The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is the ruling party of North Korea. Founded in 1949 from a merger between the Workers' Party of North Korea and the Workers' Party of South Korea, the WPK is the oldest active party in Korea. It also controls the Korean People's Army, North Korea's armed forces. The WPK is the largest party represented in the Supreme People's Assembly and coexists with two other legal parties, the Chondoist Chongu Party and the Korean Social Democratic Party, that are completely subservient to the WPK and must accept the WPK's "leading role" as a condition of their existence. Kim Jong Un is the current party leader, serving as General Secretary of the WPK.
The North Korean Branch Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea (CPK) was founded in 1945. In 1946, it was transformed into the Communist Party of North Korea (CPNK), becoming independent from the CPK, and merged with the New People's Party of Korea in the same year to eventually form the Workers' Party of North Korea. Meanwhile, the CPK was succeeded by the Workers' Party of South Korea. In 1948, the WPNK founded North Korea. In 1949, WPNK merged with the WPSK to form the Workers' Party of Korea. Kim Il Sung was installed as the leader of the WPK and the leader of North Korea. In 1950, WPK leader Kim Il Sung launched the Korean War, aiming to unite Korea, but was deterred by American intervention. Kim Il Sung attempted to stay neutral during the Sino–Soviet split, while decreasing both Chinese and Soviet influence in the WPK. Kim Il Sung purged rival factions in the WPK following the August faction incident in 1956 and the Kapsan faction incident in 1967, while promoting his own cult of personality.
At the 6th Party Congress in 1980, Kim Il Sung announced Kim Jong Il, his son, as his successor. Kim Il Sung died in 1994, leading Kim Jong Il to succeed him. Under Kim Jong Il, who governed as chairman of the National Defence Commission, communism was steadily removed from party and state documents in favor of Songun, or military-first politics. The military, rather than the working class, was established as the base of political power, and party institutions weakened. Kim Jong Il died in 2011, and was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Un. Under his leadership, there has been a revival of the party institutions, as well as a decrease in the influence of the military. The 4th Party Conference, held in 2012, amended the party rules to state that Kimilsungism–Kimjongilism was "the only guiding idea of the party". In 2021, Kim Jong Un replaced Songun with "people-first politics" as the party's political method and reasserted the party's commitment to communism. In 2023, the WPK abandoned its goals of Korean reunification.
Officially, the WPK is a communist party guided by Kimilsungism–Kimjongilism, a synthesis of the ideas of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.: "Our Party never expects that there will be any fortuitous opportunity for us in paving the road for our people and in realizing their great aim and ideals to build socialism and communism.... When the hundreds of thousands of cell secretaries and officials across the Party unite its members firmly under the leadership of the Party Central Committee and give full play to their loyalty, patriotism and creative wisdom, our revolution will always emerge victorious in high spirits and the ideal of communism will surely come true.": "The immediate aim of the Workers' Party of Korea is to build a prosperous and civilized socialist society in the northern half of the Republic and to realize the independent and democratic development of society on a nationwide scale, and the ultimate goal is to build a communist society in which the people's ideals are fully realized." The party is committed to Juche, an ideology attributed to Kim Il Sung which promotes national independence and development through the efforts of the popular masses. Although Juche was originally presented as the Korean interpretation of Marxism–Leninism, the party now presents it as a freestanding philosophy. The WPK recognizes the ruling Kim family as the ultimate source of its political thought. The WPK is organized according to the Monolithic Ideological System, conceived by Kim Yong-ju and Kim Jong Il. The highest body of the WPK is formally the party congress; however, in practice the real power is concentrated in the current supreme leader. After the 4th Congress (1961), party congresses were held irregularly roughly once per decade. After the 6th Congress (1980), no Party Congress was held until the 7th Congress (2016) during Kim Jong Un's tenure. The WPK is banned in South Korea under the National Security Act and is sanctioned by the United Nations, the European Union, Australia, and the United States.
History
Founding and early years (1945–1953) On 13 October 1945, the North Korean Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea (NKB–CPK) was established, with Kim Yong-bom as its first chairman. However, the NKB–CPK remained subordinate to the CPK Central Committee, which was headquartered in Seoul and headed by Pak Hon-yong. Two months later, at the 3rd Plenum of the NKB, Kim Yong-bom was replaced by Kim Il Sung, an event which was probably orchestrated by the Soviet Union. The North Korean Bureau became the Communist Party of North Korea in spring 1946, with Kim Il Sung being elected its chairman. On 22 July 1946, Soviet authorities in North Korea established the United Democratic National Front, a popular front led by the Communist Party of North Korea. The Communist Party of North Korea soon merged with the New People's Party of Korea, a party primarily composed of communists from China. A special commission of the two parties ratified the merger on 28 July 1946, and it became official the following day. One month later (28–30 August 1946), the party held its founding congress, establishing the Workers' Party of North Korea (WPNK). The congress elected the former leader of the New People's Party of Korea Kim Tu-bong as the first WPNK chairman, with Kim Il Sung its appointed deputy chairman. However, despite his formal downgrade in the party's hierarchy, Kim Il Sung remained its leader.
Party control increased throughout the country after the congress. From 27 to 30 March 1948, the WPNK convened its 2nd Congress. While Kim Tu-bong was still the party's formal head, Kim Il Sung presented the main report to the congress. In it he claimed that North Korea was "a base of democracy", in contrast to South Korea, which he believed to be dictatorial. On 28 April 1948 a special session of the Supreme People's Assembly approved the constitution proposed and written by WPNK cadres, which led to the official establishment of an independent North Korea. It did not call for the establishment of an independent North Korea, but for a unified Korea under a communist government; the capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would be Seoul, not Pyongyang. Kim Il Sung was the appointed head of government of the new state, with Kim Tu-bong heading the legislative branch. A year later on 24 June 1949, the Workers' Party of Korea was created with the merger of the WPNK and the Workers' Party of South Korea.
Kim Il Sung was not the most ardent supporter of a military reunification of Korea; that role was played by the South Korean communists, headed by Pak Hon-yong. After several meetings between Kim Il Sung and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, North Korea invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950, thus beginning the Korean War. With American intervention in the war the DPRK nearly collapsed, but it was saved by Chinese intervention in the conflict. The war had the effect of weakening Soviet influence over Kim Il Sung and the WPK. Around this time, the main fault lines in early WPK politics were created. Four factions formed: the domestic faction (WPK cadres who had remained in Korea during Japanese rule), the Soviet faction (Koreans from the Soviet Union), the Yan'an faction (Koreans from China) and the guerrilla faction (Kim Il Sung's personal faction). However, Kim Il Sung would be unable to further strengthen his position until the end of the war.
Kim Il Sung's consolidation of power (1953–1980)
Relations worsened between the WPK and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) when Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, began pursuing a policy of de-Stalinization. During the Sino–Soviet split, an ideological conflict between the CPSU and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Kim Il Sung manoeuvred between the two socialist superpowers; by doing so, he weakened their influence on the WPK. By 1962 Kim Il Sung and the WPK favored the CCP over the CPSU in the ideological struggle, and "for a few years North Korea almost unconditionally supported the Chinese position on all important issues." The primary conflict between the WPK and the CPSU during this period was that Kim Il Sung did not support the denunciation of Stalinism, the creation of a collective leadership, and the theory of peaceful coexistence between the capitalist and socialist worlds. Kim Il Sung believed peaceful coexistence to be synonymous with capitulation and knew that de-Stalinization in North Korea would effectively end his unlimited power over the WPK. The result of the souring of relations between the CPSU and the WPK was that the Soviet Union discontinued aid to North Korea.
China was meanwhile unwilling to increase its aid, and several North Korean industries were consequently on the brink of disaster. Mao Zedong began the Cultural Revolution shortly thereafter, an event criticized by the WPK as "left-wing opportunism" and a manifestation of the "Trotskyist theory of a permanent revolution." Relations between the CPSU and the CCP stabilized during the 1960s, with the WPK making it clear it would remain neutral in the Sino–Soviet conflict, thus resulting in the 1966 launch of the Juche program aimed at national self-determination at all levels. This, in turn, strengthened Kim Il Sung's position in the WPK.
Beginning in the 1960s, Kim Il Sung's cult of personality reached new heights. It had been no greater than Stalin's or Mao's until 1972, when his birthday on 15 April became the country's main public holiday and statues of him began to be built nationwide. Kim became known as "Great Leader", the "Sun of the Nation", "The Iron All-Victorious General" and "Marshal of the All-Mighty Republic" in WPK and state publications; official propaganda stated that "burning loyalty to the leader" was one of the main characteristics of any Korean.
Kim Il Sung and his guerilla faction had purged the WPK of its opposing factions during the 1950s and the 1960s, to the dismay of both the CCP and the CPSU. The domestic faction was the first to go (in 1953–55), followed by the Yan'an faction in 1957–58 and the Soviet Koreans (along with anyone else deemed unfaithful to the WPK leadership) in the 1957–62 purge. According to historian Andrei Lankov, "Kim Il Sung had become not only supreme but also the omnipotent ruler of North Korea—no longer merely 'first amongst equals, as had been the case in the late 1940s". After purging his WPK opposition, Kim Il Sung consolidated his power base with nepotism and hereditary succession in the Kim family and the guerilla faction. Beginning in the late 1980s, "a high (and increasing) proportion of North Korean high officials have been sons of high officials."