Letter from Enver Hoxha to Kim Il Sung

To: Comrade Kim Il Sung

General Secretary of the Central Committee of

The Korean Workers’ Party

Pyongyang

Honorable Comrade Kim Il Sung,

I received with exceptional pleasure your warm message of July 7, 1973, in which you inform in a friendly way the Albanian Labor Party Central Committee and the Government of the People’s Republic of Albania about the events taking place lately in Korea and about the new program you have unveiled for the peaceful reunification of your country.

I take this occasion to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the warm greetings you sent to the Albanian people, their party and government, as well as for the recognition of the support that they give to the just struggle of brotherly Korean people for the achievement of their high national aspirations.

We are happy that the relations of close friendship and cooperation between our two peoples, two parties, and two countries are successfully developing from one day to the next. These relations, which are embodied in the mutual assistance and support that our two peoples have given and continue to give to each other for the consolidation of the victories of socialism in the PR of Albania and the DPR of Korea, are highly valued by us and we are convinced that in the future they will be strengthened even more in the basis of the principles of Marxism – Leninism and of the proletarian internationalism.

The Albanian people and the ALP have deep feelings of love and respect for the brave, hardworking, and peace loving Korean people and are made immeasurably happy by the great victories that they, under the leadership of the Korean Workers’ Party, have achieved in all the socialist construction areas of the country and in the unceasing strengthening of the RDP of Korea.

The ALP and the Government of the PR of Albania understand well the legal preoccupation if the Korean Workers’ Party and the RDP of Korea about the charged situation created as a result of separation of the country and for the grave suffering that your compatriots are experiencing in South Korea under the double oppression and terror at the hands of the American imperialists and the South Korean authorities. They denounce with fervor the aggressive policies followed against the Korean people by the USA, which, now 20 years after the signing of the ceasefire agreement, continue to keep their occupation troops in South Korea, and have turned it into a colony and base of aggression against the RDP of Korea. The continuation of such a situation is an encroachment onto the sovereign rights if the Korean people, it causes them great suffering and pain, and is a serious threat to peace and security in the Korean Peninsula and the Far East.

The Korean people have an ancient, thousands-of-years history and it comprises one single people. It enjoys the irrefutable right to be once again reunited. Korea has been and it must once again be one, unified whole. The reunification of Korea is for the Korean people, in the South and in the North, a high historic task, which you will undoubtedly accomplish.

The Workers’ Party and the Government of the DPR of Korea have justly and continually given an importance of the first rate to the issue of the reunification of the country. They have waged and continue to wage a resolute and principled for the accomplishment of this great task of the entire Korean people. The program of 5 points presented by you on June 23 of this year based on the just objectives and tactics defined by the Korean Workers’ Party and the Government of the DPR of Korea for the achievement of the peaceful reunification of the country, is an important political act that contributes to the progress of the struggle of the Korean people for the realization of its sacred aspirations and a heavy blow to the American imperialists and their South Korean tools, which are trying to eternalize the division of Korea.

Your specific and timely proposals for the liquidation of the military confrontation and tension in Korea, for the achievement of an atmosphere of great national unity and of the multileveled cooperation between the South and the North, for the involvement of all the wider masses of the Korean people in the great patriotic work for the reunification of the fatherland, for the creation of a confederation of the two parts of Korea, and for their usage of a single name, the Confederative Republic of Korea, in the field of international relations attest to the goodwill of the DPR of Korea for the just solution of the Korean problem and clearly show who is really interested in the peace and unification of Korea and who is for war and division.

In the name of the Albanian people, the ALP CC, and the Government of the PR of Albania, allow me to express to you, and through you to the CC of the Korean Workers’ Party and the Government of the DPR of Korea our support for your program of 5 points, which serves the reunification of the entire Korean people into a single revolutionary front against the imperialism and the administration of Seoul and which opens new possibilities for the independent and peaceful solution of the Korean problem without any interference from outside.

I assure you that the Albanian people will forever stand alongside the brotherly Korean people in their struggle for the construction of socialism, the defense of the DPR of Korea, and the independent reunification of the country. By fulfilling, as always, its internationalist tasks, the PR of Albania will consistently support the just cause of the brotherly Korean people whether in the UN, or in other international forums, and will help at any chance for the fulfilling of its legal requests for the removal of the aggressive troops and the military bases of the Americans from South Korea, for ending once and for all every interference by the UN in the internal matters of the Korean people, and for the dispersal as soon as possible of the illegal Commission of the UN “for the Reunification and Reconstruction of Korea.”

Our party and government will forcibly unmask the devilish plan for the “Two Koreas” that seeks the legalization of the colonial domination of South Korea by the USA and the eternalizing of the division of Korea into two states. They will resolutely oppose every attempt to get the plant for the “Two Koreas” accepted by the UN, as well as every other intrigue that the American imperialism, alone or with the help of its collaborators, will weave to the detriment of the Korean people and the DPR of Korea. They will do all that they can to contribute to the strengthening of the international position of the DPR of Korea and its government as the only true representative of the Korean people.

I take this opportunity to deliver to you, and through you to the brotherly Korean people, the Korean Workers’ Party, and the Government of the DPR of Korea, the most friendly greetings and wishes for even greater successes in you work to the benefit of the brotherly Korean people and to the triumph of the cause of the revolution and socialism in the entire Korea.

[Signed]

Enver Hoxha

First Secretary of the Albanian Labor Party

Central Committee

Tirana, on August [illegible], 1973