Pyongyang, January 22 (KCNA) -- It has been 100 years since President Kim Il Sung made a 250-mile journey for national liberation in his teens with a pledge to liberate Korea from the Japanese imperialist aggressors.

True to his father's intention that a man born in Korea should know it well, the President was studying at Changdok School after making a 250-mile journey for learning in March 1923. In the course, he came to hear the news that his father was arrested again by the Japanese police.

With a determination to wage a life-and-death struggle with the enemies of his father and family and the Korean nation, he left Mangyongdae on January 22, 1925 to embark on the 250-mile journey for national liberation.

He arrived in the then Phophyong, Huchang County of North Phyongan Province, in 14 days. On a bank of the River Amnok in icy wind, he made a firm pledge not to return home again unless Korea became independent, looking at the mountains and rivers of the country groaning under the hooves of the Japanese imperialists.

The pledge made by the President on the day was a historic one to liberate the country at any cost and build a new independent people's world there without fail.

With this pledge, the President organized and waged the anti-Japanese revolutionary war to accomplish the historic cause of national liberation on August 15, 1945 and turned Korea into a socialist country, independent in politics, self-supporting in the economy and self-reliant in national defence. -0-