Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un
Pyongyang, September 3 (KCNA) -- Respected Comrade
The full text of his speech is as follows:
Comrade educators who have entered the venue of this significant conference with the unusual pride and honour of bringing up the younger generations of our country,
I attach importance to the work of this conference now with a feeling and expectations that are clearly different from those I have at other conferences and sectoral short courses.
It is an unquestionable fact and our consistent principle that the education work is the most important state affair that cannot and should not lag behind the work of any other fields.
I am really pleased to take this opportunity to directly offer you once again a greeting of deep respect I have always wanted to pay to the benevolent persons who are fostering the growth of the dear descendants of the country.
As I have come face to face with you like this, I am filled with gratitude to you at the thought that the talented personnel, who are a source of pride for the country and resourcefulness for the people, are growing up and the beauty and mightiness of this country are being given steady continuity thanks to many educators like you.
Respected teachers,
I think this way.
If there is anything in the world that can be put alongside the sacred and noble appellation of mother, it is probably that of teacher.
There is no more precious and valuable title in the world than that of mother and teacher.
Where mothers give children life, our teachers are just the benefactors who nurture and train them.
The mother's right is not granted by anyone, but the appellation of teacher is a qualification and honour one is granted for voluntarily choosing the occupation of an educator who rears and leads those who are born on this land to be true persons and for fulfilling one's duty.
I genuinely take off my hat and I am deeply impressed whenever I think how many stories the teachers have kept to themselves while teaching, and how many nights they have stayed up for teaching, since the sacred appellation is not defended by any others, but should be defended by themselves.
Teachers care for every aspect of students’ studies and life, as well as imparting of knowledge to and moral education for them who are different from one another in aspiration, personality, taste, family background and everything, and the trouble the teachers take through the eventful and busy daily routine is as immeasurably enormous as the pains taken by mothers who bring up their children, and nobody can go to such trouble in place of teachers.
Our educators reliably support the future affairs of the country by devoting everything, even the love that should be shown to their beloved children, families, parents and siblings, to their students, and they regard it as their mission and duty. They are respected by all the people across the country as their life is an exemplar of the most beautiful and ennobling patriotism.
As they have followed in their meticulous mind the footprints their disciples leave at hundreds or thousands of jobs and posts, they sometimes might have shed tears of deep sorrow over the death of their disciples who fell in battle, and subsequently their hair turned grey and their faces got deep wrinkles earlier than usual. Their tears touch my heart and I face them with greater respect.
Each of the heroes who laid down their precious lives to carry out the orders of their country and defend its honour, the outstandingly talented personnel who brought dignity to powerful Korea through the arduous journey of research and the faithful and patriotic meritorious persons supporting the country at factories, coal mines and farm fields all their life with immaculately pure conscience, must be the disciple of an excellent teacher.
But none of the teachers have shared their disciples' honour although they have put their heart and soul into the guidance of them since their childhood.
And few people know or ask who taught them and how great the services their teachers rendered for their successful career were.
As they have selflessly devoted themselves to their disciples' development without expecting any reward, the teachers have never thought of, or tried to take, their share in their old students' feats: for the sole reason that they used to be their students, the teachers take great pleasure and pride of life.
Teachers are the benefactors all other people in this country owe heartfelt thanks, and the best of the patriots who deserve to be put on the high platform of honour, which we build with such a deep emotion, before anyone else.
This is the true profile of the educators of our country that everyone ought to know, remember and hold in the highest respect.
Availing myself of this meaningful opportunity, I would like to offer the highest tribute and thanks to all educational workers across the country who chose the honourable yet challenging career of teacher for themselves and keep their sacred posts with an ennobling sense of responsibility and by dint of their lofty personality.
Also, I extend warm thanks and encouragement to all the educators of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) who, as champions of the right to national education, stoutly bring up the rising generations of the Korean community and Chongryon with their invariable patriotic-minded determination and resolute struggle in the alien land.
And I highly appreciate exemplary support organizations and officials who are making all unsparing, sincere efforts to strengthen the educational foundations true to the Party’s educational policy.
The venue of this conference is now overflowing with sincere wishes from not only the students, disciples and their parents but also all families in this country that have relations with schools.
This is because the teachers are entrusted with the task of training the beloved children and the descendants who will be born and grow without interruption will be trained by them.
We are now etching the 15th grand meeting of teachers in the history of its kind, but I do not think that any of the previous conferences is on a par with the current one as the teachers have greeted it honourably and proudly with the priceless fruits dedicated to the country and the achievements recognized by their fellow people.
When changes and innovations are taking place in all sectors as our socialist construction is in the period of unprecedented transformation, the educational sector is undergoing a truly dramatic change in the wide realm of system and structure, content and method, conditions and environment, and public interest and support.
Considering that the qualitative change, which presents a sharp contrast between the past and the present, has taken place in only a few years, instead of in one decade or two, it can be called a revolution.
It is just you, participants in this conference, and all other educators across the country who opened the prelude to a gigantic transformation aimed at creating the most advanced education and have elevated education to today’s level in the present era of pursuing still higher civilization.
Truly ennobling and laudable are the patriotic enthusiasm, sense of mission for the times and communist traits that our educators have displayed in the effort to achieve the goal and milestone of building an educational power and a talented nation, as planned by the Workers’ Party of Korea.
As it is the first-ever, unprecedentedly ambitious goal after our country’s founding, the educators must have faced many unfamiliar, formidable tasks to deal with, and often found themselves almost crumbling in exhaustion, but they have been paving their way strenuously to this day in the face of difficulties with the resolution and enthusiasm to attain the goal at all costs.
I believe anyone present here has unforgettable stories of those days and honourable memories of their hard work which is worth being regarded as happiness and pride of life.
The traits and qualities cultivated, and the experience and lessons learned with great efforts through trying ordeals, are truly invaluable as they will serve as strong support for successes in the revolution which will continue hereafter.
Our Party and country derive the greatest source of their strength from the ranks of revolutionary teachers who have an ennobling spirit, high intelligence and firm self-confidence.
Comrades,
Education acts as a bridge which links the past of a country and nation with its present and future by dint of spirit and knowledge.
In fact, thanks to the consistent policy of attaching importance to education and the advantageous socialist educational system, we have written a glorious history and come to demonstrate such dignity and national power as of today and are making a vigorous advance towards a more prosperous and powerful future.
Our education has trained and put forward powerful forces that cherish the revolutionary ideology and spirit of patriotism which remain unchanged even with the passage of time and that are possessed of noble ethics and morality and comprehensive knowledge. Its baton should be firmly carried forward in the future, too.
The future of this country can be entrusted only to the talented personnel who have embodied the great history and traditions of the country and the people, who have absorbed the intelligence and civilization attained by mankind, who cherish an ambition to make their country powerful and rich, and who possess the abilities to realize it.
At present, our education sector is going through a very responsible and critical stage.
From this year our education, based on the success achieved in the course of implementing the first universal 12-year compulsory education programme, is implementing the second programme, and the higher education sector has definitely entered a stage of evolution, different from the previous ones.
At this point of time when our education is taking a new course, only when every work directly linked with educational development is planned in a far-sighted way and implemented to the letter, can we reach the level we set, while adding greater resilience to state building.
The correct effort for education is the investment in the future, a stepping stone for future development, and a guarantee for everything we pursue as an ideal.
We have so far laid the foundation to attain the goal we set for placing our education in the front rank of the world. From now on, we should produce the definite fruit to present the clear full picture of the most advanced and excellent education, and surely succeed in the educational revolution in the new era which we launched with determination for the future of the country and the revolution.
In this sense, it can be said that this conference has been convened at a very appropriate time, as it will analyze and review the overall educational work and discuss the practical issues for spurring the new qualitative development of education.
Comrade educators,
It is the ideal and will of our Party to make ours the best education that everyone is envious of and wants to get, the world-class education that dynamically leads the effort for achieving the prosperity of the country.
The Party and the state have entrusted the important affair decisive of the future of the country to you, comrades, our teachers.
Educators are the designers and builders of the mainstay of the state and the revolution and the motive force of the educational revolution.
When they remain faithful to their duty with an awareness that every teaching plan and every second and every minute of the lessons and lectures they give serve as the light illuminating the future and the nourishment for growing a large number of talented personnel, the educational revolution in the new era will get an ever stronger driving force with each passing day.
Students' performances at school are evaluated by their teachers but the latter’s achievements are measured by the footprints of their students’ life.
Educators should be the teachers who train new generations to be the pillars, who will shoulder the future of the country, by dint of their noble personality traits that will remain forever as a textbook of genuine life and their academic prestige every student truly admires and appreciates.
Schools may be different in campus size and number of students, but all our schools should train all the students of new generations to be faithful and kind-hearted persons who will become the pillars of the country and a source of pride of their families.
If our educators take care of and lead all their students with affection of a mother who devotes more sincerity to a bad child than a good one, then we will feel at ease about the future.
Comrades,
The value of education, the soil where the country’s best resources grow and the motive force of national development, cannot be measured in terms of money.
I reaffirm that education is the most important state affair and educators should be held in higher esteem than anyone else.
Many undertakings are being carried out in wide realms and lots of them require a great deal of effort. However, our Party and state will make unsparing efforts and show devotion to lead the progress of education and to support the teaching platform you are standing on.
I feel infinite strength and courage to push forward with the sacred cause of educational revolution from the passion pervading this venue and your dignified manner.
As trustworthy teachers like you are taking charge of our education, it will be everlasting as the cradle that brings dignity and mightiness to the country and a base for shaping a prosperous and civilized future.
I repeatedly request all our educators to fulfil their sacred mission and defend their blessed appellation amid boundless respect and affection of all the fellow people of this country.
Fully convinced that this conference will achieve great success that all the people ardently expect and hope for, I declare the 15th National Conference of Teachers open. -0-