Juche

    It was early morning of April 3, 1977.

    Chairman Kim Jong Il gave a call to an official who was in charge of the work of revolutionary relics.

    The official was very impressed receiving the phone.

    (He does work in this early morning…)

    On the phone the Chairman asked to take measure to recover those unrecognizable letters on the slogan-bearing trees in the Chongbong camping area.

    The slogan-bearing trees, the precious historical data of the anti-Japanese revolution were discovered in the Chongbong camping area long time ago. But many letters on the trees couldn’t be recognized as they were washed out by the snow and rain for a long period. Until then, they didn’t know how to recover those letters to their original form.

    How to recover the revolutionary slogans written on barked trees.

    Bearing this anxiety, the Chairman has groped for recovering the anti-Japanese revolutionary slogans written over 40 years ago and gave a phone call in that early morning.

    The official couldn’t help feeling sorry for not having done his duty for discovering and preserving the revolutionary relics.

    Saying that all of those slogan-bearing trees in Chongbong area are priceless treasures of the country and the revolution, the Chairman spoke earnestly that it is not easy to find out the weather-beaten slogan letters in the remote thick forest but we had to do the research on recovering them at any cost.

    He further said that recently in some countries, they found out the invisible letters written in ink on parchment or paper; the slogans written in Korean ink on the trees in the period of anti-Japanese armed struggle could be different from those in normal ink but if there is a way to recover the letters in ink there should be a way to recover the letters written in Korean ink; we should give the scientists the task to carry out a research on recovering the erased letters on the tree…

    He gave so much importance to the work of finding out and preserving the revolutionary relics which prove the President’s history of revolutionary activities and revolutionary feats that he made a phone call in that early morning.

    Keeping in mind the noble will of the Chairman who tried to recover all the slogan letters which are the treasures of the revolution for all generations, the scientists at Hamhung Branch of the State Academy of Sciences succeeded, after 4 years of laborious research, in recovering unrecognizable 34 characters on 7 trees in Chongbong, by casting fluorescent light on them. And by intensifying the success they found out over eleven thousand pieces of slogans written in the period of the anti-Japanese armed struggle that read “Long live General Kim, the brilliant commander”, “Kim Il Sung, the national hero and lodestar in 5 000-long history”, “Great good luck of Korea A bright star rose on Mt Paektu”, “The great Korean shining star on Mt. Paektu is rising”, “Partisan commander Kim Il Sung and anti-Japanese woman commander Kim Jong Suk advancing into homeland on Paektusan steed” and about 7 000 revolutionary remains, relics throughout the country from the foot of Mt. Paektu to the area along the demarcation line.

    Those were precious national treasures which could be discovered by the efforts and devotion of Chairman Kim Jong Il.