"Korean Democratic Party" redirects here. For the 1945–1949 South Korean party, see Korea Democratic Party. For the modern-day South Korean party, see Minjudang.
The party was established in Pyongyang by Cho Man-sik on 3 November 1945 as the Korean Democratic Party (조선민주당).[6][7] It quickly gained support from Christian businessmen and intellectuals,as well as well-off workers,and had around half a million members after only a few weeks,[6] while reports by the Soviet Union said that the party had 141 thousand members by May 1946.[8] Cho was forced to appoint Choe Yong-gon,a secret communist sympathizer,as his deputy in the party,while the communists increasingly targeted the party for infiltration.[8]
Cho opposed the results of the Moscow Conference in December 1945,in which the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union,the United Kingdom and the United States agreed to establish a joint trusteeship over the formerly Japanese-occupied Korea,which triggered widespread opposition and protests.[8] The KDP Central Committee's Plenum on 2 January 1946 formally voted against the trusteeship plan,and on 5 January,Cho resigned from his position as chairman of the Provisional People's Committee for the Five Provinces,leading many KDP members to follow his example.[8]
Shortly after his resignation,he was arrested by Soviet authorities.[6] Cho's arrest led to many of the party's leaders moving to Seoul in South Korea,where they set up a new headquarters;[6] the party nominated five candidates for the May 1948 Constitutional Assembly elections in South Korea,winning one seat,taken by Yi Yun-yong.[9] In North Korea,the party held its first Congress on 24 February 1946,when Choe Yong-gon was formally elected as leader of the party while Cho Man-sik was declared as "a traitor to the nation and a hireling of American and Japanese imperialism".[8] A purge of Cho's alleged or real sympathizers in the party took place afterwards.[8]
Despite increasingly coming under the control of the communists,the KDP initially still continued to attract members,with a Soviet document mentioning the party reaching 291,459 members by December 1946,while a resolution of the Second Congress from May 1947 stating that it had 273,665 members. The party was used by the WPK leadership to keep track on and diffuse anti-communists in North Korea.[8]
KDP candidates were given 35 seats in the August 1948 elections,the newly-elected Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) later proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in September 1948.[8] The party further declined during the Korean War,during when many of its members sided with the government of South Korea and left the North when South Korean and United Nations forces retreated in 1950–1951.[8] By the end of the war,its membership dropped to below 10,000. In February 1956,Choe Yong-gon was appointed as a vice chairman of the WPK,leaving Hong Ki-hwang,deputy chairman of the KDP since late 1945,to replace him as chairman of the KDP.[8]
It was given eleven seats in the 1957 parliamentary elections. Hong and Chondoist Chongu Party leader Kim Tal-hyon were made a ministers without portfolios in September 1957,the last time non-Communist parties were given Cabinet positions. Hong and Kim were purged in 1958 as part of a purge of non-WPK parties,with Hong being accused of espionage and "having contacts with American imperialism".[8] In 1959 and 1960 all of the party's offices were shut down by the government.[6] It was subsequently reduced to four seats in 1962 and one in 1967 and 1972. In 1980 it adopted its current name,the Korean Social Democratic Party (KSDP).[10]
From 1982 until the early 2000s,the party distributed its party journal abroad in Korean and English translation. Since the mid-2000s,its party journal is only available online.[11]
The party was headed by Pak Yong-il until his death in 2022.[16] The previous chairman was Kim Yong-dae.[17]As of January2007[update],the party had more than 30,000 members.[18]
Criticism of government policy
Contrary to its usual portrayal in official propaganda,for a brief time in the mid-to-late 1980s,the party's journal featured texts raising criticism of government policies. These included calls to give more support to people with disabilities or improve the petition system,as well as raising the potential benefits of allowing more than one candidate per election district and allowing voters to decide which would be elected. It is believed these statements may have been linked to a brief liberalization of North Korea's justice system that occurred around the same time.[11]
Ideology
The Korean Democratic Party was initially founded by Cho Man-sik as a nationalist party that could potentially play a significant role in a coalition with the communists.[8] After Cho's arrest,the party transitioned into a satellite party of the communists. During its Second Congress in 1947,the KDP formally incorporated the theory of "people’s democratic revolution" into its program;while not explicitly mentioning socialism,the KDP declared it was unconditionally supportive of the political and social reforms done in North Korea. It also supported friendly ties with the Soviet Union and adopted democratic centralism to its structure.[8]
Since its neutralization and effective demise by the WPK,the party has been used in North Korean propaganda targeting foreign sympathizers.[8] In 1981,the party was renamed to the Korean Social Democratic Party. Because of the ostensible social democratic ideology,which is intelligible to foreigners,the Social Democratic Party is used in such propaganda much more than the other legal minor party,Chondoist Chongu Party. In the 1990s,the KSDP published periodical magazines in Korean and English. These magazines sought to simultaneously convince foreigners that North Korea has a multi-party system with independent parties,but also that minor parties in North Korea support the Workers' Party of Korea without reservation.[19]
Organization
The KSDP was a member of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea from 1949 until the front's dissolution in 2024. It participated in the front alongside the other legal political parties and organisations of North Korea.
The Supreme People's Assembly is the legislature of North Korea. It is ostensibly the highest organ of state power and the only branch of government in North Korea, with all state organs subservient to it under the principle of unified power. However, in practice it is a rubber stamp legislature which exists to approve decisions made by the ruling party as a formality, and which has little to no real power of its own.
The Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea (DFRK), also known as the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland (DFRF) or the Fatherland Front, was a North Korean popular front formed on 25 June 1949 and led by the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK). It was initially called the Fatherland United Democratic Front.
The Chondoist Chongu Party (Korean: 천도교청우당) is a popular front party in North Korea. The party was founded on 8 February 1946 by a group of followers of the Ch'ŏndogyo. The party increasingly came under the influence of the government over time and is now under the effective control of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea. The founding-leader of the party was Kim Tarhyon.
Choe Yong-gon was the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army from 1948 to 1950, North Korean defence minister from 1948 to 1957, and the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from 1957 to 1972.
In the North Korean government, the Cabinet is the administrative and executive body. The North Korean government consists of three branches: administrative, legislative, and judicial. However, they are not independent of each other, but all branches are under the exclusive political leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK).
The Communist Party of Korea was a communist party in Korea founded during a secret meeting in Seoul in 1925. The Governor-General of Korea had banned communist and socialist parties under the Peace Preservation Law, so the party had to operate in a clandestine manner. The leaders of the party were Kim Yong-bom and Pak Hon-yong.
The Communist movement in Korea emerged as a political movement in the early 20th century. Although the movement had a minor role in pre-war politics, the division between the communist North Korea and the anti-communist South Korea came to dominate Korean political life in the post-World War II era. North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, continues to be a Jucheist state under the rule of the Workers' Party of Korea. In South Korea, the National Security Law has been used to criminalize advocacy of communism and groups suspected of alignment with North Korea. Due to the end of economic aid from the Soviet Union after its dissolution in 1991, the impractical ideological application of Stalinist policies in North Korea over years of economic slowdown in the 1980s, and the recession and famine during the 1990s, North Korea has replaced Marxism-Leninism with the Juche idea despite nominally upholding Communism. References to Communism were removed in the North Korean 1992 and 1998 constitutional revisions to make way for the personality cult of Kim's family dictatorship and the North Korean market economy reform. The Workers' Party of Korea under the leadership of Kim Jong Un later reconfirmed commitment to the establishment of a communist society, but orthodox Marxism has since been largely tabled in favor of "Socialism in our style". Officially, the DPRK still retains a command economy with complete state control of industry and agriculture. North Korea maintains collectivized farms and state-funded education and healthcare.
Parliamentary elections were held in North Korea on 25 August 1948 to elect the members of the 1st Supreme People's Assembly. Organised by the People's Committee of North Korea, the elections saw 572 deputies elected, of which 212 were from North Korea and 360 from South Korea.
Parliamentary elections were held in North Korea on 27 August 1957 to elect members of the 2nd Supreme People's Assembly. Voters were presented with a single list from the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, dominated by the Workers' Party of Korea.
The Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea (CMC) is an organ of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) which heads the Korean People's Army (KPA).
The 11th Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea was in session from 2003 until 2009. It consisted of 687 deputies, and held six sessions.
The 2nd Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) was elected at the 2nd Congress on 30 March 1948, and remained in session until the election of the 3rd Central Committee on 29 April 1956. In between party congresses and specially convened conferences the Central Committee is the highest decision-making institution in the WPK and North Korea. The 2nd Central Committee was not a permanent institution and delegated day-to-day work to elected bodies, such as the Political Committee, the Standing Committee, the Organisation Committee and the Inspection Committee in this case. It convened meetings, known as "Plenary Session of the [term] Central Committee", to discuss major policies. Only full members had the right to vote, but if a full member could not attend a plenary session, the person's spot was taken over by an alternate. Plenary session could also be attended by non-members, such meetings are known as "Enlarged Plenary Session", to participate in the committee's discussions. During its tenure it held five plenary sessions, one enlarged session, seven joint plenary sessions and four stand-alone plenums.
Kim Yong-dae is a North Korean politician. He is the chairman of the National Reconciliation Council. He was the leader of the Korean Social Democratic Party from 1998 to 2019.
Parliamentary by-elections were held in North Korea on 19 July 1959 in 56 electoral districts. The reason for the by-election was an unusually high number of vacancies – more than a quarter of seats – in the Supreme People's Assembly.
Hwang Sun-hui was a North Korean politician who served in several high-ranking positions in the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), including in the Supreme People's Assembly and the Central Committee of the WPK. She was affiliated with the Korean Revolution Museum from 1965, and was its director from 1990.
The 3rd Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea was held in Pyongyang on September 28, 2010. The meeting elected the highest authority of the Workers' Party of Korea, and revised the party charter. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il also attended the meeting. A plenary meeting of the Central Auditing Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and the September 2010 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea were held earlier on the same day.
The 8th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea was held at the April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang from 5 to 12 January 2021. A total of 7,000 people participated in the congress including 5,000 delegates. The Party Congress took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic where no cases were reported.
The 7th Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK)(7차 조선로동당 중앙군사위원회), officially the Central Military Commission of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, was elected at the 1st Plenary Session of the 7th WPK Central Committee in the immediate aftermath of the party's 7th Congress on 9 May 2016.
Hong Ki-hwang was a North Korean independence activist and politician who served as a member of the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's unicameral parliament.
References
↑ 광광 대대 극극 – 《우리 민족끼리》,Uriminzokkiri, 3 February 2023
↑ 조선민주당. Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (in Korean). 1948년 5월 10일의 제헌의원선거에 조선민주당측에서 부당수인 이윤영을 비롯하여 5명이 출마하였으나 이윤영만이 서울 종로갑구에서 당선되었다 [In the Constituent Assembly election on 10 May 1948 five candidates from the Korean Democratic Party were running, but only Yi Yun-yong was elected in Jongno District in Seoul]
↑ Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz & Christof Hartmann (2001) Elections in Asia and the Pacific: A Data Handbook: South East Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific Volume 2, p. 404 ISBN0-19-924959-8
Programme and Rules of the Korean Social Democratic Party. Pyongyang: Central Committee of the Korean Social Democratic Party. n.d. [1970s]. OCLC82330677.
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