October and the WPK

October seems to be the month for the Workers’ Party of Korea: the WPK has many anniversaries in October.

October 8

Leader Kim Jong Il was acclaimed as General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea on this day in 1997.

That was a significant event in the development of the WPK.

After President Kim Il Sung passed away in July 1994, Kim Jong Il published his work titled The Workers’ Party of Korea Is the Party of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung in October 1995, on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the WPK, and has strengthened the Party to be the Party for the President, carrying forward his ideas and cause.

The leader has also developed the President’s idea of attaching importance to guns, to military affairs, in keeping with the requirement of the times and revolutionary development, thus realizing Songun politics on a full scale and at a high level. Thanks to his Songun politics, the WPK was able to lead the army and people to the heroic struggle to safeguard socialism during the harsh trials in the late 1990s and initiate the radical work of building a great prosperous powerful socialist nation.

October 10

On October 10, 1945, President Kim Il Sung founded the Workers’ Party of Korea.

That was an event of great significance in developing the Korean revolution in depth and in shaping the destiny of the Korean people.

The WPK is the general staff of the Korean revolution and the guiding force of the Korean society. Thanks to its leadership, the socialist system centering on the popular masses, was set up in north Korea for the first time in its history of 5,000 years. Korea once a backward colonial agricultural country, developed into a socialist industrial state with solid foundations of the self-reliant economy in a period of only 14 years.

Under the wise guidance of the WPK, north Korea has become an independent state with strong political and military power and an indestructible fortress of anti-imperialism.

October 17

The day is the founding anniversary of the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU), from which the WPK took root.

This year the Koreans celebrate its 80^th anniversary.

The DIU founded by Kim Il Sung on October 17, 1926, was a political organization of a new type, embracing the young people of new generation who aspired for socialism to realize the national and class emancipation under the ideal of anti-imperialism, national liberation and independence.

The formation of the DIU means the new start of the Korean revolution and from then on the Korean people’s revolutionary struggle could advance under the guidance of the grandiose program of the DIU and the correct strategy and tactics.

The DIU is the root of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The program of the DIU served as the foundation of the WPK’s program; the principle of independence set by the DIU became the principle of the Party building and activities; and the revolutionaries of new generation trained by the DIU became the backbone of the Party building.

The WPK is inconceivable apart from the DIU.

Indeed, October is a meaningful month in which significant holidays of the WPK and its long and glorious history are concentrated.

So the north Koreans sing It Is October in deep emotion.

We greet October every year

When our party was born

     The Party embraces us in its red flag,

So we are full of joy.

Voice of eulogizing the dignified Party

　

The founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea by President Kim Il Sung was an event of history-making significance in the carving out of the destiny of the Korean people and the accomplishment of the cause of global independence.

The WPK is the one and only party which united the leader with the popular masses and successfully realized the leader’s leadership over the popular masses and is a revolutionary party which played a decisive role in opening up the era of independence.

The characteristic feature of the WPK is that it has President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il at the helm, is guided by its own idea (the Juche idea), forms a harmonious whole with the popular masses, has established a system and method of work of its own style and adheres to a genuine international stand.

General Secretary Kim Jong Il has made an outstanding contribution to the Korean revolution and the cause of world independence while leading the  WPK for more than 40 years.

Secretary General of the Asian Regional Institute of Juche Idea

The WPK has followed the road of victory with the Juche idea founded by President Kim Il Sung as its guiding idea and, pitting itself against the United States fair and square, has held fast to its own revolutionary principles.

The WPK enjoys the Korean people’s ardent love, deep respect and unreserved trust as the general staff of the revolution.

The WPK has won victory after victory so far, displaying its invincible strength. This is the great exploit accomplished by President Kim Il Sung and is the outcome of the wise leadership of General Secretary Kim Jong Il who has strengthened and developed the WPK into the Party of the President all the time.

The WPK which has comrade Kim Jong Il as its General Secretary will be ever-victorious.

Secretary of the Dar-es-Salaam Provincial

Committee of the Revolutionary Party of Tanzania

The WPK is incomparably firmer and mightier in unity and cohesion than any other party in the world.

Comrade Kim Jong Il has brought about the Party’s unity and cohesion based on one idea and one center and has paid deep attention to further strengthening it.

The leader’s leadership is ensured without a hitch from the Party Central Committee to its lowest units and all the Party organizations and members accept the Party line and policies without any reservation and implement them in a thoroughgoing way. Thanks to the establishment of such rock-firm unity and cohesion, the WPK is so powerful.

Russian newspaper

Glasnosty

Licensed criminals

…South Korea is the place the US soldiers like most. This is because they can do anything there as they please. Even if they are arrested for illegal acts, they may exercise the right of silence, and a US military police or investigation team come to their rescue. They know well that any south Korean investigation agency is bound to do nothing to them. To them south Korea is merely place of their occupation…

This is part of an article carried by a Canadian newspaper.

It can be said that the US troops’ 60-odd-year-long occupation of south Korea is annals of crime. They have committed numerous crimes in south Korea. They, however, have felt no sense of guilt or moral restriction for they knew well that they possessed a special right of acquittal.

The right is just provided by the south Korea-US Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).

The administrative agreement, from the first article to the last, provides one-sided rights to the US troops, including the issues concerning the criminal jurisdiction over the US troops, their use of land and facilities, and control of their tax and migration.

The part of the criminal jurisdiction mover the US troops, in particular, provides them with an unprecedented special right to cover crimes. Accordingly, the south Korean authorities are not allowed to arrest US troops for their criminal acts committed in the line of duty or investigate the cases, and, on top of it, has no right to punish them. The south Korean authorities are granted only the primary jurisdiction over the US troops’ crimes committed out of duty, and yet it may “be comprehensively given up when there is a request from US troops.” It is also to be decided by the US troops whether a crime is committed in the line of duty or out of duty. In the long run, the south Korean authorities have to idly look on any crime by US troops. The SOFA is simply a license for the US military crime.

Consequently the US troops have unhesitatingly committed all manner of crimes in south Korea. It is just the reality of south Korea that the US troops swagger about in the land whereas the local people have to live in apprehension and horror.

According to south Korea’s official data, the criminal acts of murder, violence, plunder and rape by the local US troops number more than five a day on average, nearly 2,000 a year. The south Korean authorities exercised its primary jurisdiction over only a few of them. Even the trials that took place under the pressure of public opinion may well be “formal procedures to grant American murderers’ acquittal” or “deceptive farces.”

In June 2002 when two schoolgirls were run over by the US troops’ armored vehicle, the Us murderers were boisterously frequenting bars and fireworks were set off in the US army unit while their parents were wailing over their daughters’ death and memorial services for the deceased were taking place across south Korea.

A south Korean law professor, Choe Sung-hwan, said in indignation, “Where on earth is such a place as south Korea where they ask the aggression army not to withdraw by going so far as to pay for its upkeep? I feel disgrace, indeed.”

A local historian, Yu Hong-jun, asserted, “A lot of people are deprived of their livelihood and their life is daily endangered by the US troops, but there is no institutional mechanism to control the US troops’ crimes. This further encourages their insolence as the day go by. It is high time we had the subservient SOFA abolished and recovered our national dignity.”

In the land where they are deprived of their sovereignty under the occupation of the US troops, people could not avoid misfortunes and sufferings. This is a lesson to the international community from the reality of south Korea as well as of Iraq.