calendar>>January 8. 2009 Juche 98

World-startling Chollima Upsurge in 1950s

Pyongyang, January 8 (KCNA) -- Now the Korean people are all out in a general offensive to open the gate to a great, prosperous and powerful nation, holding high the militant slogan "Make the fullest development of Songun Korea by inheriting the great tradition of revolutionary upswing!"

General Secretary Kim Jong Il kindled the torch of a new revolutionary upsurge while giving field guidance to the Chollima Steel Complex on December 24 last year to be recorded in the history of Songun Korea.

This is a remarkable event which will mark a new turning-point in the development of the Workers' Party of Korea and the revolution as President Kim Il Sung set the Chollima Movement in motion over 50 years ago.

The President convened a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the WPK in December Juche 45 (1956) and called upon the whole Party and all the people to make a new upswing in the socialist construction with redoubled efforts.

With that as a momentum the flame of Chollima upsurge furiously blazed in the DPRK, working world-startling miracles in all sectors of the national economy.

Under the revolutionary slogan "Charge at the speed of Chollima!" the Korean people took ten or hundred steps when others took one step and made continued innovation and uninterrupted advance, smashing all sorts of passivism, conservatism and mysticism about technology.

As a result, the Five-Year National Economic Plan (1957-1961) was overfulfilled within two and a half years in the terms of total industrial output value and within four years on all indices of products. The total industrial output value grew 3.5 times in the period from 1957 to 1960 and the average annual increase of industrial production showed 36.6 percent.

The Korean people built a self-supporting socialist industrial state in a short span of time with the stamina with which they had carried out the Five-Year National Economic Plan ahead of the set time.

The Korean people will fully demonstrate once again the might of heroic Korea in the efforts for accomplishing the cause of building a great, prosperous and powerful socialist country in the great Songun era in the spirit with which they had built a powerful nation independent in politics, self-supporting in the economy and self-reliant in defence, overcoming the grave difficulties through the Chollima upsurge in the 1950s.