organizations and women's union organizations should enlighten and sincerely help mothers to voluntarily get aware of their duties before families and society and give birth to many children and bring them up with devotion.
It is necessary for the Party Central Committee and provincial, city and county Party committees to always pay attention to the women’s union organizations so that they can perform their role properly, bearing in mind that the work of the women’s union is an important part of our Party work, and solve the problems arising in the women’s union on a priority basis and guard strictly against the overburdens imposed on it.
The Party and power organs and economic bodies should ensure that the benefits of the state such as giving priority to families with many children in allotment of dwelling houses, foods and commodity supply and medical service are correctly realized, and apply special subsidies in order to contribute to the life in actuality and take more preferential treatments in various aspects.
Dear mothers!
It is the long-cherished desire of our Party to provide our people, who are the best people in the world and have endured more sufferings and troubles than anyone else, with a happy and highly-civilized life as soon as possible. This reflects the dream our mothers have had generation after generation.
It is the most glorious and honourable task to bear in mind the mothers’ dreams and wishes for bringing up their children well in the beautiful land of socialism and communism and realize them to the utmost.
Our Party will make more dynamic struggle to achieve everything desired by the toughest and most beautiful mothers in the world and their beloved sons and daughters as soon as possible.
Dear mothers!
I regard it as the greatest pride that our mothers are the most honest and greatest in the world.
It is a great blessing and fortune for the sons and daughters of this country to call such good mothers their mother.
Heartily wishing all the mothers of the country good health and happiness, in reflection of the minds of all the sons and daughters on this land, I declare the Fifth National Conference of Mothers closed.
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