The following is the full text of the speech made by the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un at the opening ceremony of the military hardware exhibition Defence Development-2024 on Nov. 21:

Dear comrades and friends, 

In a stirring period, when the precious successes achieved in various fields of state work and socialist construction through a vigorous struggle in 2024 are approaching us, an exhibition has opened here today, introducing the successes gained in the defence sector this year.  

First, I extend warm thanks to the persons in the relevant sectors and others, who have made efforts for the preparation of this exhibition.

The exhibition hall is really wonderful.

Seeing the exhibition hall encapsulating remarkable development of the defence capability of our state that has given a new feeling in less than one year, we can give a satisfactory appraisal to the work of the defence industry for making a steady and rapid growth.

I extend thanks to Full Generals Kim Jong Sik and Jang Chang Ha, Chairman Ko Pyong Hyon, Presidents Kim Yong Hwan and Jon Il Ho and other leading cadres in the defence sector, the defence sci-tech group and the officials and workers at the munitions industry enterprises under the Second Economy Commission, who have made greater contributions than others for achieving remarkable successes in the development of our armed forces every year.  

In recent years fundamental changes have been brought about in our defence sci-tech field, and many knotty problems in this sector have been resolved correctly by our internal forces, our defence sci-tech group. 

While witnessing the process of these changes in person, I have become more confident of the practical abilities of this group and confirmed the promising nature and inexhaustible potential of our Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that is justifiably matchless in the sector of the brain industry.

I am confident that this is an outcome of the perfect combination of the good qualities of our nation with the policy of training the group of brains in a correct way and enlisting them in a concentrated way.  

The weapon systems on display here all differ in their missions, but I attach special meaning to the fact that they are crystallization of the modern defence sci-tech strength and economic potential of the defence industry, and that these have been developed by our own resources, ie our internal forces. 

Great changes have taken place in recent years, indeed.

All these we are seeing today are a proud record of the successes achieved again in a year in the defence industry revolution in the new era, which our Party has planned and is dynamically pushing forward. And with this, we have demonstrated on a larger scale the righteousness and vitality of our Party’s idea of self-reliant defence–defending the state, the people and the revolutionary cause by our own efforts–and made a decisive stride in attaining the goal of building up the defences, advanced by the Eighth Congress of the Party.  

What makes the current exhibition weightier in the practical aspects and more significant in the political and military aspects is that these exhibits are fruition gathered in defence development by exercising our right to self-defence on the principle of countering power with power and of head-on contest in 2024, when the hostile attitude of the United States and its allied forces for confrontation and their adventurist military records exceeded the peak year level. 

These brilliant successes we have achieved in the defence sector year after year afford us glimpses at its development potential and speed, which fairly convince us that we are possessed of definite capability and a guarantee for security to cope proactively with not only the various threats the enemies are posing to us now but also the security threats we are likely to face in future. 

Our defence industry has at last been upgraded as a cutting-edge one that can offer the most suitable and thoroughgoing support for military activities as required in each stage, each period and each situation of our revolution; it has also been built up as a strategic fortress that firmly guarantees the position of our state as a world-class military power. 

Our cutting-edge defence sci-tech sector and the technological foundations of our munitions economy are also exerting important effects on, and playing the leading role in, transforming the structure of the national industry as a whole.

Comrades,

The military hardware on display here represent what we have achieved this year, 2024, and yet, until they presented their majestic appearance here, they witnessed arduous courses accompanied by painstaking and pioneering research work in renewing each of their records, whose value can hardly be measured by the lapse of time alone. 

We can compare these military hardware with world-class ones of their kinds in terms of design, manufacturing skills, grade of materials or combat and technical specifications, but it is hard to fully estimate their true value.  

In an attempt to suffocate and destroy our self-reliant defence industry completely, the hostile forces have pursued unprecedentedly cruel sanctions and blockade against us, leaving us in difficulty and in short supply of everything. But the Party and the people have adhered to the view that strengthening the defence capabilities is the supreme expression of their patriotism and consciousness of the revolution, and fully aware of their great expectations, our defence sci-tech group and workers in the munitions industry have worked with devotion to live up to them, regarding doing so as their duty. Their ennobling spirit is embodied in the weapons here.  

For this reason, our military hardware, in terms of the righteous purpose and character, the indomitable spiritual strength and unheard-of fighting spirit embodied in them, has thousands of times greater–utterly incomparable–power than those the military-industrial complexes of imperialist countries manufacture in pursuance of massacre, destruction and economic profit. 

Comrades, 

Today our Republic has risen as a powerful axis exerting an influence on political and military developments around the world. It owes this status to the absolute dignity and strength it has gained thanks to its revolutionary ideology, cause of justice and perseverance. 

However, without the extraordinary wisdom and courage and undying perseverance that would surpass those which we have displayed in clearing a thorny path and going through the successive stages by leaps and bounds, we can neither cope with the ever-changing reality nor guarantee our foreseeable future. 

As we are witnessing now, our planet is in the grip of confusion and violence, the worst ever since the end of the Second World War. 

The United States is growing more brazen in trying to place the whole world under the sphere of its interests, and the consequent contradictions and confrontations of every hue have passed all critical points to develop into too unjust, horrible wars and catastrophic disasters. 

This is literally a pandemonium, in which some reckless and high-handed powers violate international norms, regardless of their obvious purpose of, and orientation towards, respecting the territories and sovereignty of all countries and nations and defending global peace and security. 

Nearly a century ago, fascisms in Europe and Asia colluded with each other to throw the world into turmoil. Likewise, the reactionary forces in the West and East, allied under the baton of the US imperialists, are now attempting to establish a rapacious and tyrannical world order. This is a present reality. 

In particular, the United States is expanding the nuke-sharing military alliance system to contain our Republic’s rapid rise, which is an insurmountable obstacle in the way of implementing its policy of dominationism, and to retain and increase its influence over its vassal countries. On the other hand, it is going to great lengths to ratchet up the military pressure and provocations against our country by deploying around it a vast array of strategic strike means and troops of its allies. 

The Korean peninsula has never been under such a critical situation as the present, in which there is a growing likelihood of a most destructive thermonuclear war breaking out amid the acutely dangerous confrontation between the belligerents. 

Another fact that we must point out here is that this extreme tension in the peninsula is by no means something caused by the misunderstanding of each other’s rival. 

We already did everything possible in the bilateral negotiations with the United States, and what we were eventually convinced of was not the superpower’s will to co-exist with us but its domineering stand and unchangeably aggressive and hostile policy towards the DPRK. 

American politicians still say, as they are wont to do, that the United States has never been hostile. This odd-sounding rhetoric has long been rejected by the world as anything but plausible. 

The US imperialists’ and their vassal forces’ wild ambition to obliterate our ideology and system at any cost and destroy our people to the last one has never changed. Rather, they are recklessly manoeuvring to realize this ambition in this century. 

In the present world where military conflicts are growing rampant, a country which gave up building its own defence capability cannot be called a sovereign state; a weak country will fall victim to tyranny and is bound to be ravaged by foreign invasion. 

All facts convince us, with each passing moment of the day, that the greatest defence capability with which to overpower the enemies is just the key to safeguarding peace and guaranteeing durable stability and development. 

Our Party and government will never remain an onlooker to any encroachment upon our state’s sphere of security, and we make clear once again that we will never lower the weight of military balance on our side by ourselves. 

We will go on with resolute actions for removing all manner of military threats to our state and people and thoroughly break the enemies’ will to use armed forces by steadily developing our defence capability and exercising our legitimate right to self-defence.

Comrades,

It is an indispensable and consistent demand of our Party’s line of building up the self-reliant defence to bolster up our strength without interruption and limit and steadily raise the tremendous capabilities of deterring and fighting a war to defend the sovereignty, interests and security environment of our state in a responsible manner.

The enemies, too, keep whetting their sword for evolution.

Accordingly, only when we make a more unequalled leap forward can we prevent military conflicts with the enemies and take the strategic initiative in controlling the political and military situation.

We should not content ourselves with the present mightiness but push for infinite mightiness. In this aspiration and will lie the true mightiness of our state and the sure guarantee for its security.

Our main purpose of holding this military hardware exhibition is not merely to look back on the history or to congratulate ourselves on the current level. 

It is to highlight more clearly the necessity for us to step up the important change of defence capability and markedly enhance its strategic position and role by bringing about leaps forward in the self-reliant defence industry at any cost.

I think that as long as there exist the forces attempting to infringe upon our sovereignty and the enemies persist in their vicious moves, we should continue to upgrade various kinds of military hardware and make them cutting-edge as much as the security environment of our state requires us and as many as the changes in the current wars show us.

Given the new aspects of modern warfare and the enemies’ war tactics that are transforming in a dangerous way day after day, we should develop our defence capability more aggressively and limitlessly while promoting technological modernization of our army and equipping it with a larger number of powerful means.

Rapid development of science and technology is continuously transforming the world, and this transformation of enormous significance greatly affects the security of every country.

That it must acclimatize to the change of the objective world and cope with it rapidly and promptly is the character of the main duty and development orientation of our defence science sector today. 

Military capability should be constantly upgraded. 

Stagnation in increasing overwhelming military strength means the start of the defence capability becoming inferior.  

Our Party and government will show more concern to search for answers to this end, mapping out a greater number of long-term projects and implementing them actively. 

Comrades, 

To remain more faithful to the line of self-reliance in national defence, whose scientific accuracy and power have been clearly proved through the prolonged revolutionary practice, and make steady, invariable and more vigorous advance–herein lies the eternal security and future of our state and our people. 

Pioneering this road and the will to pioneer the road constitute our boundless worth of life, pride and honour.

Our Party and government will make all their efforts to increase more advanced capability of military technology, powerful military strength, thus safeguarding our glorious motherland, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, on the strength of reliable defence capability.

I hope that all those attending this event will have a pleasant time looking round the exhibition with due pride in our defence capability and with optimism for and confidence in the limitlessness of its development. 

Thank you.