He led the Korean People's Army to share its fate with the Workers' Party.

In the early years of his Songun (military-first) guidance he defined it as the basic army-building principle to establish the monolithic ideology and leadership of the Party in the army.

In the first half of the 1970s he set forth the programme of modeling the entire army on the Juche idea and energetically guided the work for its materialization. In the mid-1990s he clarified the philosophical principle that the party means the army and vice versa and directed big efforts to strengthening the harmonious whole of the party and army in every way.

He stressed that the unison of the party and army makes it possible to overpower any enemy and lead the revolution and construction to victory, saying that if a party fails to put an army under its control, it would not display its might to the full, and the latter, without the former's guidance, would not become powerful combat ranks.

Thanks to the single-minded unity between the party and the army provided by Kim Jong Il, the DPRK has reliably defended the gains of revolution from any aggression moves of the hostile forces, advancing the building of socialism to victory.