Kim Jong Un Tells Youth ‘Steel-Like Fighting Strength’ Is Source of National Pride

Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s chairman of the State Affairs Commission, met with young people and urged them to play a larger role in advancing the state and strengthening loyalty to the system.
 
According to Yonhap, the Korean Central News Agency reported May 3 that Kim met the previous day with participants in the 11th congress of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, a youth organization affiliated with the ruling Workers’ Party, and posed for a commemorative photo.
 
KCNA said Kim was accompanied by Workers’ Party Central Committee secretaries Kim Jae Ryong, Ri Il Hwan and Ju Chang Il, as well as Kim Song Gi, director of the Korean People’s Army General Political Bureau.
 
Kim said “new and vast tasks of struggle” facing the party and the revolution require “more active advance and courageous roles” from young people, urging them to take part more actively in party work.
 
He praised what he called youths’ heightened patriotism and revolutionary zeal, saying, “The noble spirit and steel-like fighting strength of our youth — found in no other country in the world — are a proud symbol of our national power.”
 
The 11th congress, held for the first time in five years, took place in Pyongyang from April 28 to 30.
 
KCNA described the meeting as an important step in making the youth league “an elite organization” and a “loyal vanguard” of the Workers’ Party.
 
The youth league is one of the party’s four major mass organizations, along with the General Federation of Trade Unions, the Socialist Women’s Union and the Union of Agricultural Workers.
 
After concluding the 9th party congress earlier this year, North Korea has been holding congresses of mass organizations, including leadership reshuffles, to reinvigorate them as it pursues goals under a new five-year plan.