Pyongyang
Comrade Kim Il Sung, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of
Korea and Prime Minister of the Cabinet of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea:
On the 40th anniversary of the glorious founding of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army,
we would like to extend our warmest congratulations to you, and through you, to the
Workers' Party of Korea, the Korean Government, and the fraternal Korean people.
Forty years ago, the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, personally founded by you, was
the first revolutionary armed force representing the national aspirations of the entire Korean
people. Under your direct leadership, this heroic people's armed force, holding high the
banner of the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle and closely relying on the broad masses
of the Korean people, bravely and unyieldingly persevered in the anti-Japanese armed
struggle during the arduous years against Japanese imperialism, achieving remarkable feats
for the cause of Korea's independence and liberation.
Since the liberation of Korea, the Korean people and the People's Army have inherited and
carried forward the glorious traditions and revolutionary spirit of the Korean People's
Revolutionary Army. They have dared to fight and to win in the struggle against U.S.
imperialism and its running dogs. In the cause of socialist revolution and socialist
construction, they have forged ahead with the vigor of a Thousand-Li Horse, building their
homeland into greater prosperity and strength.
The heroic struggle of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army not only wrote a glorious
chapter in the history of the Korean people's revolutionary struggle, but also provided
valuable proletarian internationalist support to the Chinese people's War of Resistance
Against Japanese Aggression. In the long struggle against the common enemy, the Chinese
and Korean peoples forged a profound fighting friendship. This friendship, forged with blood
in arduous struggles and founded on Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, is
therefore unbreakable.
May the fighting friendship and revolutionary unity between the Chinese and Korean
peoples endure forever. May the Korean people continue to achieve new victories in their
just struggle against U.S. imperialism and Japanese militarism and for the independent and
peaceful reunification of their motherland.
Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Zhou Enlai, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China



Beijing, April 24, 1972