The Origin Of The Juche-Oriented National Defense Industry-The Arsenals In The Thick Forest Of Mt Paektu

Our national defense industry has grown tremendously in its size and strength which no one can depreciate.

Our Juche-oriented national defense industry couldn't be thought without the immortal exploits of the President who made sure that our own arsenals were built in order to make the weapons ourselves.

The arsenals in the thick forests of Mt Paektu where the hammering of the self-reliance rang out have become the origin of the Juche-oriented national defense and the spirit of Yongil bomb created during the days of the arduous anti-Japanese armed struggle served as a precious ideological and spiritual source for the building of the Juche-oriented defense industry.

President Kim Il Sung said:

"The spirit of self-reliance that rang out in the hammering of the arsenals in the guerrilla zones drove the pulse of the era of the Workers' Party and provided the powerful force that propelled this era forward."

The armed struggle against the Japanese imperialists put it as an essential requirement to solve the problem of weapons.

The naive people of Jiandao once planned to build a hand-grenade factory in the guerrilla zone with the help of the Soviet Union.

But the Soviet Union sent no reply to our request, neither a promise to comply with it.

The silence from the Soviet Union confirmed us in our belief that self-reliance was the only way to live.

The President attached special importance to the work of the arsenals and concentrated efforts on it, saying that weapons should be produced by our own efforts. He also saw to it that the arsenals were built by providing necessary steel tools.

At that time there were few modern machines and tools in the arsenals of the guerrilla army.

The people in Wangqing had only one perforator and one hand-operated drilling machine, and except them, files were the best tools they had.

But they repaired everything with the file.

They repaired the cartridge holders and the firing pin by filing, grinding with a stone, hammering, soaking in water and mud.

In the end, even machine-guns could be repaired without any problem.

However, in the production of ordnance, the most badly needed and hard-to-supply material was the gunpowder.

At first, the guerrilla arsenals used gunpowder sent by miners and underground political workers.

But this method was accompanied by constant danger and concern to expose revolutionary organizations, and many people even lost their lives.

A gram of gunpowder was the blood and flesh of the fighters.

Therefore, the President decided to make the powder by themselves.

Under his energetic guidance and assistance, the soldiers of the arsenals made powder without hesitation despite many difficulties and failures in the course of making it.

As the problem of powder was settled, the production of the bombs increased rapidly. The bombs were produced by the method of using a tin to hold a fuse and they were inconvenient in operation and unpleasant on the outside as they were made by pure manual labor. But it had a great deal of fatality, incomparable with hand grenades. The Helong arsenal was the first to produce a bomb known as the "sound-bomb", which later developed into the "pepper bomb" and then into a powerful bomb called the "Yongil bomb", afterwards they even made the wooden cannons.

President Kim Il Sung, in his reminiscences "With the Century", said that the revolutionary activeness, perseverance and initiative and ingenuity of the officials in the arsenals in the forest were really admirable spirits to startle the world. He recollected with deep emotions that if the Korean communists had not thought of self-reliance from the outset or had not had the firm faith that self-reliance is the only way to save Korea, no arsenal would have been built in the guerrilla zones and powerful weapons such as the wooden cannon and "Yongil bomb" would not have been born in the world.

One day in October, Juche 34(1945), after the liberation of Korea from the Japanese imperialists' colonial rule, the President unfolded a far-reaching plan, in Phyongchon plain of Pyongyang, for founding the Juche-oriented munitions industry on the basis of the arsenals in the thick forest of Mt Paektu which were born in the flames of anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle.

Thanks to the arsenals in the thick forest of Mt Paektu, our country could build the first ordnance factory in June, Juche 36(1947), after the liberation and produced submachine guns, hand grenades and mortars suited to the specific conditions of the country by relying on its own efforts, technology and resources in such a short span of time.

And during the Fatherland Liberation War, our own munitions industry greatly contributed to victory by waging a dynamic struggle for munitions production and now it has developed into a Juche-oriented and modern defense industry which produces weapons and equipment capable of resolutely punishing any aggressive forces as we want.

Indeed, the arsenals in the thick forest of Mt Paektu, which resounded with the hammering of self-reliance, were the origin of the Juche-oriented defense industry of the DPRK.