“Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished services. Reflecting the demands and aspirations of the working class, Marx and Engels, the first leaders of the working class, developed socialism from a Utopian concept to a science and started the socialist and communist movement. Lenin inherited and developed Marxism to meet the change in the times and won the victory of the October Socialist Revolution by organizing and mobilizing the working class. Stalin, succeeding to the cause of Lenin, built the first young socialist state into a world power and defended the socialist fatherland from the fascist invasion, leading the army and the people. In their day- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names. The fact that imperialists and the traitors to the revolution viciously defame the leaders of the working class and abuse their leadership as “dictatorship” or “infringement on human rights” only proves that the leaders of the working class were zealous champions of the people’s interests and enjoyed their trust and support, and that they were steadfast communist revolutionaries who held fast to the revolutionary principle without compromising with the enemies of the revolution.”

Kim Jong il (1996), “Respecting the Forerunners of the Revolution is a Noble Moral Obligation of Revolutionaries”