Pyongyang, January 17 (KCNA) -- The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un made a speech at the conference in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League.

The full text of his speech is as follows:

Young people of Korea, a source of strength and dignity of this country,

Reliable volunteers, who are devoting their beautiful youth to the patriotic struggle,

Steadfast and vigorous officials of the youth league,

Comrades,

I congratulate the young vanguard, who are attending this celebratory conference representing the most resourceful, courageous and patriotic young generation.

I feel really pleased and happy to share this significant moment of looking back on the glorious history of the youth league and foreseeing its bright future with you, brimming over with such a refreshing mettle and burning enthusiasm.

As the first national-level event in this significant year when the Ninth Congress of our Party will be held, we have arranged this large-scale gathering of young people in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the youth league.

The basic objective of this event is to greatly encourage and give wide publicity to our young people, who have always made more efforts than others in every realm of our cause, as well as to inspire them to make fresh, redoubled efforts and bring about innovations.

It is quite meaningful that the youth league, a loyal vanguard of our Party and a powerful organization of the patriotic youth, is celebrating the 80th anniversary of its founding in this grand way in the lead-up to the Ninth Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea.

Today, when it is reviewing the eye-opening struggle stages and foreseeing a new prospect of socialist construction, the whole country, together with you, is celebrating your holiday in a significant way, praising the brilliant history and exploits of the youth league.

This is an expression of its great affection for and encouragement to our young people and, at the same time, its great appreciation of the 80-year history of the youth league.

The Korean youth movement that has demonstrated its fame with heroic struggles and legendary feats will greet the glorious Party congress. Such an honourable moment is not something that comes of itself with the passage of time; it is something the youth organization that has shared its ideology and ideals with our Party and faithfully supported its cause can greet on its proud journey, I think.

Availing myself of this opportunity of celebrating the 80th anniversary of the youth league, I pay noble tribute to the glorious struggle history of the Korean youth movement that has invariably supported our revolutionary cause, and extend warm congratulations to all the young people, youth league organizations and their officials, who, with faithfulness to the Party and their country, are leaving lofty and beautiful imprints of their youth at their work places, military posts and school campuses.

Comrades,

It would be too much for me to recount the 80-year chronicles of the youth league as its origin and traditions are so sacred and its records of succession and development are so brilliant.

The history of the youth movement of Korea is so much honourable, and the exploits it has performed generation after generation is so much enormous.

Since it emerged in the first days of nation building as the banner of unity of young people from all walks of life who were aspiring after a prosperous and powerful nation, the youth league has followed a protracted course while writing the most proud and glorious pages in its chronicles thanks to the faithful and patriotic aspirations cherished, and the powerful strides made, by the ranks of young people.

The flag of the youth league has served as the guide for young people, who are always full of vigour and ambitions for progress and innovation, in their struggle to advance straight ahead along the path indicated by the Party; our young people have been a source of strength for pioneering and for transformation against all manner of challenges and trials of history.

The youth league has trained its members as the reliable main force for socialist construction and national defence, leaving in the annals of history their indelible traces as the advance party and their remarkable feats as the vanguard for creation and construction.

As they were well aware that their country means their motherly embrace and the cradle of their life and wellbeing, which they should defend and look after from one generation into the next, our young people, united as one under the banner of patriotism, have made strenuous efforts against all odds to help build theirs into a prosperous country with a strong army.

In the 1950s, the members of the democratic youth league defended their country in the flames of the war, and the Chollima movement pioneers rehabilitated this land on the debris of the war; in the grim period when the destiny of socialism was at stake, your parents' generation defended their country, their social system. In this way, all the generations of our Republic have left behind legendary tales and structures, signs of their exploits, which are symbolic of their youth and which are named after their generations.

Shining on all these achievements are the feats performed by the youth league in implanting in the young people the sense of duty and obligation as befits the successors to the revolution and in firmly maintaining the tradition of purity, patriotism and loyalty of the youth movement of Korea.

The journey of our revolution has been beset with challenges and obstacles which would have been impossible to cope with even with high spirits and youthful vigour; and there has never been an interruption in the wind of temptation aimed at degenerating our younger generations. Nevertheless, the red flag held by our young people, instead of fading with the passage of time in the face of historical ups and downs, has fluttered ever higher and more strongly as it has been empowered by pure and thoroughgoing succession.

The change of generations in the ranks of young people continued along with the advance of the revolution. But as our state has the successors who have always been faithful to their mission as the vanguard class fighters and pillars of socialist construction and to the duty of the times, its mainstay has remained steadfast, and the world of love and noble virtues created by them added more beauty to our society.

In the vigorous struggle for the revolution and construction, our young people have never misspent their youth, and in those days they have grown up beyond recognition in the ideological and spiritual aspects.

The youth movement has responded to the call of the country with heroic struggles. In the proud course it has covered along with the name of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, it has united the millions of young people behind the Party more firmly and trained them into honourable builders of socialism, opening a brilliant chapter of a new era of transformations by dint of their inexhaustible strength.

We were deeply impressed by the true looks of young successors, witnessing their heightened zeal for volunteering, which swept across the country after the Eighth Congress of the Party.

In their days full of dreams and ambitions our young people are preserving the original features of young Koreans and faithfully performing their mission of successors by dedicating their precious youth to the call of the times and their country.

Among them were the young people in Nampho, who volunteered ahead of others to work in the socialist countryside. They were followed by tens of thousands of other young people in the capital and other cities who volunteered for mountain, rural and island villages and for difficult and labour-consuming sectors, invariably and steadily following the road of patriotism.

They had the right to enjoyment and must have cherished precious dreams, but they translated their laudable decisions into practice, devoting their pure conscience and great sincerity to their motherland.

If they had no warm heart desirous of the country’s prosperity or firm faith in and ardent aspiration to socialism, they would not have been able to make such an admirable decision and, moreover, remain faithful to it.

This is an inspiring story which can be explained only with the noble ideological and spiritual traits of our young people.

They are not all.

Ours is called a heroic era filled with transformations, which shines more brilliantly with the exploits performed by the hundreds of thousands of young people who volunteered to work at the sites of building new streets and other grand construction theatres in hearty response to the call of the Party.

In looking back, the revolutionary ideology and ideals of our Party have always become those of the young people themselves and the course of our state building and development has always coincided with the course of worthwhile life of the young people. But there has not been such an era as today when the young people across the country are giving full play to their might at the many places to translate the grand blueprints of the Party into brilliant reality.

Our Party appreciates the record of victories achieved and all the monumental structures set up by the young people more highly than any other successes and wealth. It is because they are permeated with the fervent affection and enthusiasm of our younger generations for their socialist country, and they reflect the unshakable pledge and will of the successors.

The annals of history of our glorious Party and country are adorned more with pages the young people are writing with their blood and sweat, and one tale about the revolutionary spirit and heroic feats of the young Koreans is being produced after another along with the numerous transformations brought about on this land. These are clear proof to the ideological and spiritual inheritance that has run through the history of the Korean youth movement as its bloodline.

In the whole course of the Korean revolution beset with unprecedented difficulties, the young people have never been a burden to their country or tarnished their revolutionary nature.

In the present world, your peer group is in the centre of the unheard-of bloody catastrophe.

Young people, steeped in extreme misanthropy, money-is-almighty poison, moral depravity and pessimism, give rise to serious social problems and heartrending tragedy of bloodshed and discord in different places. This is an undeniable reality of the present world.

It is something that we can be proud of before the world that we have trustworthy, stout young revolutionaries who, bearing in their minds the appellation of successors as the honour of youth, temper and perfect themselves by braving trials together with the Party and their motherland.

Present here are also young soldiers, who have defended the dignity and honour of their country recently in the overseas special military operations by displaying the excellence, heroism, self-sacrificing spirit and character peculiar to their fellow people.

Not only these young soldiers but also their countless comrades-in-arms are devoting even at this moment their youth without hesitation at battlefields in the alien land in order solely to remain faithful to the order of their homeland without expecting any reward.

What they are desirous of is only the prosperity of their homeland, not any reward.

No one in the world will be ever able to find such soldiers as ours who go to battlefields expecting no reward or private interest, to fight to defend their country’s honour and their self-respect and to execute in good faith the orders given to them.

It is only the Koreans, only young Korean people, who can do this, so the world is yet to understand their spiritual world.

So ordinary were our soldiers as we could see them anywhere but, having been dispatched to engage in the overseas operations, they have fully demonstrated how wonderful are the character of young Korean people, sons of the Korean people, which is unique on this planet. They have set a noble example to be respected and followed by all the young people of future generations.

Having such young people is our state’s source of pride which is incomparable with anything else.

The 80-year history of struggle of the youth league is being reviewed in the light of the socialist ideals, noble patriotism, passionate sense of justice and pure spiritual world, which you and all the other young people across the country have now cherished as part of their faith and mental qualities. And this again raises the position and fame of our young Koreans on the highest level.

Linking the proud past of our state with its glorious present and building a rosier future by wonderfully preparing the next generation who will carry forward the baton of the revolution–this is the historic exploits and victory of the Korean youth movement, which cannot be compared with anything else nor achieved by anyone else.

Availing myself of this meaningful opportunity, I once again extend warm tribute to the days of youth of our Republic’s all generations who, by braving all sorts of hardships and trials and even sacrificing their youth and lives, have defended their motherland and, by performing noble feats and miracles, have brought prosperity to our country, as well as to the proud 80-year history of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League.

Comrades,

We can now talk about the invincibility of our revolution because its youth organization is strong, and our era is full of transformations because its young heroes are high in their ideals, strong in their sense of self-respect and soaring in their revolutionary enthusiasm.

The revolutionary cause to be accomplished generation after generation still demands that the youth league and young people carry out the important mission, and the steps of succession they have made decade after decade should continue.

All the activities of the youth league, in the future, too, should be oriented to training our young people into a powerful force capable of opening up an era of transformation, and its efforts continuously developed to rally as one the millions of young people on the strength of patriotism.

Together with the Party members, all the young people should, as they have done before, form the main current of our revolution, make the gains of socialism larger and richer through a vigorous struggle, and be braver than others in aspiring after the new, stepping up the change, abolishing the backwardness and accelerating progress.

The sturdy growth of young people is one of the core aims for the state development our Party wants to attain in the present struggle, as well as a big step forward towards the future.

As we remember respectfully the days of youth of your grandparents and parents who braved all difficulties for the country and the revolution, you should ensure that the coming generations remember your worthwhile, youthful days unfailingly.

Comrades,

Your motherly country has decided to confer the Order of

Kim Jong Il , a highest order of our state, on the Socialist Patriotic Youth League as an expression of its greatest appreciation of the steady succession to our cause the youth league has ensured by safeguarding its traditions and remaining faithful to its sacred obligations and duty over the past 80 years.

This will be a source of the greatest honour and dignity of all the young people of Korea.

Today with the expectation that our resourceful and brave young people will continue to record their shining names and feats in the glorious history of the Party and the country and firmly propel the succession and advance of our revolutionary cause in the future, too, I will pin the order of honour on the flag of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League.

You should vigorously advance towards a new brilliant era, which will shine thanks to your resourcefulness and great might, proudly writing pages in the annals of socialist development and loudly singing the songs of creation and struggle.

The dream of Korea, the future of Korea, is calling our young people.

For the eternal prosperity of our motherland,

For our beautiful tomorrow, and

For the honour of the young people of Korea,

Let us struggle more bravely and more dynamically.

Long live the Democratic People's Republic of Korea! -0-

www.kcna.kp (2026.01.17.)