The ideological and mental source of the Juche idea is the idea of “Aim High” and its premise is Marxism-Leninism.

    The ideological and mental source of the Juche idea is the idea of “Aim High” put forward by Kim Hyong Jik, the father of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung and an outstanding leader of the anti-Japanese national liberation movement in our country.

    “Aim High” means what it says.

    The idea of “Aim High” is a revolutionary and patriotic idea originated from the historical lessons of the Korean people’s arduous struggle to restore the country. This idea implies an ardent love for one’s own country, nation and people, an absolute trust in the strength of the popular masses and a thorough-going spirit of independence that one must always win the nation’s independence by one’s own effort.

    With the spirit of ardent love for country, nation and the people and with an ideology of attaching importance to the popular masses and an ideology of self-independence as the most precious sustenance, the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung embarked on the road of revolution and went among the people to seek for a new path for the revolution.

    In this course, the great leader found two starting points of the Juche idea. One of them is that the masters of the revolution are the popular masses and when one goes among the people to educate and mobilize them one will be able to register victory in the revolution. Another starting point is that the revolution should be carried out not by anyone’s approval or instruction but by one’s own conviction and on one’s own responsibility, and all problems arising in the revolution and construction should be solved in an independent and creative way.

    When the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung met the delegation of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance of Peru visiting the DPRK from the late June to the early July 1983, he said that, in the first period of his revolutionary activities, he viewed critically the actual situation of the Korean nationalist movement and initial communist movement and felt keenly that the revolution should be waged on the strength of one’s own people and that one’s own problems should be solved on one’s own responsibility. And he further said that his father, too, had much revolutionary influence on him conceiving such idea.

    Like this, the idea of “Aim High!” served as a source of the Juche idea that is a revolutionary idea of the masses based on the principle that the masses are masters of the revolution and construction and the motive force of the revolution and construction, an independent revolutionary idea based on the principle that people in each country are the masters and the motive force of their own revolution.

    The ideological and theoretical premise for the Juche idea is Marxism-Leninism.

    The great leader was engrossed in reading books on Marxism-Leninism not only because of taste for learning and spirit of inquiry but also from the standpoint of finding answers to the questions of in what way one can defeat the Japanese imperialists to regain the country and eradicate inequality of society to make the working people enjoy a happy life.

    In this course, the great leader sympathized with a socialist ideology embodied in Marxism-Leninism, but he saw through its limitation of an age, its historical limitation. And through a profound analysis of it, he found new principles of revolution and built the frame of an independent revolutionary idea, the Juche idea.

    For this reason, the Juche idea is deeply connected with Marxism-Leninism that asserted to liquidate exploitation and oppression of man by man, eradicate all kinds of social inequality and build a socialist society where the broad working masses including working class enjoy a free and equal life.

    However, this never means that the Juche idea is an idea which inherited directly some principles of Marxism-Leninism.

    Though the Juche idea is an idea connected with Marxism-Leninism, it is a new, original revolutionary idea which gave answers to the demands of a historical age different from one of Marx and Lenin, and was evolved and systematized with its own peculiar principles.