The Guardian 12 October, 2005
60th Anniversary,
of the Workers’ Party of Korea
Celebrations are underway in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) on October 10, 1945. The following statement was released by the Korean Central News Agency to mark the anniversary.
The foundation of the WPK was a historic event that effected a radical change in shaping the destiny of the Korean people. All the victories, successes and wonderful realities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are related with the founding day.
The 60-year-long history of the WPK is the history of opening up the unique way of building a revolutionary Party in the era of independence under the banner of the Juche Idea, the great history of setting a global example of socialist construction through the most arduous struggle and creating a heroic epic of anti-imperialist struggle, and the glorious history of laying the eternal foundations of socialism.
President Kim Il Sung who set out on the road of revolution in his early teens started building a Juche-type revolutionary Party by forming the vanguard, the Down-with-Imperialism Union, and laid the firm organisational and ideological foundations for the founding of a party during more than 20 years of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle.
After founding the Party the President worked hard to strengthen the Party and enhance its role to advance the cause of Juche victoriously for nearly half a century ’til the last moments of his life.
Kim Jong Il has led the WPK over 40 years. Having started his work on the Central Committee of the WPK in the mid-1960s, he, with uncommon intelligence and outstanding political ability, has achieved the ideological oneness and rock-solid unity and cohesion of the whole Party based on the revolutionary idea of the President, and thus immeasurably enhanced the leading role of the Party.
Under his leadership the WPK has firmly maintained its character as the Party of Kim Il Sung which invariably realises the idea of cause of the President even after his death in July 1994, and is advancing victoriously under the unique Songun policy [*see note below].
The WPK exploded "the myth of the US strength" during the three years of the Korean War (1950-1953), and demonstrated the stamina of heroic Korea to the whole world. In the war the DPRK was so tragically destroyed that even the US said that Korea could not rise again, even in a hundred years.
But Korea finished its post-war reconstruction in three years, and carried out in 14 years industrialisation which had taken other countries hundreds of years.
In the 1990s Korea found itself in the most serious adversity because of the frantic politico-military pressure and economic sanctions by the US-led imperialist allies as well as natural calamities.
Under the wise leadership of the WPK, however, it surmounted the difficulties, held high the slogan of building a great, powerful and prosperous nation and could demonstrate its national power by launching an artificial earth satellite into orbit and declaring its nuclear possession.
The 60-year-long history of the WPK is also the history of having shaped the destiny of the people admirable with the idea of regarding them as God and by politics of love for and confidence in them.
The idea of regarding the people as God is incorporated in all the lines and policies advanced by the WPK, and is also manifested in the slogan "We serve the people!" and the emblem of the WPK inscribed with a hammer, a sickle and a writing brush.
The glorious history of the WPK is brilliantly carried forward by Kim Jong Il, General Secretary of the WPK and the prominent successor to the President.
Glory to the WPK which leads the cause of the independence of the people and the cause of socialism to shining victory!
*Songun: Giving top national priority to military affairs and making the Korean People’s Army the backbone of revolution, so as to beef up the driving force of revolution and vigorously promote national defence and socialist construction as a whole.
[abridged]