What is the strategic significance of the Battle of Pochonbo?
Its significance lies not in that it killed a few Japanese aggressors, but in that it showed the Korean people were not dead, but alive and it threw out revolutionary rays of hope which inspired them with the confidence that they could defeat Japanese imperialism if they fought it. The Battle of Pochonbo declared to the whole world: The Korean people are resisting Japanese imperialism; they do not accept the notion that Korea and Japan are one; the Japanese imperialists and the Koreans are not of the same ancestry; the Koreans will not join the Japanese imperialists in invading China; Koreans will not abandon their mother tongue, nor will they change their surnames into Japanese ones; the Korean people are not dead but are alive; and they can defeat the Japanese imperialists if they fight them. This is the strategic significance of the Battle of Pochonbo. Herein lies the historic significance of the Battle of Pochonbo.
KIM IL SUNG
