Today we celebrate the fifty-seventh anniversary of the March First Independence Movement. Compelled by the aspirations of our people that resounded throughout the world on that day in 1919 and moved by the patriotic spirit of our forefathers, we take this occasion to make a solemn and patriotic declaration, both at home and abroad, concerning democracy.

The division of Korea at the end of World War II shattered the hopes that had filled the hearts of our people at the time of Liberation from Japanese rule. This tragic division once more cast a dark shadow over the future of our nation. Yet to the end our people refused to give up their cherished hope. They rose up out of the ashes of the Korean War, they crushed the dictatorship of Syngman Rhee through the Righteous Uprising of April 19, and they reestablished in every heart the hope for realization of a free and democratic society.