Workers' Party of North Korea

The North Korea Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea broke away from the Seoul central committee in 1946 as the Communist Party of North Korea and on 22 July led the United Democratic National Front set up by the Soviet authorities. The Communist Party of North Korea and the New People's Party agreed to merge at the end of July, and the founding congress of 28–30 August established the Workers' Party of North Korea. The English-language source estimates about 366,000 members in around 12,000 cells at the founding, while the English article on the New People's Party gives more than 170,000, of whom 134,000 came from the communists and 35,000 from the New People's Party. The New People's Party drew on intellectuals and the communists on workers and peasants, and Kim Il Sung told the congress that the party was the vanguard of the working masses and must keep its purity and discipline.

The party inherited four factions from the Communist Party of Korea: the Soviet Koreans led by Ho Ka-i; the domestic faction of communists who had stayed in Korea under Japanese rule, such as O Ki-sop, Chu Yong-ha and Kim Yong-bom; the Yan'an faction led first by Mu Chong and then by Kim Tu-bong and Choe Chang-ik; and Kim Il Sung's guerrilla faction. With about 130 to 140 members the guerrillas were initially the weakest, but Kim's leadership of the government and Soviet backing gave them the upper hand. The first politburo had six members from the Yan'an faction, three Soviet Koreans, two from the domestic faction and two guerrillas.

The party held 36% of the seats in the People's Assembly of North Korea, which Kim Tu-bong chaired, while Kim Il Sung headed the People's Committee of North Korea. In the village and ward people's committee elections of 1947 party members won 57.7% of the 70,454 seats. A purge of the domestic faction in early 1947 expelled 40,000 to 60,000 members. At the Second Congress on 27–30 March 1948 the party claimed 725,762 members in 29,762 cells, and Kim Il Sung attacked O Ki-sop and other domestic communists. Its organs were Rodong Sinmun and Kunroja.

In early September 1948, 102 of the 212 deputies of the Supreme People's Assembly came from the party; the assembly proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with vice chairman Kim Il Sung as prime minister. On 24 June 1949 the party merged with the Workers' Party of South Korea to form the Workers' Party of Korea; the Korean article on the Workers' Party of Korea says the WPSK was absorbed on 24 June and the name was changed on 30 June.