North Korea’s Workers’ Party is set to hold
a convention for the first time in 36 years, throwing the ruling political
body’s past and present into the spotlight.
Pyongyang says that the roots of the
Workers’ Party trace back to the group ‘Down-with-Imperialism Union’ [DIU],
drawn up by the country’s founder Kim Il Sung back in 1925, but the foundation
of the Party is considered to be October 10, 1945, when ‘The Chosun Communist
Party Convention of Leaders and Devotees of the 5 Northwest Provincial Party
Committees’ was held. Starting in 1949, that day was designated a national
holiday.
The first Party Congress was held in August
of 1946, before the political leadership was established in the North, to
discuss the issue of merging the North Chosun Communist Party and the New
People’s Party as well as deciding on the Workers’ Party’s doctrine and
regulations. During the second Congress in 1948, the Party revised its
regulations, and those adopted from the first and second meeting outlined the
Party’s goal of building an independent country and improving people’s
political, economic, and cultural standards of living, without delineating the
political body’s ideology.
It was only in April of 1956, years after
the Korean War was halted with a ceasefire, that the third Party Congress took
place. Here, the Party revised its party regulation article 1 to declare it
follows Marxism and Leninism as the supreme principle of operation within the
Party. It put forward its immediate goal of ‘completing the anti-imperialist,
anti-feudal democratic revolutionary mission on a national level’, while
outlining its final goal of building a communist society.
Not much change was evident in the fourth
Party Congress that was held in September 1961, but in the fifth meeting in
November of 1970, the Party, as it revised regulations again, took on Kim Il
Sung’s ‘juche’ ideology along with Marxism and Leninism as its ruling ideology.
Having removed all of his political rivals through the ‘August Faction
Incident’ (in 1956), Kim Il Sung was able to make rapid advances in his
ideological stance.
By the time the sixth Congress in October
1980 unfolded, the Party was able to stipulate Kim Il Sung’s ‘juche’ as being
the Party’s only ideology of political rule and present ‘the complete juche
ideologization of society’ and ‘construction of a communist society’ as the
ultimate goals of the Party. This is also where the idea of hereditary succession
from father to son was first publicly announced, and with a revision to Party
regulations, the Party’s central political committee became the political
bureau with a standing committee, moving toward a power structure centering on
(the founder’s son and next in line to power) Kim Jong Il.
During Kim Il Sung’s era, Party conventions
were held more regularly. However, at the third Congress, rules for gathering
changed to once in every four years, and that was further extended to five in
the sixth meeting. In line with this, the Party’s all-member central committee
meeting was also revised to take place at least once in six months from that
point on. This all reaffirmed the transition to a dictatorial decision-making
system led by Kim Jong Il .
After having been officially tapped as the
heir of power through the Party convention, Kim Jong Il failed to ever again
hold another Party Congress, in effect turns the Party into a rubber-stamp
political body, which garnered criticism.
What makes the seventh Party Congress,
scheduled to take place in May, notable, is the fact that it will shed light on
the state of the Party for the first time in 36 years.
The North Korean Branch of the Chosun
Communist Party started as a group with 4,530 members in its early stages.
Following its merger with the Chosun New People’s Party in 1946, though, the
number of its members swelled dramatically, only to drop again after the Korean
War, as many members either died in combat or were held accountable for losses
in battles and were purged from the Party.
However, leading up to November 1952, its
membership had grown by 450,000, and this is mainly attributed to the practice
of offering immediate membership to those on the combat field. One of the
issues that received criticism from within the Party at the time was the fact
that more than half of these new members were illiterate.
In September of 1961, when the fourth Party
Congress took place, there were some 1,030,000 members with roughly 65,000
official cells. However, during the 1980 sixth Congress, the Party stopped
revealing its overall numbers, with only estimates from the time that put
numbers at around 3.2 million.
The famine of the ‘90s is said to
have dealt a severe blow to the Party, as illustrated in former International
Secretary of the Workers’ Party Hwang Jang Yop’s testimony in which he
described over half a million Party members having died of starvation from the
year of 1996. The fact that Kim Jong Il was mainly referred to as the National
Defense Commission [NDC] chairman, all the while not holding Party Congress
likely ties back to these issues. Had he allowed Congress to take place, it may
have revealed to the rest of the world just how many Party members had died of
starvation.
This all gave birth to the belief that this
may have resulted in his preference for military over Party and the title ‘NDC
chairman’ over ‘Party first secretary’.
Another element worthy of attention in
light of the seventh Congress meeting is whether this signals a return to an
operation system from within the Party.
Unlike Kim Jong Il, who was behind the
collapse of Party leadership and its eventual incapacitation, Kim Jong Un has
from the early stages of his regime focused on normalizing the Party structure.
What especially set him apart from his father are his efforts to rectify the
Party’s position over the military.
To further understand the execution of this
decision, it is important to consider the basic structure of the Party itself.
The function and role of the Workers’
Party’s internal organs is well reflected in the word ‘guidance’. In North
Korea’s ‘Big Dictionary of the Korean People’s Language’, it is defined as ‘to
teach well and assist in order to direct in a particular direction, or work of
that act’, but under the reality of operations within the organization, it can
simply be understood as ‘to control and order.’
The base organization of the Party are cell
groups. Cells are composed of five to 30 members, and ‘guiding’ it is a higher
‘elementary Party committee’ that consists of 31 or more members.
Within the military, each base unit also
has a Party committee established, and the overall Party Central Military
Commission overseeing all these groups falls directly under the Party Central Committee.
The secretary for the Party Central Military Commission becomes the director of
the Korean People’s Army’s General Political Bureau. Party committees within
the military are able to receive ratification from the Party’s Central Military
Commission and recommended as political and military cadres within the
committees at each base.
Meanwhile, the Workers’ Party operates a
cadre fostering and retraining program for committees at all levels to ensure
that Party cadres have the desired qualities and the better management of human
resources. At the municipal level exists the Kim Il Sung Higher Party School,
which offers programs running from one month up to five years. Each
province has a Communist University and each county is home to a Party school.
All Party cadres are required to receive
education at these retraining schools each year on a regular basis for at least
a period of one month. However, there has been news that this system has not
been properly managed since the turn of the century.
In order to promulgate the Party’s policy
lines, the Party has its ‘Rodong Sinmun’ as well as the Workers’ Party
Publishing House for media coverage and publication. These organizations not
only take on the role of ideological education but the mobilization of people
to accomplish Party policies.
