Report from the East German Embassy to North Korea, Plenum of the North Korean Workers' Party on 18 July 1967

SED Central Committee

Department of International Relations

SAPMO-BA, Berlin

[GDR Embassy to the DPRK]

Pyongyang, 14 August 1967

[To:]

1. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department Far East /2
2. SED Central Committee, Department International Relations

Dear Comrades!

In addition to our information from 4 August 1967 about the most recent KWP plenum we send you today the translation of the Rodong Sinmun commentary from 18 July 1967 about “The Correctness of our Party Course of Parallel Implementation of the Build-Up of Economy and Defense”. We were not able to send this commentary together with the information [of 4 August 1967] because the translation had not been completed yet.

We want to emphasize especially the following aspects:

1. The commentary clearly demonstrates that economic development of the DPRK gets increasingly subordinated to the interests of the country's defense.

2. The commentary strongly emphasizes the role of Kim Il Sung in working out and implementing the course of parallel development of economy and defense. This text makes very clear that any attempt to modify or change this course will be seen as a confrontation against Kim Il Sung.

3. The commentary is supposed to contain some excerpts from Kim Il Sung's speech at the recent plenum. This refers to the literal quotes on pages 5, 10, 11, and 13. Although they are listed as verbal statements of Kim Il Sung, source references made for all other literal quotes in the commentary are missing in these cases.

4. There are slight differences between the quotes we provided in our information [of 4 August 1967] and the translation attached herewith. This is because, when we drafted our information, we used the shortened version of the commentary from the Russian-language information bulletin of the DPRK news agency.

Overall, the commentary confirms the tendencies we outlined in our information about the KWP plenum.

[signed]

Jarck

1^st Secretary

Appendix

[17 pages as mentioned above; not included]