On August 15, 1945 the Korean people greeted a historic event of liberation from the Japanese imperialists’ military occupation. But their delight didn’t last long. On September 8 that year the US imperialists, who had long pursued a legitimate claim for occupation of Korea, took the southern half of Korea bloodlessly in the guise of “liberator.” Later, they officially announced their occupation of south Korea by means of the September 18 statement of President Truman in which he openly declared his opposition to Korea’s liberation, and the aggressive announcement of the US State Department director in charge of the Far Eastern affairs who uttered that Korea could not directly switch to autonomy. The US sought to develop south Korea as its colonial military base and strategic bridgehead for invading the northern half of Korea and Asia. To this end, it established a “military government” and took hold of all fields of south Korea such as politics, the economy, military and foreign affairs.
The founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on September 9, 1948 was the gains of the Korean people in the struggle to frustrate the moves of the US imperialists and their stooges for a divided Korea and establish a reunified, independent state in Korea. When the Korean people intensified the struggle for building an independent and sovereign state, the US imperialists schemed to fabricate a separate “government” in south Korea and employ neo-colonialism. To deal with the situation, the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in the north proposed to hold north-south general elections to establish a supreme legislative body for all Korea on the principle of general, equal and direct elections to be done by the secret vote. As a result, a joint conference of representatives of political parties and public organizations in north and south Korea was held in Pyongyang in April 1948. With this as a momentum the people in north and south Korea turned out as one in the struggle to establish a unified government. However, the US forced separate elections on south Korea and fabricated a reactionary puppet regime.
To cope with the prevailing situation, the WPK took a decisive measure to have general elections to set up an all-Korea supreme legislative body and establish a unified central government representing all the Korean people’s will. Later, the north-south general elections were held to send deputies to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Supreme People’s Assembly. The turnout was 99.97 per cent in the north and 77.52 per cent in the south. By the unanimous will of the Korean people the Supreme People’s Assembly, the highest organ of state power, was established, and the founding of the DPRK was proclaimed to the whole world.
Since then the WPK has waged a dynamic struggle to realize the independent and peaceful reunification of Korea under the banner of the DPRK. In September 1948 the First Session of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly demanded, in the name of the government of the DPRK, that the governments of the Soviet Union and the United States immediately withdraw their troops from Korea. The Soviet government complied, and withdrew its forces completely from the north of Korea by the end of 1948. The US imperialists, however, refused to comply, and made a request to UN for a continued presence of its forces in south Korea. While enforcing a long-term occupation policy in south Korea, they accelerated preparations for an aggression war against the young DPRK. On June 25, 1950 they provoked a criminal war against the DPRK.
After the victory in the three-year-long Fatherland Liberation War the WPK and the government of the DPRK made persistent efforts to turn the cease-fire into durable peace and achieve Korea’s independent and peaceful reunification. At a Geneva Conference in 1954 it put forth a proposal on peaceful coordination of Korea, and took positive measures to remove military confrontation between the north and the south and have the foreign forces pulled out from Korea. It also made realistic proposals for realizing wide-ranging inter-Korean cooperation and exchange in all fields of politics, the economy, culture, defence and foreign relations. But none of those proposals came true.
The enthusiasm of the south Korean people for reunification was mounting after a popular uprising took place in April 1960 involving millions of people across south Korea for national salvation against the US imperialists and the Syngman Rhee puppet regime. The youths and students in south Korea launched a strong campaign for national reunification, chanting, “Go northward and come southward; let’s meet at Panmunjom!” Feeling uneasy about the ever-growing demand for national reunification in south Korea the US imperialists and the south Korean puppet clique brutally suppressed the reunification movement of all strata and cooked up many plots to suppress and murder patriotic people and organizations who fought for reunification.
In the 1970s President Kim Il Sung made it clear that the DPRK was ready to have contact at any time with all political parties, including the Democratic Republican Party, and public organizations and individual personages in south Korea to open a new phase in the national reunification movement. Then he set forth a wide-ranging policy of negotiation. When a south Korean delegate came to Pyongyang for high-level political talks between the north and the south, the President met him and suggested the three principles of national reunification—independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity—as the fundamental guideline to be maintained by both sides in the joint cause of national reunification. As a result, the North-South Joint Statement was published on July 4, 1974 with the principles as its keynote.
Basing themselves on the principles the WPK and the DPRK government worked with all sincerity to hasten the independent and peaceful reunification of Korea. When the atmosphere of national reunification mounted quickly throughout the country, the US imperialists and the south Korean puppet regime announced the idea of “simultaneous entry into the UN” by the north and the south and “cross recognition” and clung to fabrication of “two Koreas.”
The WPK and the DPRK government waged a vigorous struggle to implement President Kim Il Sung’s policies for one Korea, including the five-point policy whose gist is to remove military confrontation and ease tensions between the north and the south, achieve multilateral cooperation and interchange, convene a national congress comprising the representatives of people of at all strata, of political parties and social organizations from both sides, institute a north-south federation named the Federal Republic of Koryo, and enter the UN under this name; the proposal for founding the Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo that would be a unified federal state with a national government to be established on condition that the north and the south recognize and tolerate each other’s ideas and social systems, a government in which the two sides are represented on an equal footing and under which they exercise regional autonomy with equal power and duties.
In the 1990s the inter-Korean high-level talks took place, adopting the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Cooperation and Exchange between the North and the South. But the US imperialists and the south Korean clique threw a wet blanket over the agreement with a frenzied anti-DPRK nuclear racket. Later, when there were two inter-Korean summit meetings in the 2000s followed by the adoption of the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration and the October 4 Declaration, the US imperialists hindered their implementation and reversed the north-south relations back to confrontation.
This year the WPK and the government of the DPRK made positive proposals of crucial importance to create a favourable environment for the country’s reunification and made positive efforts to this end. But the US imperialists and the south Korean puppets waged Key Resolve and other joint military exercises recklessly, sent seditious leaflets to the north and raised a “human rights” campaign against the north. This created a touch-and-go situation in which a nuclear war might break out at any moment. The confrontation was more acute than ever before in the Korean peninsula.
It is an invariable stand of the WPK and the DPRK government to accomplish national reunification without fail under the idea of by our nation itself. The Korean people are firmly convinced of their bright future as they are under the wise leadership of their supreme leader Kim Jong Un who is thoroughly implementing the instructions of President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il on national reunification.