editorial

The DPRK people will soon celebrate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The WPK has followed the untrodden path for 80 years, bearing such legendary appellations as the great party, the Juche-type revolutionary party, the ever-victorious and iron-willed party, the most experienced and seasoned political general staff, the genuine people’s party and the motherly party, in which the uniformity and continuity of leadership have been perfectly ensured decade after decade.

The long journey made by the WPK was the unprecedented path of pioneering a road unknown in history and building a new world that humans have never seen and the continuation of hard fights against the outnumbering formidable enemies who staked their fate on the counter-revolution.

The editorial board of The Pyongyang Times introduces in chronological order the precious experience gained and immortal exploits performed by the WPK from the days 80 years ago when the cause of the party founding was achieved under the outstanding leadership of President Kim Il Sung, through the glorious years when it shined as a model of the revolutionary party building in the world under the care of Chairman Kim Jong Il, to the great era of Kim Jong Un when the golden age of strengthening the whole party has been ushered in.

Independence, unity

Independence is the main spirit that runs through the whole course of the struggle to prepare for the founding of a party during the anti-Japanese revolutionary war.

Comrade Kim Il Sung had already seen through the serious defects and limitations in the early communist movement in Korea in his teens and formed the Down-with-Imperialism Union, a new-type political organization with the ideal of anti-imperialism, independence and sovereignty, thus providing the glorious foundations of the WPK.

Later, he put forward the Juche-oriented and scientific line of party founding that fully suited the actual conditions of the Korean revolution, formed the Society of Rallying Comrades, the first party organization, and, on the basis of it, established the Party Committee of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, the actual central leadership organ which organized and guided the party organizations that spread out like blood vessels across the country.

At the time when history had recorded only the concepts of bourgeois revolution and socialist revolution in the category of revolution, the President gave a surprising formulation that the Korean revolution was the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution in its character and advanced the line of founding the party by forming the basic party organizations first and expanding and strengthening them, not by proclaiming the party central committee first. It was a new discovery in the history of the world revolutionary movement.

The Juche idea, the eternal guiding ideology of the WPK, was created in the course of pioneering the revolution with an unflagging independent stand.

The hard-core members of the party were trained in the flames of the bloody anti-Japanese war to liberate the lost country, the mass foundation of the party was firmly laid in all parts of the country in the course of forming the basic party organizations and expanding and strengthening them, and perfect preparations were made for party founding in the 20 years of the anti-Japanese revolution.

The liberated country, however, greeted General Kim Il Sung with a pile of more complicated and acute problems which was on a par with the armed struggle.

The most serious difficulty was that revolutionaries and theorists of all types who styled themselves communists got together from across the country and abroad to build parties of their own and were bent on extending their factions. It was very dangerous in that it might lead to the break-up of the communist movement and the frustration of the centralized party founding efforts. If this serious political situation was not rectified, the terrible blunder of the communist movement in the early 1920s, when it made a mess of the revolution with factional strife and scramble for hegemony, might be repeated.

Therefore, the General chose to form a unified party central committee by rallying all the revolutionary forces in the country though he could found the party with only the anti-Japanese war veterans who were tempered, tested and firmly prepared organizationally and ideologically in the flames of the war.

Whereas the first step to party founding of the genuine Korean revolutionaries demanded brilliant wisdom beyond human intelligence and an independent path, unity was the mountain they had to climb in the liberated country, the vital prerequisite for accomplishing the cause of party founding.

Cherishing the noble view that unity precisely means revolution and vice versa, he warmly embraced everyone who had tried to join the revolution with untiring perseverance and broad magnanimity without asking about their past. He showed warm paternal affection without prejudice when sincerity was needed for unity and made bold decisions without hesitation whatever they cost when extraordinary political courage and decision were necessary.

He could have successfully settled all problems without trouble by relying on the legendary authority and reputation of him all the Koreans revered and followed as God. But he introduced his real name to the revolutionaries in the homeland on the day when the party central leadership body was formed and the party founding congress was successfully closed.

Under such great guidance, the Juche-type revolutionary party, the WPK, was founded.

People-first principle

The essence of the WPK’s original ideals and spirit is the people-first principle.

For President Kim Il Sung, the people were not the necessary beings for the revolution, but the cause, motive and essence of the revolution.

It was his political creed that the revolutionary struggle is, in essence, to attain the independence of the masses of the people, and to achieve this lofty aim the party should become the bright beacon, the vanguard that fights bravely without flinching from making sacrifices and the devoted mother. Committed to this noble ideal, the President closely rallied the broad segments of people around the Party from the days of party founding.

After the country’s liberation, a patriotic religionist highly praised General Kim Il Sung, who won everyone to the side of the revolution transcending the differences in political views and religious beliefs if they truly loved the country and the nation, as the "God of Korea”. Hearing his true confession, he said that he was thankful for it, but it was not him but the people who should be actually respected as God and that it was not an empty talk, but the devotion he had developed as he waged the revolutionary struggle so far.

He, who believed in the people as God, himself observed the commandments for the faith, he said, personally writing his three commandments for him that day. They followed: First, worship and serve the people as God; second, devote yourself to them readily; third, do everything by relying on them and enlisting their support.

Kim Il Sung built the WPK into a mass party deeply rooted among the broad masses of the working people.

Back in the years of the anti-Japanese war, he had already clarified that the driving force of the Korean revolution at the present stage was the wide-ranging anti-imperialist democratic forces, embracing even the intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie as well as the workers and peasants. And after the liberation of Korea he came up with a democratic slogan acceptable to the people of all social strata, saying that it was impossible to build a prosperous, democratic, independent and sovereign state in the liberated country by the efforts of only a minority of communists and the working class.

The emblem of the WPK, which most visually reflects his ideal of building a popular and mass party, is a masterpiece which has injected eternal viability and ruling ability into the Party and the symbol of eternal victory.

Saying that when it comes to work, people usually think of workers at factories or mines and it was wrong to consider it only in that aspect and that not only workers but also peasants work and office workers also do mental work, he named the Party, an organization of progressive elements of workers, peasants and working intellectuals, the Workers’ Party. When the Party emblem was designed, he saw that the mass character and inexhaustible might of the WPK, the one and only party in the world, were correctly reflected with the hammer, sickle and writing brush.

Once, a Korean-American member of the Communist Party of the US saw the emblem of the WPK in the magazine Kulloja founded in 1946. He was so fascinated by it that he crossed the ocean straight through and asked the following questions:

Do you know that intellectuals have been treated as an intermediary stratum of society who can serve this and that class and have become the objects of transformation in the revolution?

Your trust in intellectuals is confined to the tested advanced elements, isn’t it?

To what extent do you believe in intellectuals and to what extent do you not believe in them?

There is a fact that gives a clear answer to these questions.

An intellectual eked out a living with a private hospital before the country’s liberation. And he got married to a Japanese woman. So he was branded as a “pro-Japanese element” and placed under house arrest after liberation. The factionalists persecuted him in every way, arguing that a revolution is to get rid of the bourgeoisie like him.

However, Comrade Kim Il Sung warmly embraced him, as he proposed working together with mutual trust from that day on and becoming eternal companions, not temporary ones, and encouraged him to always believe in the Party and people’s government and lead a life with firm determination full of hope and optimism.

Guided by his noble intention and world of trust, many intellectuals who had led an unfortunate life changed their course of life to the genuine revolution and more than 1 000 politicians, scientists, writers and artistes willingly entrusted their life to the embrace of the WPK during the period of the strategic temporary retreat alone in the Fatherland Liberation War, when a step of their choice decided their faith and changed their destiny.

The 80-year history of the WPK shows that the people-first principle established, applied to the revolutionary practice and handed down to posterity as a precious legacy by President Kim Il Sung is an ideological and theoretical asset that can never be bartered for anything, absolute truth and eternal lifeline for the Party.