Politics

Socialism built by intention and will of people

To build socialism where the people are masters was the ideal the Workers’ Party of Korea had upheld from the initial period of its founding. However, it was an untrodden path that could not be found in any classics and no one had ever taken.

The WPK successfully built Korean-style socialism officially recognized by the world people in the 20th century when mankind was groping for a correct path.

What then were the ideology and ideal the Korean people pursued in carrying out the socialist revolution in their country?

As he talked with Comrade Kim Jong Il one evening, Premier Kim Il Sung said that he did not logically abstract by reading books, but came to realize through revolutionary practice that ideological consciousness of man, the performer, plays the decisive role in all social movements, that he fought the guerrilla warfare and carried out democratic and socialist construction with the outlook on struggle based on man-centred philosophy no matter what others said, and that his outlooks on politics, the economy and history were all man-centred.

The people-centred Korean-style socialism was the product of the great Juche idea and at the same time the noble crystallization of “The people are God”, the lifelong motto of President Kim Il Sung.

It was his political creed that when the opinions and demands of the broad segments of people are crystallized and systematized, they become ideas, lines and policies.

In retrospect, it was not easy to open up a new path of socialism in Korean way in the mid-1950s when flunkeyism and dogmatism were prevalent.

Some dogmatists were sceptical about the WPK’s policy on socialist transformation, claiming that it was impossible to transform the relations of production without socialist industrialization and presented such arguments that socialist transformation was “premature”.

At this juncture the WPK clarified its stand of independence to set out on the first journey to socialism in Korean way by publishing theses in April 1955.

At the time, Kim Il Sung said that since urban handicraftsmen were so heavily ruined during the war in the country, it was possible to transform them along socialist lines, that agricultural cooperativization was not the matter that should be handled only when objective conditions were provided, but the matter which should be tackled when peasants, the performers, demanded it and that the present reality and peasants of the country demanded it and there was no reason that the country could not do it as other countries failed to do it.

The socialist transformation of the relations of production gained momentum after the publication of the immortal programme, called the historic April theses on the character and tasks of the Korean revolution in April 1955.

Giving precedence to the reorganization of economic forms over technical reconstruction!

It was the principle and guidelines the WPK newly upheld in the socialist transformation of the old relations of production.

On the basis of the firm stand that the driving force of the reorganization of economic forms in the countryside are the peasants themselves, the Party set out the plan for it including the setting of the proper period of agricultural cooperativization and stage of development, the solution to the problem of the form and scale of the agricultural cooperative economy, the enforcement of a correct class policy, the combination of the voluntary principle with the guidance and assistance of the Party and the state.

Indeed, the 1950s was the decade of pioneering when the DPRK people, who were aware of the truth of the revolutionary idea of the Party, did not choose the path written in any classic, but continuously rushed forward making their way through the untrodden path by relying only on their own efforts.

It was a miracle that they consolidated the fortress of independence and built a new country in three years after liberation, won victory in the three-year war and demonstrated the spirit of heroic Korea. It was also an epoch-making event that they completed socialist transformation both in urban and rural areas and won victory in the socialist revolution in only four-five years.

It was the intention of Comrade Kim Il Sung that neither nature nor society could be transformed unless the reforming of people preceded it.

A private manufacturer, who had been too miserly to buy a vial of penicillin in the past when his son was seriously ill, joined a cooperative in the midst of socialist transformation and succeeded in research into smelting ore with anthracite coal one day. That evening he donated to the country a certificate of capital worth 300 000 won he had kept in the safe place. Later, he became a member of the Workers’ Party of Korea and was elected chairman of the management board of the cooperative and deputy to the Supreme People’s Assembly.

The establishment of a new system gave birth to new men.

Referring to such facts, contemporary newspapers said that "the cooperatives have grown and the people changed", "income is more secure and there are more things to do in them than when they were private handicraftsmen", "the socialist system has turned the barren land into a granary and made all the poor peasant families rich."

Once, Chairman Kim Jong Il said that if the year when President Kim Il Sung laughed most is to be selected, history will put 1958 on the top of the list. 1958 was a surprising year when socialist transformation of production relations was completed, lorries, tractors, bulldozers and excavators were made in succession and the country gave birth to many precious things desired by the people and demanded by the times one after another across it like a healthy prolific mother, he noted, adding he often saw the President who went out for the early morning stroll singing the song which reads: It is where happiness is achieved by labour and life flourishes with labour.

In August 1958, the socialist transformation of the relations of production was completed and the socialist revolution triumphed in the DPRK, with the result that the people-centred socialist system was established.

We are the happiest in the world!

The song We Are the Happiest in the World is one of the most favourite songs of the DPRK people. It is a famous song of the times which sings of the great happiness of the whole country forming a large family and living in harmony under the care of the motherly Workers’ Party, holding President Kim Il Sung in high esteem as the father of the people.

The song was created in 1961, only three years after the establishment of the socialist system in the country.

Although the socialist system is advantageous and has been established, it does not mean that it is naturally hailed by the people. Only when the people’s desires and opinions and their interests and convenience are put first and the state affairs are administered accordingly, can the advantages of that system be fully displayed and the people always live happily.

The synonym for the history of the President’s leadership over the socialist cause can be claimed to be “among the people”.

One day in 1957 when he met a few women, he asked them if they had any difficulties in the work of the women’s union or in their life. A woman told him without reserve that now students wore good clothes, but they were made individually and so their styles were different from each other and they did not look like students when they acted in group.

Kim Il Sung noted her opinion down on his handbook and saw that it was adopted as a state policy. Under his care school uniforms were provided to all schoolchildren and students by the state from 1958.

It happened in November 1964, when he visited a foreign country.

At that time the leader of the country said that even though he loved the children so much, his country gave education to the children by receiving money from them and that Comrade Kim Il Sung enforced free education for children, but he could not do so however hard he tried and it was a big problem, asking him where and how the DPRK collected money for it.

Kim Il Sung answered that no country gave money to the DPRK and no one helped it, and that the country was giving free education not because it was well off. In the DPRK material wealth created by the people is used entirely for promoting the well-being of the people themselves and as socialist construction progresses, the people’s living conditions are constantly improving, he added.

The leader of the country was so deeply impressed by the noble love of him, who achieved everything for the people, however difficult it might be, that he highly praised Comrade Kim Il Sung as the most popular statesman in the world.

As the country held him, who regarded the people as his God, in high esteem as their leader, the socialist benefits permeated through the people’s life, with the people enjoying happiness and comfort provided by socialism to their heart’s content and everyone saying that socialism was really good.

However, material abundance and economic growth brought by socialism are not enough for them to say they are the happiest in the world. As they are led by the great Party and live in the infinitely benevolent embrace, the DPRK people have sung they are the happiest in the world generation after generation and Korean-style socialism has taken root deeper in the minds of the people.

Advancing along the road of socialism with full confidence under the leadership of the great Workers’ Party of Korea, they increased the industrial production at a rate of 19.1 per cent on average every year to perform a miracle of carrying out the historic task of industrialization, which took capitalism a whole century and even a few centuries to do, in only 14 years. They also built up the national economy and defences simultaneously, created a new history of implementing the theses on the socialist rural question and lay solid foundations of an independent national economy.

As they developed so passionate attachment to socialism which has brought a radical change to their destiny and life, the DPRK people could win victory in the campaign to defend socialism in the 1990s, made such a long journey to date and are now greeting a new era of comprehensive development of socialism.

On the morning of New Year’s Day a few years ago, the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un said that he would work harder to ensure that the era when all the people sang the song We Are the Happiest in the World, trusting Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and being optimistic about the future, would not be a moment of the past history but become a reality of today. It moved all people throughout the country to tears.

The song We Are the Happiest in the World, which can be born only under the care of the WPK that provides leadership for the people by putting them at the centre of all thinking and practice, is a song in praise of the Party sung by the people in all sincerity.