Characteristics of WPK Founding
The solid mass foundation, that is, the ardent support and trust of the working masses is the greatest political asset of the Workers’ Party of Korea. This asset difficult to gain is ascribable to the fact that the WPK was founded in a different way from the parties of many countries.
The WPK was founded on October 10, 1945, less than two months after the liberation of Korea (August 15, 1945) from the Japanese imperialists’ military occupation. However, it can be said that the preparation for its founding started nearly 20 years before. No communist party or workers’ party of any country was founded after such a long period of preparation.
The WPK is different from other parties in terms of not only the mode of the founding but also the class foundation.
On October 17, 1926, Comrade Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) formed the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU), the first genuine communist revolutionary organization in Korea. The DIU broke with flunkeyism and dogmatism which had remained deep-rooted in Korea and paved a new road of revolution on the principle of independence for the first time in history. Since then, the work for founding a Juche-type revolutionary party was launched in Korea.
In his early years Kim Il Sung put forward a policy of founding a party by forming its basic organizations first and then expanding and strengthening them, not by founding its central committee first and then forming its basic organizations, and led the struggle to form party organizations among the broad working masses. Under his guidance, the Korean revolutionaries awakened and rallied the masses and steadily expanded and strengthened the basic party organizations. The pioneers who were fighting against the Japanese imperialists and for building a new society in which the working people are well-off became the members of the basic party organizations. This mode of party building was the first of its kind in the world.
After the country’s liberation, Kim Il Sung, above anything else, dispatched staunch revolutionaries who took part in the anti-Japanese armed struggle to various parts of the country on a mission to form basic party organizations. The Korean revolutionaries organized party cells by rallying hard-core members in factories, farming and fishing villages and, on this basis, formed regional party organizations.
The organizational and political lines of the WPK are also unique.
Kim Il Sung set forth a policy of founding the Party with communists tempered in the anti-Japanese armed struggle as its core and embracing all the communists involved in the anti-Japanese struggle at home. He also saw to it that a hammer and a sickle symbolizing workers and farmers, as well as a writing-brush representing intellectuals were inscribed in the Party’s emblem, thus making the WPK a mass-based Party of the working people. In this way, the WPK could become a powerful political organization which was firmly based on the broad masses from the first days of its founding.
The Party’s political line of carrying out the tasks of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution and founding a democratic people’s republic was also a line which fully accorded with the interests of the masses. On the basis of this line, the WPK carried out the tasks of the agrarian reform, nationalization of major industries and sex equality in a short span of time, commanding the hearty support of the people. As it carries forward and develops these traditions, the WPK is demonstrating its might as a dignified and powerful political organization.
