February 8 this year marks the 78th founding anniversary of the heroic Korean People's Army.

The great leader Kim Il Sung founded the KPA.

Clarifying the Way of Building the Regular Revolutionary Armed Forces

After liberating the country by leading the 20-year-long anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle to victory, the great leader Kim Il Sung regarded the founding of a powerful regular army as an essential demand for building an independent, sovereign state and strengthened and developed the Korean People's Revolutionary Army into regular revolutionary armed forces.

Doctor Han Kyong Rim, Researcher of the Academy of Social Sciences, said it was a very urgent and important historic task in the liberated country to found a regular revolutionary army, and continued:

"In the historic speech 'On Building the Party, State and Armed Forces in the Liberated Homeland' he made on August 20, 1945 right after the liberation, the great leader Kim Il Sung clarified that our country should become a completely independent and sovereign state and for the purpose, it is necessary to found a powerful national army which can safeguard the country and nation and defend the gains of the revolution.And he said the revolutionary army should be founded with the anti-Japanese fighters tempered in the trials of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle as the backbone and with the sons and daughters of working people including workers and peasants.

In a number of works including the famous work 'Let Us Found a True People's Army, a Modern Regular Army', he stressed the need to found a regular revolutionary army firmly armed politically and ideologically by carrying forward the revolutionary tradition of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army and equipped with modern military science and technology."

Besides, Kim Il Sung gave instructions on organizing different services and arms needed for building the regular revolutionary armed forces.

Like this, he indicated a correct way of building revolutionary armed forces that can reliably guarantee the building of a new country with arms in a short span of time despite the complex situation and difficult conditions right after the liberation.

For Founding a Regular Army of Korean Style

The great leader Kim Il Sung put great efforts into training military and political cadres of the regular army.

He took important measures to solve the problem of cadres of the regular army with our own efforts by training a large number of new cadres of worker and peasant origins and with the anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters as the backbone.

He decided to build a mother base of training military and political cadres and had the Pyongyang Institute established. He went out to the spot, selected the site for the institute, named it, taught in detail the task for its construction and the orientation of the educational work and dispatched competent anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters to it.

As a result, the Pyongyang Institute opened in February 1946.

Later, Kim Il Sung had the Central Security Officers School built, which trains commanding personnel and technicians of ordinary and special arms.

And he visited the Pyongyang Institute and the Central Security Officers School several times to take warm care of the life of the students and lead the work to give education in Korean style.

He saw that the Security Officers Training Centre was organized and on its basis, the regular army was organized in the way of expanding several services and arms units and subunits.

On the other hand, he founded the air force, the first of its kind in the history of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and organized the Marine Security Corps, the first naval unit of the country.

Saying that there should be a lot of weapons to organize the regular army, he saw that the weapons were made by our own efforts.

Doctor Han Kyong Rim, Researcher of the Academy of Social Sciences, said:

"In early October 1945, the great leader Kim Il Sung came out to the spot and fixed the site for the first munitions factory and said we should make necessary weapons with our own strength at any cost.

That day, he gave confidence to the officials, saying to them: Of course, we still have many bottlenecks and difficulties. But if we work in the spirit of having made the 'Yongil bomb' with our own strength during the anti-Japanese armed struggle, there is nothing we cannot do."

Thanks to his energetic leadership, the first munitions factory was built in the DPRK and a submachine gun produced.

Kim Il Sung visited the factory, held a submachine gun and test-fired it, saying the weapon made by our workers themselves is wonderful.

Kim Il Sung declared the founding of the Korean People's Army, regular revolutionary armed forces of Juche type, all over the world on February 8, 1948.

The day was recorded in the history as the day when the long-cherished desire of the Korean people to have regular armed forces was realized and as the day of great event to be specially recorded in the history of building the Juche-based army.