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The Korean People's Revolutionary Army could defeat the Japanese imperialists, who were incomparable in numerical strength and technology, because it applied adroit guerrilla tactics.

The superb use of military force such as concentration, dispersion and movement according to circumstances, stealth, suddenness, promptness and resoluteness in combat actions, feint and allurement based on keen insights into the enemy’s action plans and the use of favourable terrain in combat actions are the general principles of guerrilla tactics advanced by General Kim Il Sung during the anti-Japanese armed struggle.

The battle on the Antu-Fusong border was a thrilling battle that shattered the myth of the mightiness of the Japanese imperialists who boasted of being “invincible” for the first time in the history of the guerrilla warfare and the battle to defend the Xiaowangqing guerrilla zone, recorded as the fiercest one of the battles to defend guerrilla zones in the history of the anti-Japanese armed struggle, was the one that dealt a devastating blow to the enemy troops, who were out in the “punitive operations” to attack the guerrilla base under cover of planes and artillery fire, through the tactics of combining skilful manoeuvres, surprise fire strike, assault, ambush and attack on the enemy in the rear.

The KPRA used a telescope tactic to win many battles. At the time, the Japanese imperialists were so great a loss by the tactic that they said in despair that the guerrillas were using singular methods of “appearing in an unexpected place at an unexpected moment and leaving no trace behind” and “rising into the sky and dipping into the ground”.

In the defensive battle of the Yaoyinggou guerrilla zone, the defenders created and applied active guerrilla tactics of forestalling the enemy from attack without waiting for them, wiping out them with a sudden blow in a position, destroying them by luring them to a favourable terrain, and striking them in succession with strong fire and fierce charges.

The guerrilla tactics also included those of attacking the enemy in the west after making sounds in the east, marching a long distance at a go, making them unable to know whether the guerillas soared into the sky or sank into the ground, using a small unit to lure a large enemy unit to tire and weaken it before dismembering and defeating it, pretending to go away but staying nearby and suddenly switching to a dispersed small-unit march from a large-unit march. Those tactics produced lots of legends, which were on every Korean’s lips.

At that time, the Japanese imperialists often howled that the strategy and tactics of the Communist army would make even gods weep and that the army fought a war by means of a war method which could not be found in any books on military science.