Fifty Packets of Ground Dried Meat

President Kim Il Sung was an incarnation of noble obligation who, with a great sense of comradely fidelity, loved deeply and took every possible care of revolutionary comrades and showed whole-hearted devotion to them all his life.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un said:

"He was the supreme incarnation of revolutionary comradeship. Proceeding from the principle that the revolution means comrades and vice versa, he began his revolutionary struggle by gaining comrades, thus creating the most beautiful history of revolutionary comradeship."

Revolutionary comradeship was a propellant of the revolution which had been constantly prioritized by the President throughout the whole course of leading the revolution.

The story about fifty packets of ground dried meat shows his warm comradely love for revolutionary soldiers.

In the days of small-unit actions, President Kim Il Sung regarded as the most precious revolutionary comrades all his soldiers from the members of the small unit under his personal command to those of the small units and groups dispatched to different parts of Korea and Manchuria, and warmheartedly cared for their lives with parental affection.

In the autumn of 1940, while he was operating with only several messengers and the machine-gun squad, he was so concerned about the members of a small unit which was temporarily out of contact as to forget his food and sleep, like a mother who lost her children and worried about where they were.

When his unit had to leave the bivouac at the head of a valley in Chechangzi towards a new theatre of activity, he saw to it that newly made padded clothes and rice were buried under the site of the campfire, saying the small unit would definitely come to that place.

Though he prepared everything for their wintering at the appointed place before leaving, his concern about them grew deeper as the days went by. Indeed, his love and affection for the guerrillas acting away from him were heartier and warmer than those of their real parents.

One day when the members of the headquarters were on the march suffering from food shortage, they took a short cut across the hillside and shot a rare wild animal which was known to be good for invigorating the human body. Pleased at the thought that they could gorge themselves on meat for several meals, they boiled meat soup that evening.

Sitting around for the meal with delight, they waited for him to take the soup first.

However, he just sat still facing the soup bowl absorbed in deep meditation and gazed into the western sky aglow with the setting sun for a long while, wondering if the members of small unit attached to the 7th regiment ate properly.

Looking up at him, the soldiers could not but get deeply touched by the warm-heartedness of him who was reluctant to take the soup at the thought about the comrades of the lost small unit.

After finishing the meal with the members, he ordered to dry and pulverize the remaining meat and put them in fifty packets. Then he wrote down the names of the small unit members, who were never heard of, on one packet after another with a brush.

When the names were written on all fifty packets, he told his soldiers to keep them carefully and give them to the small unit members when they returned.

Much impressed by his warm love, the soldiers were moved to tears as they stacked the packets in a haversack.

Since then, they kept the haversack filled with fifty packets of pulverized dried meat with much care during the grim days of continued fierce battles and grueling marches, even when they had to eat snow as they ran out of food, climb up rugged cliffs and fight their way through enemy encirclement.

He would ask if the packets were kept well even in untoward circumstances and ensured that they were dried properly in sunlight when they got damp even a little.

Thanks to the great love and trust of him who never forgot about the revolutionary soldiers unknown where they were and firmly believed that they would come again with their shares left, the small unit could overcome hunger and cold with the food and padded clothes buried under the campfire site at the valley in Chechangzi, survive life-and-death crises and return into his embrace at last.

Though the fifty packets of ground dried meat were no more than one meal, they carried boundless meanings to the members of the small unit.

The President's warm and benevolent affections on the revolutionary soldiers aroused the peerless self-sacrificing spirit and valour of carrying out his orders and instructions to the end through thick and thin, the ardent spirit of safeguarding the headquarters of the revolution in any adversities as well as the absolute trust in and boundless reverence for him in the hearts of all officers and men of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army.

The single-mindedness of the revolutionary ranks was firmly consolidated underpinned by his noble comradely love and the Korean revolution advanced dynamically through trying ordeals, motivated by comradeship.