Date: Berlin, May 20, 1984.
Source: "Speech of Comrade Erich Honecker at the
Banquet Given in Honour of Comrade Kim Il Sung",
in Everlasting Fraternal Friendship. The Great Leader Kim Il Sung's Official
Goodwill Visits to the Soviet Union and Other European Socialist Countries (Foreign
Languages Press, Pyongyang, 1984), pages 40-44.
Esteemed Comrade Kim II Sung,
Esteemed Korean comrades,
Esteemed comrades and friends,
I should like once again to give a warm welcome to esteemed Comrade Kim II Sung on his visit to our country.
We receive you as an envoy of Korean class brothers with whom we have long established solid friendship and maintained militant fraternity.
Comrade Kim II Sung, our people appreciate you as an outstanding fighter who is dedicated to the national and social emancipation of the Korean people and an indomitable fighter who is devoted to the maintenance and consolidation of peace against the imperialist policy of aggression and confrontation.
I recollect with pleasure my December 1977 visit to the land of the morning calm and to Pyongyang, a magnificent capital, which has been built on a large scale and is prospering as never before.
Today you are a guest of Berlin, our capital city, which is growing more beautiful with every passing day as a symbol of socialism which has become a reality in Germany.
I regard your revisit to the GDR as an event of the greatest significance in the relations between our Parties, states and peoples.
Your visit demonstrates, in striking fashion, our internationalist relationship, the feelings of real friendship, mutual respect and mutual support between the communists and working people of the two countries.
Your visit to our Republic and other fraternal countries will contrib¬ute to strengthening existing socialism.
Our talks are also inspired by this spirit.
These talks reflect our determination to devote everything to maintaining and ensuring peace and to strengthen and extend our relations in many spheres.
The same can be said of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation which we are going to sign.
As you said when we were exchanging views today, the conclusion of this treaty will be a symbol of encouragement to peoples.
The impressive, overwhelming success which the working people of the DPRK have achieved in socialist construction under the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea headed by esteemed Comrade Kim II Sung, is widely known to our people. Your industrious and energetic working people have quickly healed the tragic wounds of war caused by the imperialist aggression.
The American military boasted that they would bring the DPRK to complete ruin, but they miscalculated. This has been proved by the continued existence of the DPRK.
The courageous Korean people always enjoy the solidarity and support of the fraternal countries. They have recently effected the country’s socialist industrialization and have developed agriculture.
The brotherly Korean people are successfully carrying out the decisions of the Sixth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Second Seven-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy.
Under the leadership of respected Comrade Kim II Sung, the Workers’ Party of Korea has proved once again the vitality of scientific socialism by creatively applying Marxism-Leninism.
Life in the GDR is flourishing in all fields. The socialist state of the workers and peasants, the first to be born in Germany, will soon commemorate its 35th anniversary.
This will give our working people a due sense of pride in the success they have already achieved and inspire them with determination to devote everything to the prosperity of the socialist fatherland.
The line adopted at the Tenth Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany for the well-being of the people is being carried out with thoroughness.
Our economy which is making steady progress this year, too, bears witness to this. The correctness of the policy of combining economic and social measures has been proved, and this encourages the working people to display creative initiative. They fully understand that success in their work contributes to strengthening the position of socialism.
Esteemed comrades,
The most aggressive circles of imperialism, US imperialism in particular, continue to pursue the policy of confrontation which threatens peace.
Their policy is characterized by the buildup of armament, thermo¬nuclear weapons in particular, the manoeuvres for flagrant interference in the affairs of other countries and the worsening of relations among nations.
It is well known, the two world wars broke out in Europe.
We must do our best to prevent a new war, a nuclear war, which may exterminate mankind.
Contrary to the wishes of the people, NATO began to deploy US weapons for forestalling attack in West Europe which will bring international tension to the point of crisis and increase the danger of nuclear war. In this situation it is more imperative than ever before to intensify the struggles for peace, arms control and disarmament.
The GDR and the FRG bear a heavy responsibility for peace, in view of their past history and their present situation.
War must not recur in Germany. It contradicts this basic principle that the FRG continues to permit the deployment of Pershing-2 missiles and becomes a US nuclear launching pad.
At many talks with the leading politicians of the FRG parties in and out of power we have explained the urgency and propriety of the proposal made by the Warsaw Treaty member nations.
The consistent peace policy of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries gives the people hope in the current international situation which has reached a dangerous stage because this policy shows them the possibility of halting the imperialist moves for war.
For this reason, the GDR is making every effort to strengthen the socialist community and its economic and military power and consolidate its unity and solidarity.
The GDR regards it as the most important task to maintain peace and prevent nuclear holocaust and is ready to unite with all the countries which act accordingly.
The world strategy of the United States which expands its military bases and deploys mass destruction nuclear weapons in Western Europe and Asia, in the FRG and south Korea, is giving rise to protests from all sober-minded people.
The DPRK and the GDR stand on the boundaries between socialism and capitalism in the East and West and on the outposts of the struggle for peace.
We highly appreciate the dear Korean comrades who support the constructive proposals of the Warsaw Treaty member nations for the preservation of peace and for the termination of the arms race in Europe. We join you in demanding the withdrawal of US armed forces from south Korea.
We support your struggle to reunify your country peacefully and on a democratic basis, free from foreign interference. Every year the US forces in south Korea and those from elsewhere have joint exercises with the south Korean puppet army, revealing the aggressive and adventurous nature of Washington’s policy in the eyes of the world.
We stand by you, dear Korean comrades, in the struggle against the plot of the United States to form an imperialist military alliance which involves Japan and south Korea.
The effective proposals of the DPRK which are motivated by a high sense of responsibility for maintaining and strengthening peace, are making a constructive contribution to easing the tension in the Korean peninsula and to safeguarding peace in that region and throughout the rest of the world; they have won universal support.
We support the DPRK’s proposal for tripartite talks aimed at replacing the Armistice Agreement signed between the DPRK and the USA in 1953 with a peace agreement and for adopting a non-aggression declaration between the DPRK and south Korea.
Esteemed Comrade Kim II Sung,
Dear Korean comrades and friends,
Our two Parties, two countries and two peoples are intimate comrades-in-arms who have been trained in all the trials of class struggle.
A street in Hamhung City which was rebuilt with the help of our technicians in the initial years of reconstruction bears the name of Comrade Wilhelm Pieck whom we can never forget. The Children’s Union organization of a school in that city was named after “Ernst Thaelmann” like its counterpart in our Republic.
Every year the members of such children’s organizations in the GDR and many other countries spend their vacation happily in our Republic at the International Young Pioneers’ Camp which was named after you, esteemed Comrade Kim II Sung.
These are a few examples out of many. They show us how closely our two peoples are united, how they understand each other and how firm their solidarity is.
We can truthfully say that the relations between our two Parties, two countries and two peoples are developing steadily in all fields.
Cooperation between our two peoples is continuously strengthening in favour of peace and socialism.
I am convinced that your present visit to our country will open up a new phase in the development of our relations.
We have the same firm resolve to develop further friendship and cooperation between our two Parties, two countries and two peoples on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
I propose to you, dear comrades, a toast to an unbreakable militant fraternity between the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the Workers’ Party of Korea and brotherly friendship and cooperation between our two countries and two peoples based on Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, to new success in the struggle for peace and socialism, to the good health and long life of esteemed Comrade Kim II Sung, and to the health of other Korean comrades and friends who are present here.