Dr. Ri Myong Chol, Faculty of History, Kim Il Sung University
2025.2.14.
The movement to read 10 000 pages of books a year is a mass reading campaign which was conducted on his initiative of and under the meticulous guidance of Chairman Kim Jong Il. It is aimed at making each and every student a revolutionary talent who is armed with revolutionary world outlook and who has acquired profound and rich knowledge in major field by bringing about a revolutionary turn with studying the immortal works of President Kim Il Sung as the main focus.
Chairman Kim Jong Il said:
"The main requirement of the movement to read 10 000 pages of books a year is to read the works by the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.
In order to become genuine revolutionaries of Korea and revolutionary men unfailingly loyal to the great leader, students should fully equip themselves with his revolutionary ideology."
Chairman Kim Jong Il initiated the movement to read 10 000 pages of books a year while he was waging his revolutionary activities at Kim Il Sung University in order to arouse the enthusiasm for study among students and to make them acquire rich and versatile knowledge as well as to prepare themselves to be genuine revolutionaries of Korea who are fully armed with the revolutionary idea of President Kim Il Sung.
In his talk to primary officials of the student primary organizations of Kim Il Sung University "Let Us Hold High the Torch of the Movement to Read 10 000 Pages of Books a Year" given on 25th of March 1961, he taught that the essence of the campaign is to read as many works as possible and that they should be firmly armed with the revolutionary idea of President Kim Il Sung to be the genuine revolutionaries and soldiers of President Kim Il Sung.
He said the works of President Kim Il Sung are the encyclopaedias that give answers to all the problems arising in revolution and construction and the guidelines of our revolution which lead it to victory.
He continued that in the works of President Kim Il Sung codify the rich experiences and ideological wealth, and originality and creativeness run through all the works. Therefore in order to lead our country's revolution to victory, we should study and learn the President's works. He taught that not studying the President's works but clinging to the classics and studying the established ideology and experiences of other countries cannot lead one to become the genuine revolutionary.
Under the grand plan of Chairman Kim Jong Il, one class started the movement to read 10 000 pages of books a year and the flame spread out to the whole university in an instant and further to all the universities throughout the country.
On the 30th of March 1964, in his talk "Let Us Become Revolutionaries Who Are Boundlessly Faithful to the Party and the Leader" to graduates of Kim Il Sung University, Chairman Kim Jong Il recalled that he and his classmates held the torch of the movement to read 10 000 pages of books a year which is aimed at studying the works of President Kim Il Sung and let the flame spread across the whole university. He saw to it that the movement to read 10 000 pages of books a year fundamentally altered the students' viewpoint and attitude towards studying; they developed the habit of studying the leader's works in depth and the stand and attitude of analyzing and judging everything only on the basis of the revolutionary ideas of President Kim Il Sung and Party policy.
As seen above the movement to read 10 000 pages of books a year is neither a simple reading march nor a studying campaign but rather a perfect implementation of his far-reaching plan to bring up each and every student a Juche-type revolutionary who is boundlessly loyal to President Kim Il Sung. It was also a mass reading campaign which is targeted to make all the universities and colleges into the ones that are imbued with the revolutionary ideas of President Kim Il Sung as well as an energetic scientific research campaign dedicated to making students read more books needed for our revolution and construction faster and deeper to occupy the fortress of science built by human kind.
