Yeonpung Rest House was near Yeonpung Reservoir. One of Kim Il Sung's private villas was there, and another one for cadres of the Party. Not only that; a direct line to Pyongyang had been installed, too. From 1972, I started doing my research at Yeonpung Rest House.

Kim Il Sung's brother-in-law was one of my students, so I never expected that he would go against me, despite his unfavorable feelings towards Kim Yong Won.

Within the Archive Office, younger secretaries were fighting, under the protection of Kim Il Sung's brother-in-law, against the chief and the vice chief. The dispute ended when Kim Il Sung himself attended a cell meeting and sided with his brother-in-law, appointing a new chief and vice chief of the office.

I asked Kim Il Sung to downgrade the former vice chief to the level of guidance officer and let me hire him as my assistant. I got his permission, but the younger secretaries, led by Kim’s brother-in-law, remained very hostile. Even though they treated me as their teacher to my face, they would speak ill of me behind my back. They must have thought that I might manipulate Kim Il Sung's documents and put their positions at risk.

I wasn't like that, so I let them do whatever they wanted, but their opposition, which seemed trivial at first, soon became a big obstacle to building my new philosophical principles. I had already taken the business of theoretically systemizing the Juche ideology based on human-centered philosophical principles quite far.

I had produced writings such as “People Are Social Beings with Independence and Creativity,” “Basic Principles of Social Development,” “Outlook of Life” and many others, which were revised from dialectical materialism based on human-centered philosophical principles.

I reported my achievements to Kim Il Sung, but I did not hear anything back from him. I asked his escort secretary about it, and he told me that Kim Il Sung always brought my writings with him but was not able to read them. I realized that it must have been difficult for him to understand things based on new philosophical principles since he had never received an education in philosophy.

Therefore, I suggested that I would explain dialectical materialism in order to help him understand philosophical principles better. But he said it would take time to understand philosophy, so he told me to put my efforts into explaining political issues. After that incident I focused on Juche philosophy.

In the summer of 1972, Kim Il Sung asked me to go on vacation with him. Secretaries from the Archive Office also accompanied him, and it was September by the time the summer vacation ended.

One day after we arrived back in Pyongyang, a Japanese daily, Mainichi Shimbun, asked Kim Il Sung for an interview. The topic of the interview was to be the “domestic and international policies of the Chosun Workers’ Party based on the Juche ideology.” Kim Il Sung told them he would first give written answers and then meet them afterwards. I took charge of writing the answers for him.

On September 17, 1972, my writing based on new philosophical principles was published under the title, “Regarding Our Party's Juche Ideology and a Few Issues on the Republic Government's Domestic and International Policies.” For the first time in history, I had defined the Juche ideology in my writing and revealed the domestic and international policies of the Chosun Workers’ Party based on human-centered and social historical principles.

When my writing was published, it received a fairly good response. However, some people were unimpressed.

The reason why I had hired the vice-chief of the Archive Office and the Theory Director of the Propaganda Department as my assistants was to quell the hostility and jealousy of the group of people who would have the right to speak on my works. However, Kim Yong Won, Kim Il Sung’s cousin, was brought back to Pyongyang for going hunting and the Vice Chief of the Archive Office was demoted for being opposed to Kim Il Sung’s brother-in-law and lost ground that way. Therefore, my initiative went down the drain, and thereafter I had to practice my new theories in a worsening position.