80th Anniversary of the Founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea
October 10, 1945

A Party Forged in the Crucible of Korean Peoples Struggle to Liberate Their Country

A mass gymnastics and artistic performance “Long Live the Workers’ Party of Korea” celebrating the 80th founding anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, May Day Stadium, Pyongyang, October 9, 2025

President Kim Il Sung, founder of the Workers’ Party of Korea

The Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) was founded by the esteemed leader Kim Il Sung on October 10, 1945. It is a Party forged in the crucible of the Korean people’s struggle to liberate their country, first from the Japanese occupiers in the first decades of the 20th century and then from the U.S. imperialists after WWII.

Kim Il Sung had already embarked on the road of revolutionary struggle in his teens to liberate his country and people from the Japanese imperialists. On October 17, 1926 he formed the Down-with-Imperialism Union. This was the starting point of founding a Juche-type revolutionary party, which differed from previous parties in Korea.[1]

While advancing the Juche-oriented line of the Korean revolution at the Kalun Meeting in June, 1930, Kim Il Sung illuminated the essential way of founding a revolutionary party. The most important thing, he said, was to found a party independently and by way of forming its grass-roots organizations first and enlarging and strengthening them, and prepare for its founding in close combination with the anti-Japanese struggle.

Kim Il Sung then formed the Society for Rallying Comrades in early July 1930. This was the first Party organization comprised of the young communists of the new generation present at Kalun. This is how the prototype of the party organizations guided by the Juche Idea was born.

The anti-Japanese armed struggle waged under the guidance of Kim Il Sung served to both wage a liberation war to save the country and nation and found a revolutionary party of the working class. During the anti-Japanese armed struggle, the Party committee of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army was organized, making it possible to establish the system of guiding the party organizations at all levels and realize Party guidance over the Korean revolution as a whole.

A sound organizational backbone was built up and the solid unity and cohesion of the Party Committee ranks were consolidated. On the basis of the successes and experiences in party-building achieved during the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle, Kim Il Sung organized to move forward to founding the party shortly after Korea’s liberation on August 15, 1945. At last, on October 10, 1945, the WPK was founded with the fighters who had been tempered and trained during the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle as its core and communists who had been active in various regions.

Comrade Kim Il Sung leading in the anti-Japanese armed struggle

Comrade Kim Il Sung forming the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU), October 17, 1926.

Top: Comrade Kim Il Sung leads the historic Kalun Meeting in Jiajiatun, China, a conference of young Korean communists, from June 30 to July 3, 1930, where Kim Il Sung elaborated the Juche principles. Bottom: On July 3, the conference participants founded the Society for Rallying Comrades, aimed at mobilizing those with the ambition and will to advance and complete the Korean revolution.

Monument commemorating the formation of the first Party organization in Onsang, at a clandestine meeting led by Comrade Kim Il Sung on the top of Turu Hill on October 1, 1930.

The Party Founding Museum in Pyongyang. Displays inside include the hall where the inaugural Congress of the WPK was held.

Sculpture at the Grand Monument on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang. It symbolizes the struggle of working people, who achieve brilliant success in the socialist revolution and construction under the Party’s leadership.

The founding of the WPK enabled the Korean people to victoriously carve out their destiny and usher in a new era of epochal changes by relying on their own vanguard force. Kim Il Sung’s method of founding the WPK created a communist party capable of guiding the nation-building project of the DPRK despite very difficult conditions imposed by the U.S. imperialists and its allies, including Canada. Today, this Party is advancing victoriously along the road of accomplishing the cause of socialism by answering the call of history and overcoming all the difficulties which lie in its path.

On this occasion, National Leader of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) Anna Di Carlo, sent a message of greetings and congratulations to Kim Jung Un, General Secretary of the WPK, and through him to the Party’s Central Committee, members and the Korean people. Among other things Ms. Di Carlo said the anniversary “Brings to mind the magnificent exploits and heroism of the Korean people and what can be achieved under the leadership of their Communist Party which has lofty aims and maintains the unity of its ranks and of the Korean people based on principle.” She spoke of CPC(ML)’s deep respect for the WPK’s leadership, today and throughout its history writing, “Kim Il Sung’s exploits in founding the WPK and of Kim Jong Il in consolidating the WPK, both at crucial moments of great changes in the history of the Korean people and the world, provide lessons of great significance on the role of the Party in uniting the people to consolidate their nation-building projects and setting an independent people-centred course to fulfill the aims of the people.”

A mass meeting in celebration of the 80th founding anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea was held at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang on October 9, 2025.

Kim Jong Un, General Secretary of the WPK and President of the State Affairs of the DPRK, visits the Party Founding Museum October 9 and delivers a speech on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the WPK.

One of the meetings held to celebrate the 80th founding anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea held by working people’s organizations on October 3, 2025.

Note

1. Speaking to a group of journalists from Japan on September 17, 1972, Kim Il Sung explained the concept of Juche: “[T]he idea of Juche means that the masters of the revolution and construction are the masses of the people and that they are also the motive force of the revolution and construction. In other words, an idea that one is responsible for one’s own destiny and one has also the capacity for hewing out one’s own destiny. We are not the author of this idea. Every Marxist-Leninist has this idea. I have just laid a special emphasis on it.”

(Photos: KCNA.)

[BACK]