Pyongyang, February 17 (KCNA) -- Senior Party and government officials of the DPRK visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun on Sunday, the 83rd birth anniversary of Chairman Kim Jong Il.

They included Pak Thae Song, Jo Yong Won and Choe Ryong Hae, members of the Presidium of the Political Bureau of the C.C., Workers' Party of Korea, and other senior Party and government officials, officials of the Party Central Committee, leading officials of ministries and national agencies and officials of armed forces organs.

The Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il, eternal leaders of our Party and people, lie in state, was wrapped in a solemn atmosphere.

Floral baskets in the name of the WPK Central Committee, the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK, the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK and the Cabinet of the DPRK were laid before the statues of the great leaders.

The visitors paid high tribute to the statues of the great leaders.

At the halls where Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il lie in state, the participants paid homage to them in humblest reverence.

All of them renewed their firm pledge to glorify forever the new period of comprehensive development of the state by fulfilling their important duties, entrusted by the Party and the people, in the first and forefront line of honorable struggle for the accomplishment of the grand revolutionary programme set forth by the Eighth Congress of the WPK, true to the ideas and leadership of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un. -0-