Law on Nationalization of Major Industries

Pyongyang, August 10 (KCNA) -- Today is the 80th anniversary of the promulgation of the law on nationalization of major industries by President Kim Il Sung.

Today the DPRK people are looking back with deep emotion on the feats performed by the President in leading the struggle for nationalization of major industries to victory so as to put the workers forward as the masters of the factories, the ones of the means of production.

Before Korea's liberation most of its industries were monopolized by Japanese imperialists and comprador capitalists. And this noticeably prevented its economic development.

After Korea's liberation (August 15, 1945) the President acquired a deep insight into the requirement of the developing revolution and organized and led the struggle for nationalization of major industries.

Factionalists completely infected with flunkeyism and dogmatists asserted that nationalization of industries should be carried out at the stage of the socialist revolution, and that all the industries nationalized. And they also insisted that industries should be owned by capitalists as the Korean revolution means the bourgeois revolution. They even argued that there is no need to promulgate the law on nationalization of industries because major industries belonged to the Korean people, following the defeat of the Japanese imperialists.

Taking into account the specific conditions of the country, the President set nationalization of industries, which was regarded as a task for the socialist revolution in the past, as an important task for the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution.

To realize nationalization of major industries, the President set forth the slogan "Factories to the Workers" and took such measures as the organization of factory committees assigned to seize and operate the industrial facilities and economic organs, the objects of nationalization, and the establishment of a well-regulated system of controlling and managing them within the people's government organs.

The President promulgated "Law on Nationalization of Industries, Transport, Communications, Banks and So On" on August 10, 1946.

According to the law on nationalization of major industries, more than 1 000 major industrial facilities amounting to over 90 percent of all the industries became all-people property.

Nationalization of major industries enabled our workers to become legitimate masters of factories and means of production and made it possible to use major means of production for the prosperity of the country and the promotion of the working people's wellbeing. -0-