The WPK As The Mother Party

October 10 represents the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea by President Kim Il Sung.

The entire citizens of the DPRK and its foreign friends celebrate this occasion as a historical political event.

People who do not know much about or are badly misinformed about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) might not understand this event well.

In the DPRK, a society constitutes a family, the country's leader is regarded as a father of the entire nation and the WPK has become the “Mother Party". In order to understand this more clearly, some points are mentioned below to the readers.

In an article entitled "Mother Party" published in the magazine Korea Today, Ri Kyong Hui said that "The WPK takes responsibility and care for the people's destiny" (10, Juche 97 [2008], p. 2). The same article adds that "The DPRK government effected the universal free medical care system, when it was at war with the United States - a sure sign of its sense of responsibility for the people's health. The following universal free education system introduced in the late 1950s realized the hope of the people to study to their hearts' content free of charge. In 1974 the taxation system was abolished, and they have lived happily in the houses which the state allocated to them free, and they have no idea of the word of 'tax'" (p. 3).

More light could be shed on how life in the DPRK is organised by reading Kim Jong Il's works. In Socialism Is A Science (1994), he wrote "In our country, everyone regards and supports the leader as they would their own father. They trust and follow the Party, regarding its embrace as that of their own mother. The leader, the Party and the people form one socio-political organism, and share the same destiny. The whole of society overflows with communist morality. For instance, one devotes one's own life without hesitation to save one's revolutionary comrade from danger, and young men and women become life companions of honourably disabled soldiers and take warm care of orphans and old people without support, as they would their own relations. This is a proud result of the benevolent politics of our Party" (p. 31).

There are many other stories that reveal the care exhibited by the WPK. The aforementioned issue of Korea Today included an interesting article by Professor Kang Yong Ho, a researcher at the Kim Chaek University of Technology. This researcher spent the first few years of his life in Japan. Sometime around 1960, he was able to move to the DPRK with his wife and daughter. He wrote that "The day after our arrival home, an official sent for me. At the first glance he looked like a good man. He gave me two sheets of paper. One was a certificate of my appointment as a researcher of the Academy of Sciences, and the other was a certificate of my ownership of a good dwelling house. I looked at the official dubiously, and he said: 'Now you will be able to realize your hope to your heart's content under the embrace of the Workers' Party of Korea. You work as best as you can. And if you have any problem in your life and work, you may call on me at any time'" (p. 9).

In many other countries, millions of people do not feel that there is an organisation such as the WPK that acts as a mother to them. Instead of being made to feel important and part of a community, countless individuals in such countries are often left to fend for themselves. The lack of care and concern shown for millions of human beings is easily seen when one walks through various cities and counts the number of homeless people living in the streets. I still clearly remember how horrible it felt to walk through a part of Madrid littered with people sleeping on carton boxes during the winter season. No genuinely caring government should ever accept to have any of its citizens living without a decent roof over their head!

It is also important to remember that the WPK is doing its utmost to continue improving the standard of living of the people in the DPRK in spite of many sanctions that are intended at sabotaging the socialist society chosen by the Korean people themselves. Single-heartedly united around their leader, Kim Jong Il, and guided by the WPK, the popular masses of the DPRK have resisted every attempt of hostile forces to replace socialism with neoliberalism.

The Songun-based revolutionary cause of the WPK is to defend socialism and bring a happier life to the people.

Hopefully, the points mentioned above would be helpful for the readers to obtain a better understanding of life in the DPRK.

Emblem of Workers' Party of Korea

October 10 this year marks the 65^th birthday of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) founded in 1945.

The WPK, since its founding, has creditably performed its role as the organizer of all victories of the Korean people and the great guide of the cause of socialism, breaking through all sorts of upheavals and trials of history.

The 65-year-long career of the WPK, resplendent with victory and glory, is inconceivable apart from its emblem clearly showing its character.

Its golden emblem bears a hammer, a sickle, and a writing brush which are intertwined in the middle of their handles. The hammer is symbolic of a worker, the sickle a peasant, and the writing brush an intellectual. The intertwinement of the said symbolic at one point shows that the working class, the peasants and the intellectuals are closely united.

The WPK ‘s emblem represents that the Party embraces not only the working class but fine progressive elements of peasants and intellectuals, and that it conducts all its activities to meet the demands and interest of broad sections of the working people. It also symbolizes that the Party is vanguard unit of the working people who are rallied around their leader firmly in organizational and ideological aspects.

What is noticeable in the emblem is the writing brush. Today there are a number of emblems and flags symbolic of the party of the working class around the world, and they all have only a hammer and a sickle on them it is only the WPK that has the writing brush designed along with the hammer and the sickle.

Then, how was the WPK ‘s emblem designed? It is said that its draft design was originally different from the present one. It had a drawing of a worker holding a hammer and a peasant plowing a field. Some people proposed to depict the worker as a smelter holding a tapping bar.

President Kim Il Sung(1912-1994), father of socialist Korea and founder of the WPK, examined the draft design and pointed out that it was a great mistake to exclude an intellectual in the design, only depicting a worker and a peasant. He instructed that the Party emblem should portray a working intellectual together with a worker and a peasant. Only then can the emblem represent that the WPK is a unified party of the masses of working people embracing the progressive elements of workers, peasants and working intellectuals, he said. Then he indicated specific ways of portrayal, even advancing his opinion on depicting a hammer for the worker, a sickle for the peasant and a writing brush for working intellectual in Korean style, although a pen would be possible.

Afterward, he examined a design presented by creators, who drew a hammer, a sickle and a writing brush fan-like by attaching their ends in regular order. He told them that it was recommended to intertwine them in the middle of their handles not only in the light of composition but to represent that the Korean people including the working class, peasants and intellectuals are closely united, and even fixed the point of their crossing. When the creators failed to show distinctive points where the hammer, the sickle and the writing brush were intertwined, he noted that the lines of those handles must be clearly drawn so that everybody could easily see their orders, and gave his finishing touches to the design, personally making sketches on a paper.

As a result, a writing brush together with a hammer and a sickle was depicted on the emblem of the WPK. The WPK not only described in its emblem the fact that it regards intellectuals as its constituent together with workers and peasants, but has let them to share the same destiny forever with the Party.

Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the WPK, once said to officials that the brilliant career of the WPK is associated with devoted services of not only workers and peasants but working intellectuals and that its history splendid with victory and glory is inconceivable apart from them. The other time, he received a letter from intellectuals who wrote their determination to entrust their destiny entirely to the Party and believe and follow it in whatever hardships and trials. He sent them a letter of his reply, hoping they would be eternal companions, faithful assistants and excellent advisers in the Party building and activities.

It is by no means fortuitous that the Korean intellectuals are dedicating their wisdom and zeal to realizing the cause of socialism, holding high the slogan “ there is no border in science, but we have our socialist motherland.”

True to the WPK’s plan to build a thriving nation, they are now bringing about eye-opening achievements in the drive to push back the frontiers of science and technology . Typical are the successful launch of two artificial earth satellites, development and introduction of CNC technology, manufacture of an UHP electric arc furnace and perfection of an iron-and steel-making technology of using no coke. These can be said to be a powerful demonstration of the writing brush uniquely depicted in the WPK’s emblem.

The WPK with a unique emblem will emerge victorious in the future, too.

65th Anniversary of the Founding of the Workers' Party of Korea

The Workers’ Party of Korea was founded on October 10,1945, in less than two months after Korea’s liberation from the Japanese military occupation (1905-1945) on August 15, 1945.

It set the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution as its immediate task and next year enforced such democratic reforms as the land reform, nationalization of major industries and equal rights for both sexes, leading the Korean people to the building of a new society. It developed the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army, which had waged the 15-year-long guerrilla warfare against Japanese imperialism to liberate Korea, into the Korean People’s Army, a regular armed force, and founded the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the first people’s democratic state in the East, on September 9, 1948 Korea, once a backward, colonial semi-feudal society, underwent a radical change in a short period after liberation.

The Korean war (1950-1953) provoked by the United States, however, threw grave roadblocks in the progress of the WPK. The allied forces of the US and its 15 vassal states attempted to nip the young DPRK in its bud. The WPK aroused all the Party members and the people to turn out in the righteous war in defence of national freedom and independence and inflicted an ignominious defeat on the US, which had boasted of its being “the strongest” in the world, for the first time in history, honourably safeguarding the sovereignty and dignity of their country.

After the war the WPK led its people to the post-war rehabilitation and the laying of foundations of socialism. It advanced the basic line of economic construction on giving priority to the growth of heavy industry while simultaneously developing light industry and agriculture and led the work to its implementation. Under its guidance the agricultural cooperation and the socialist transformation of private handicraft and capitalist trade and industry were carried out successfully in Korea in a brief span of time, resulting in the establishment of the socialist system in August 1958. The WPK turned the DPRK into a socialist industrial state in a short period of 14 years by effecting an all-people revolutionary upsurge, which was called the “Chollima Movement”.

Since the 1970s the WPK, based on these achievements, promoted onto a new higher level the three revolutions-ideological, technical and cultural-for the complete victory of socialism. The flames of the three revolutions brought about heydays in all fields of politics, the economy, culture and others. With the abolition of taxation in 1974, the DPRK became the first tax-free country in the world. It has since 1975 enforced in a comprehensive way the universal 11-year free compulsory education, the highest standard in the world. The Sixth Congress of the WPK held in October 1980 put forward the fundamental tasks of socialist economic construction in the 1980s and its ten long-range objectives. If they are attained, the DPRK will be able to join with flying colours the ranks of those countries with advanced economy.

The WPK, however, faced an unexpected situation from the mid-1980s. The whirlwinds of “reform” and “perestroika” swept the ruling parties in the former Soviet Union and other socialist countries, thus resulting in the frustration of socialism. The WPK lost its political allies and the socialist international market. The imperialist forces took advantage of it to direct their intensive anti-socialist offensive against the DPRK. This being the situation, President Kim Il Sung, who founded the WPK and led it for nearly 50 years, passed away in July 1994. To make matters worse, the DPRK was hit by unprecedented natural disasters one after another. They were the worst trials ever known in the history of the WPK.

Braving those hardships, the WPK administered Songun politics on a full scale and aroused the people to the struggle in defence of socialism, rallying them more closely around leader Kim Jong Il. Under its leadership, the Korean people have not only safeguarded socialism in the worst adversity but secured a foothold for the building of a great, prosperous and powerful nation. In August 1998 the DPRK’s artificial earth satellite, Kwangmyongsong No. 1, manufactured completely by its own efforts and technology, was successfully launched into space, striking the whole world with amazement. It was as the same as a solemn sound of gun firing signaling the start of building a socialist thriving nation.

On January 1, 1999, the WPK published a joint editorial in its official organ and other leading newspapers in the country, officially declaring that it would start the drive to build a thriving nation. The term of a great, prosperous and powerful socialist country referred to by the Koreans is a country with strong national power, in which everything prospers and its people live happily with nothing to envy in the world. It was the lifelong wish of President Kim Il Sung, father of socialist Korea. The WPK is vigorously inspiring all its members and other people to the drive to open the gate to a thriving nation at any cost in 2012, making the centenary of birth of the President. The DPRK is concentrating its efforts on economic construction, now that it has already secured the position of a powerful nation in the aspects of politico-idelogical strength and military might. Revitalization of the national industry, growth of agricultural production, expansion of land development and developing science and technology-all these are giving strong impetus to the development of the independent national economy.

Under the leadership of the WPK, the DPRK is bringing about eye-opening achievements in the efforts to build an economic power. Last year another artificial earth satellite Kwangmyongsong No.2 was rocketed into orbit. The Juche-based steel-making system of using no cokes and iron scraps was perfected and the CNC technology widely introduced to bring about unheard-of increase in production. Vinalon cotton and fertilizer began to be mass-produced this year.

Sixty-five-year-long career of the WPK is, indeed, the history of victory and glory that it has led the Korean people to make epochal changes.

Congratulations on the 65^th birthday of the Workers’ Party of Korea which organizes and guides all the victories of the Korean people!

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