The Workers’ Party of Korea celebrated its 80th birthday. It enjoys international fame as a powerful party and a single-mindedly united party. How was it founded?

The WPK was founded on October 10, 1945. But its origin dates back to October 17, 1926, the day when the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU) was formed to provide a starting point for the founding of the WPK.

The DIU was a vanguard organization of young revolutionaries of a new generation, the first of its kind, formed by the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) when Korea was under Japan’s military occupation (1905-1945). It set it as its immediate task to defeat Japanese imperialism and achieve the liberation and independence of Korea, and as its final objective to build socialism and communism in Korea and destroy all imperialism and build communism throughout the world at large. This programme served as the basis of the WPK’s programme, the principle of independence upheld by the DIU became that of the building and activities of the WPK, and the new breed of revolutionaries the DIU began to train grew to be the backbone of the WPK in the making.

The WPK was founded in a unique way.

As he delivered a speech titled The Path of the Korean Revolution at a meeting in Kalun, Northeast China, in June 1930, Kim Il Sung set forth an independent line of founding a party by forming basic party organizations and steadily expanding them before proclaiming the party central committee. This was an original party-founding approach fundamentally different from what it was in other countries. According to this line, the Society for Rallying Comrades was formed in July 1930 as the first basic party organization.

With the SRC as the parent body, basic party organizations were expanded during the 15-year-long hard-fought armed struggle against Japan. The preparations for party founding gathered momentum with the establishment of the party committee of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army in May 1934 and the formation of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland as an organization of the anti-Japanese national united front in May 1936.

After Korea’s liberation in August 1945, Kim Il Sung dispatched to different parts of the country those revolutionary veterans who had been trained and tempered through the anti-Japanese armed struggle.

They launched dynamic activities to adjust and strengthen the exiting party organizations and form new ones.

On the basis of these preparations the WPK was founded on October 10, 1945 less than two months after the country’s liberation.

Han Su Yong