In his memoirs With the Century , President Kim Il Sung wrote:

“Capitalists say they take great pleasure in making money, but I took the greatest pleasure and interest in making comrades. How can we compare the happiness a man feels when he has won a comrade to the delight a man feels when he has obtained a piece of gold!”

Kim Il Sung devoted great efforts to gaining comrades from the first day of his revolutionary activities.

His effort to win comrades started at Hwasong Uisuk School, a military and political school founded by Korean nationalists with a view to training cadres for the Independence Army.

At that time, the tide of sympathy for the new thought swept the school with an irresistible force. Except for a few bigoted students who followed nationalism, the overwhelming majority accepted the progressive ideas.

Kim Il Sung discussed the practical problems arising in the Korean revolution by frequently organizing reading and discussions of books on communism among the progressive students. In the course of those gathering the young men reached a consensus of opinion, and adopted similar positions on the Korean revolution. Choe Chang Gol, Kim Ri Gap, Ri Je U and several others were among them.

As many comrades were rallied behind him, Kim Il Sung decided to form an organization with them and made preparations for it.

He formed the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU), an organization of young communists of the new generation, on October 17, Juche 15 (1926).

The DIU was a pure, fresh political organism of a new type created in the throes of a historic cause by young people of the rising generation who aspired to socialism and communism, for the realization of national liberation and class emancipation with the ideal of anti-imperialism, independence and sovereignty.

The immediate task of the DIU was to defeat Japanese imperialism and achieve the liberation and independence of Korea, and its final objective was to build socialism and communism in Korea and, further, destroy all imperialism and build communism throughout the world.

The DIU is recognized as the historic root of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and the formation of the DIU as a starting-point or the genesis of the Korean communist movement and the Korean revolution.

At the meeting held on October 17 to formally set up the DIU, Kim Il Sung was nominated as head of the Union.

After the meeting, the DIU members rushed hand in hand to River Huifa and, singing a song, made a grim resolve to share life and death on the road of the revolution for the motherland and the nation.

In the Korean communist movement at that time there were many organizations with eye-catching slogans.

The DIU was a new organization which could scarcely be compared with those organizations in terms of scale. The public did not even know about its existence.

Nevertheless, the young communists of the new generation were feverishly excited because they were proud of the fact that theirs was a communist revolutionary organization of a new type that was totally different from the conventional organizations.

The DIU was not an organization formed by a certain faction and its members were not people who had broken away from any faction or from an organization in exile. They were from the new generation, as white and pure as snow, free from any impurities.

They were virile, young talented people; they could make speeches, write treatises, compose songs and were good at martial arts.

Whenever the Korean revolution was in a predicament in later years, the members of the DIU always found a way out, even if it meant sacrificing themselves. As hardcore elements of the Korean revolution, they played a leading role everywhere they went.