The 95th anniversary of the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU) formed by President Kim Il Sung falls on October 17.

The Workers’ Party of Korea regards the DIU as the root of the Party founded in October 1945, and the DIU’s formation as a new starting point and genesis of the Korean communist movement and the Korean revolution.

From this root came the programme of the Party, the principles for its building and activities, and the backbone for its foundation. After the formation of the DIU, the Korean revolution made a new start on the basis of the principle of independence.

During the military rule of the Japanese imperialists the Korean communist movement had serious weakness and limitations.

Campaigners of the early communist movement only paid lip-service to the revolution and competed for “hegemony”, divorced from the masses, instead of mixing with the people and educating, organizing and rousing them for the revolutionary struggle. In consequence, the early communist movement in Korea was unable to develop smoothly. It traversed an anguished and tortuous course, and the Korean Communist Party which was organized in 1925 not only failed to perform its function properly as the vanguard of the revolution, but was unable even to maintain its existence for long under the repression of the Japanese imperialists.

At this juncture, Kim Il Sung, in order to open up a new path of the revolution, conceived a plan to form a vanguard organization of the revolution for pushing forward the anti-Japanese national liberation struggle with a correct fighting programme by relying on the masses.

Later, he recollected as follows: We young communists of the new generation learned the important lesson that we would be unable to carry out the revolution if we followed the same path as the early communist campaigners. We chose a completely new path of revolution. We firmly believed that in order to make a revolution we had to mix intimately with the masses and fight by depending on them, build a party ourselves and provide leadership for the revolution to suit the specific situation in our country. And we believed that if we did this we should naturally win recognition and sympathy from the people of other countries. We fought with this conviction. This was the new revolutionary line and the policy of building a revolutionary party adopted by the young communists of the new generation.

The Down-with-Imperialism Union formed by Kim Il Sung with the young communists of the new generation in 1926 was the vanguard organization for leading the revolutionary cause of Juche along the road to victory and the genuine communist revolutionary organization, the first of its kind in Korea.

The programme of the DIU was to achieve the liberation and independence of Korea, build socialism and communism in Korea and, further, fight for the victory of communism throughout the world.

With its formation, the Korean revolution broke with flunkeyism, dogmatism and every other trend of outdated ideas, and entered upon a new era of advancing under the principle of independence, and the Korean communist and national-liberation movements became capable of developing forcefully with correct fighting objectives, strategy and tactics.

Nearly one century has passed since the WPK began to grow from the DIU. Following the glorious road of struggle, it has performed great exploits and developed and strengthened into a powerful revolutionary Party with steel-strong unity and rich experience.