North Korea’s main party daily the Rodong Sinmun on Wednesday urged the country to further push towards “self-reliance” as a means to achieve “greater victory” and overcome pressure from international sanctions.

The political essay (Jongron), published to mark Thursday’s 74th anniversary of the foundation of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), stressed that the DPRK was the only country to have existed “for decades under tenacious and persistent sanctions of hostile forces.”

“The atrocities of hostile forces, who try to crush our Republic to death, ran at its height for the last seven and eight years,” the essay, written