On October 17, 2022, Kim Jong Un, General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, visited the Central Cadres Training School of the WPK and gave a commemorative lecture.
Centre for Training the Hardcore of the Party
The Central Cadres Training School of the Workers’ Party of Korea is the “pedigree farm” for training its hardcore.
After defeating the Japanese imperialists and liberating the country on August 15, 1945, Kim Il Sung founded the Party on October 10, 1945, the political organization guiding the Korean revolution, ahead of all other work.
In leading the efforts for accomplishing the cause of building a state and an army, the Party faced an important task of laying its organizational and ideo-theoretical foundations indispensable for building itself as a socialist ruling party in the future while expanding its ranks rapidly.
At the initiative and under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, the first school for training its cadres was founded on June 1, 1946.
Kim Il Sung visited the school later, and left its students the written instructions that they should become competent officials of the Party and the state who always work among the people, together with them and in the vanguard of them for the independence and sovereignty of the country and the freedom and happiness of the people.
These instructions have served as invariable guidelines and principle in the whole course of the building and activities of the Party.
The Central Cadres Training School of the WPK has safeguarded the organizational and ideological consolidation of the Party and its leadership activities with educational practice and academic approach by theoretically systematizing the Party’s ideas, lines and policies. Many Party officials and talented persons produced by the school set examples in leading the masses with skilled and strenuous activities in all fields of Party and state building and socialist construction, thus making a great contribution to the development of the Party and the state.
In the commemorative lecture, General Secretary Kim Jong Un said: Today our Party faces a responsible period when it has to link its leadership history of nearly 80 years to 100 years, nay, more years. It is obvious that if the educational system is not perfect enough to train the eminent reserves of the Party, even though the revolutionary idea of the Party is great and its exploits are enormous, and consequently the reserves that would shoulder the cause of the Party are not well prepared, the Party, far from inheriting its ideology and exploits, cannot foresee its future.
This is why the General Secretary of Party put forward an immortal great programme at the school, which would guarantee a new century of the socialist ruling party.
It is very meaningful that he gave the commemorative lecture on October 17, the day when the Down-with-Imperialism Union (October 17, 1926), the historical root of the WPK, was formed. To be seen in this context are his instructions in his lecture that it is important to push forward in a responsible and strong way with the work of training Party officials who have acquired its unique revolutionary trait while intensifying throughout the Party the education and struggle for always maintaining and displaying the noble ideals and determination in the early period of its founding.
It is Kim Jong Un’s intention that it should become a school which trains competent Party officials, political activists, who are capable of taking charge of the future of the Party for the coming 50, nay, 100 and hundreds of years.
Orientation of Party Building in the New Era
In the lecture Kim Jong Un said: What is important for the socialist ruling Party in opening up its future is to resolutely maintain its inherent duty and principles of activities without losing the centre of its development under any circumstances and conditions, continue to intensify the struggle for uniting the whole Party around its Central Committee, and always keep itself firmly rooted among the working masses and gain the unanimous trust of all the people.
For this, he defined the political, organizational, ideological, discipline and work style construction as the orientation for building up the WPK in the new era.
The WPK has so far achieved great victories, overcoming grave difficulties, through a tireless struggle to make the whole Party a powerful body, ideologically pure and organizationally integrated, and to link its guidance with the masses in the three aspects of organizational building, ideological building and leadership art building. Therefore, it can be said that the definition of the new orientation of Party building set forth in the lecture is the indication of the steady development of Party building.
He said in his lecture: The Party’s political construction is a central task in steadily enhancing its leadership ability and maintaining and consolidating its correct political traits. The Party’s political construction should always be given priority and strengthened, and it should define and lead the other sectors of Party building, including its organizational and ideological building. The whole Party should be a single-hearted entity with the Party Central Committee, forming one head and one body. Party committees at all levels should perform their functions and role correctly as the supreme leadership bodies and political staff of the units concerned, and all Party members should play their role as political activists with a high degree of political consciousness. It is also important to steadily develop the methods of leadership over the revolution and construction.
Stressing the need to continue to strengthen the organizational building of the Party, he referred to the need to give priority to the work for winning trust of the masses and consolidating it, the need for Party organizations and officials to always lend an ear to the people’s opinions, and to respond sensitively to and properly coordinate public sentiments, and the need to direct efforts to working with the youth, an important guarantee for building the Party in the coming years.
He also stressed the need to push ahead with the ideological building of the Party more dynamically. He noted that precedence should naturally be given to the Party’s ideological work before all other work in view of its essential requirement, and only then can the Party prevent its change and degeneration and lead its revolutionary and enterprising development. He said: It is important for the theoretical study field to conduct in depth theoretical research for deeply explaining and propagating the ideas, theories and policies of the Party and deepen it in a far-sighted way so as to lead the Party’s ideological building by providing theoretical and profound clarification of the law of development of our Party and revolution and the prospect of socialist construction and developing them systematically.
He also referred to the principled issues arising in putting spurs to the building of Party discipline, including strict establishment of the trait of voluntarily observing discipline, the system of supervising discipline and the system of applying discipline throughout the Party, so as to establish an accurate and powerful disciplinary system.
He explained the need to build the Party’s style of work in a substantial way. He said: The whole Party should steadily and methodologically conduct the work of making its officials acquire the revolutionary and people-oriented style of work and apply it in real life, so that the communist work style peculiar to the Party is carried on. It should become the mode of existence and mode of revolution of the Party to deepen the people’s trust in it by regarding them as divine and devoting itself to them, purify its climate and attain higher goals by dint of the single-minded unity between itself and the people.
The new five-point orientation of building the Party illuminated in his commemorative lecture will serve as a powerful weapon for invariably strengthening it into a promising party.
