Seven Decades: Leading the Korean People

This year marks the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Founded on October 10, 1945, the WPK has gone through thick and thin, leading the people along the road resplendent with victory as the political organization guiding Korean society.

It has led them to develop their country into a prosperous socialist state.

Established no more than two months after Korea’s liberation (August 15, 1945) from Japanese military occupation (1905-1945), it ensured that the people’s government was formed (February 1946) and immediately enforced such democratic reforms as the agrarian reform, nationalization of major industries and sex equality. Furthermore, it initiated the general ideological mobilization movement for nation-building, campaign against illiteracy and emulation drive for increased production in order to rouse the broad sections of the people to build a new society.

As a result, in a few years after national liberation it transformed the country from a backward semi-feudal colony into a democratic society, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the first democratic people’s state in the East, was founded on September 9, 1948.

When the country was devastated in the Korean war (1950-1953) ignited by the United States, it led the people to carry through postwar reconstruction in a matter of three years and transform the outdated relations of production in town and country along socialist lines, with the result that a socialist system was established in 1958. Along with this, it inspired all the people to launch the Chollima movement aimed at effecting a production upsurge and thus completed socialist industrialization in a short period of 14 years (1957-1970).

Thanks to its benevolent policies the universal free medical care system and universal free compulsory education system were introduced and developed, and the people-oriented socialist system struck its roots deep among the people, in which the state took responsibility for their food, clothing and housing.

This socialist system remained unperturbed even when the former Soviet Union and other socialist countries collapsed one after another by the end of the 20^th century.

The US-led imperialist allied forces clamoured about the “final end of socialism on the planet,” concentrating on the campaign to stifle the DPRK. The WPK held higher the banner of Songun to safeguard the socialism of Korean style, and mapped out a far-reaching plan for building a thriving socialist country and provided a springboard for its implementation. The August 1998 launch of the first home-made artificial earth satellite heralded the beginning of the nation’s struggle to build a thriving country. Despite the worst economic situation, the arable land of the country was realigned into large-sized standardized fields and the tideland reclamation project connecting the various islands on the West Sea completed, thereby reshaping the map of Korea. Moreover, CNC technology was developed and, in December 2012, the country’s first applications satellite Kwangmyongsong 3-2 achieved orbit, demonstrating its great national strength.

The WPK has led the people to defend their country’s sovereignty and dignity.

Immediately after liberation, it gave top priority to building a regular army and an independent munitions industry, so as to get fully prepared to cope with the desperate moves of the US and south Korean puppets to invade the north.

During the war, which the United States unleashed against the young DPRK by mobilizing a two million-strong force including the armies of its 15 vassal states, the south Korean army and the remnants of the former Japanese army, it roused its members and other service personnel and people to safeguard the freedom and independence of their country, debunking the myth of the “strongest in the world” and putting US imperialism on a downhill march towards ruin.

In the post-war period it led them to frustrate the incessant military threats by the United States and its manoeuvres for another war, economic blockade and sanctions, and persistent schemes aimed at undermining the country from within, always winning victories in the political and military confrontations with it.

Whenever a hair-trigger situation was created, the United States suffered an ignominious defeat: the intrusion by the armed spy ship Pueblo in 1968 and the spy plane EC-121 in 1969; the Panmunjom incident in 1976; and the Korean peninsula nuclear crisis that originated in the 1990s.

To cope with the US threat of preemptive nuclear strike and nuclear war exercises, the DPRK chose to develop its self-defensive nuclear deterrent. The nuclear monopoly of the US and its unilateral nuclear threat cut no ice with the DPRK any longer as the latter has grown to be a nuclear power itself.

Today the Korean people are raising fierce flames of innovation to implement the WPK’s far-reaching plan of building a thriving country.

Having developed the DPRK into a political and ideological power where all the people are united single-heartedly, an invincible military power, a formidable nuclear state and a country that is capable of manufacturing and launching artificial earth satellites, the WPK now focuses on building an economic giant and a civilized socialist nation.

It stands in the vanguard of the grand march of the Korean army and people to achieve final victory on all the fronts of building a thriving socialist nation in the face of the frantic challenges by the US-led hostile forces.

In the future, too, it will continue to lead the people along the road filled with victory and glory.