His Trace at Panmunjom

The Korean situation was the most critical in the mid-1990s. Misjudging that they could knock down the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the imperialist allied forces headed by the US spread the theory on the possible collapse of the DPRK in three days, three months or three years, and unusually intensified their “threat” and “blockade.”

The south Korean authorities, overwhelmed with glee, tried to make a chance for “unification by absorption,” running amok for aggression. Worse still, the economic condition of the Korean people was the worst because of consecutive natural disasters year after year.

At this juncture, on the early morning of November 24, 1996, Chairman Kim Jong Il said he was going to Panmunjom. Officials stood in his way, for they couldn’t let him go to the dangerous place with a company of a few officials, where the two opposite sides were confronted with arms aiming at each other.

However, the Chairman left for the front, saying that he had to go to inspect Panmunjom in any case to encourage the people and soldiers in this tense situation. Saying that he knew the officials must be more tired than him, he called upon them to go through the difficulties together.

The Chairman drove a long way and arrived at Panmunjom. At that time it was so foggy there that they couldn’t see even an inch ahead. Deep silence with fog around seemed to  add  to  the  tense  situation.  Kim Jong Il first walked to a newly erected monument inscribed with a model of President Kim Il Sung’s signature reading “Kim Il Sung July 7, 1994”.

Scrutinizing the letters carefully, the Chairman said that Panmunjom was not only a historical place where the Korean people and the Korean People’s Army soldiers had defeated the US imperialists, the first of its kind for the US in its history of warfare, but also a place symbolizing the national division; so he, with a single desire to transform the symbol of division into a symbol of reunification, had suggested setting up the monument inscribed with an autograph of the President in honour of his exploits for the cause of national reunification, in the place where a number of activists for reunification from home and abroad gathered every year. And he added that the signature was short, but that its meaning was great and sublime.

After going round the Panmun House he went to the monument again, where he said that the President, who had worked heart and soul for the reunification of the country, had spent busy hours working to bring a reunified country to the whole nation in the last days of his life, before passing away unexpectedly just after making his last autograph to the document, and that the monument was reminding him of many things. Then he continued that the historic document signed by the President at the close of his life was impregnated with his strong will, faith and conviction of the reunification.

Looking round them, the Chairman, reminding that the President had said in his lifetime that his best gift for our people was national reunification, said that he would give a reunified country to the Korean people without fail true to the President’s intention.

Hearing the news much later that Chairman Kim Jong Il inspected Panmunjom on the frontline on the early morning of Sunday, the enemy was very surprised, for they had been watching every movement of the DPRK with their artificial reconnaissance satellite in the sky. At that time, the US and south Korean authorities ran amok to know why he had been there and what he had done there.

Later, a US officer, recollecting that time, lamented, “I felt as if I were standing on an A-bomb just before explosion. It seemed Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il brought fog with him using his trick. It was a mystery indeed.” Foreign media reported, “Kim Jong Il’s inspection of Panmunjom pierced a sword into the heart of the US” and “It seemed a north Korean A-bomb was about to explode under the foot of the Americans in a minute.”