Workers' Party of Korea
조선로동당
Ruling party of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), formed in June 1949 by the merger of the Workers' Party of North Korea and the Workers' Party of South Korea. Led first by Kim Il Sung and then by Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un, it is defined by the constitution as the party under whose leadership the state conducts all its activities. Its official guiding ideas are Kimilsungism–Kimjongilism and Juche.
In depth
The party's actual origin is the North Korea Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea, set up at a conference of party officials and activists from the five northwestern provinces held in Pyongyang on 10–13 October 1945. North Korean scholarship traces it instead to the Down-with-Imperialism Union said to have been founded by Kim Il Sung. The bureau became the Communist Party of North Korea in 1946 and merged with the New People's Party into the Workers' Party of North Korea, which merged with the Workers' Party of South Korea on 24 June 1949. According to the Korean-language source, the party took the name Workers' Party of Korea on 30 June and elected Kim Il Sung chairman, with Pak Hon-yong and Ho Ka-i as vice chairmen.
North Korea invaded the South on 25 June 1950, beginning the Korean War. The party contained four factions, domestic, Soviet, Yan'an and guerrilla, and after the war Kim Il Sung purged the domestic faction in 1953–1955, the Yan'an faction in 1957–1958 and the Soviet Koreans in 1957–1962. The August faction incident followed the Third Congress of 1956, and the Yan'an leader Kim Tu-bong fell in 1957. Kim manoeuvred between the two sides in the Sino-Soviet split to reduce their influence and launched the Juche programme of self-reliance in 1966. He purged the Kapsan faction in 1967, and in 1972 a socialist constitution made Juche the guiding principle of state activity.
At the 6th Congress in 1980 Kim Jong Il was officially named successor. After Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, Kim Jong Il became General Secretary on 8 October 1997 and pursued Songun, military-first politics, which placed the army above the party and the state and weakened party institutions. A 1998 constitutional amendment made the National Defence Commission the highest state organ. The 3rd Party Conference of 28 September 2010, the first in 44 years, confirmed Kim Jong Un as heir, and Kim Jong Il died on 17 December 2011.
The 4th Party Conference of 11 April 2012 elected Kim Jong Un First Secretary and wrote Kimilsungism–Kimjongilism into the party rules as the party's only guiding idea. Party institutions revived under him: the 7th Congress of 2016, the first in 36 years, made him chairman, and the 8th Congress of 2021 general secretary. From 2021 the party replaced Songun with "people-first politics" and restored communism to the party rules, and in 2023 it abandoned the goal of Korean reunification. At the 9th Congress on 19–25 February 2026 Kim Jong Un was re-elected General Secretary. The party is banned in South Korea under the National Security Act.