Korean Democratic Party (North Korea)
조선민주당
Party founded in Pyongyang on 3 November 1945 by Cho Man-sik. It drew support from Christian businessmen and intellectuals, but after Cho, who opposed the trusteeship plan, was arrested by the Soviet authorities in January 1946, it came under Choe Yong-gon and became a satellite of the communists. Renamed the Korean Social Democratic Party in the early 1980s, it survives as an allied party of the Workers' Party of Korea.
In depth
According to the Korean-language source, on 14 October 1945 the Soviet military government proposed to Cho Man-sik a party with Cho as leader and Kim Il Sung as deputy. Cho at first refused, fearing that founding parties under division would make the partition permanent, but after repeated pressure from Kim he founded the Korean Democratic Party in Pyongyang on 3 November. Figures for its size differ: the English-language source says it had around half a million members after a few weeks while Soviet reports gave 141,000 by May 1946, and the Korean-language source gives 300,000 by Kim Il Sung's count and 500,000 by the party's own. Cho was forced to appoint Choe Yong-gon, a secret communist sympathiser, as his deputy.
When the Moscow Conference of December 1945 decided on a trusteeship, the party's Central Committee plenum voted against it on 2 January 1946; on 5 January Cho resigned as chairman of the People's Committee for the Five Provinces and was soon arrested by the Soviet authorities. Many party leaders moved to Seoul and set up a new headquarters, winning one seat (Yi Yun-yong) in the Constitutional Assembly election of May 1948. In the north, the First Congress on 24 February 1946 elected Choe Yong-gon leader and declared Cho "a traitor to the nation", and his supporters were purged.
On 22 July the party joined the United Democratic National Front and became in effect subordinate to the communists. Its Second Congress on 13–15 April 1947 wrote the theory of "people's democratic revolution" into its programme and adopted a structure resembling that of the Workers' Party of North Korea. Its membership still grew for a time: a Soviet document gives 291,459 in December 1946 and a resolution of the Second Congress 273,665 in May 1947. It was given 35 seats in the August 1948 elections, but during the Korean War many members went south, and by the end of the war membership had fallen below 10,000.
According to the English-language source, when Choe Yong-gon became a vice chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea in February 1956, Hong Ki-hwang replaced him as leader, and Hong was removed on espionage charges in the 1958 purge of non-WPK parties; the Korean-language source instead says Choe led the party until 1958 and was followed by Kang Yang-uk. From 1958 its local organisations were dismantled, leaving only its top bodies by the 1960s. It was renamed the Korean Social Democratic Party, which the English history section dates to 1980 and the Korean source and the English ideology section to 1981 (the 6th Party Congress of 28–29 January). Since then it has served propaganda claiming that North Korea has a multi-party system, and in 2026 North Korean media identified Ri Son-gwon as its chairman.