Workers' Party of Korea

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Workers' Party of Korea Full Name: Workers' Party of Korea Alias: WPK Origin: Seoul, Korea Foundation: June 30, 1949 headquarters Pyongyang, North Korea Commanders: Kim Jong-un (2011 - present) Kim Jong-il (1997 - 2011) Kim Il-sung (1949 - 1994) Goals: Retain total control of North Korea (successful) Take control of South Korea (ongoing) Crimes: Oppression Crimes against humanity Human rights violations Xenophobia Internment Torture Mass starvation

The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is the founding and ruling political party of North Korea. It is the largest party represented in the Supreme People's Assembly and coexists de jure with two other legal parties making up the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. However, these minor parties are completely subservient to the WPK, and must accept the WPK's "leading role" as a condition of their existence.

It was founded in 1949 with the merger of the Workers' Party of North Korea and the Workers' Party of South Korea. The WPK also controls the Korean People's Army. This political party (and all of the other parties in the DPRK) remains illegal in South Korea under South Korea's own National Security Act and is sanctioned by Australia, the European Union, the United Nations and the United States.

The WPK is organized according to the Monolithic Ideological System and the Great Leader, a system and theory conceived by Kim Yong-ju and Kim Jong-il. The highest body of the WPK is formally the Congress, but in practice a Congress occurs infrequently. Between 1980 and 2016, there were no congresses held. Although the WPK is organizationally similar to communist parties, in practice it is far less institutionalized and informal politics plays a larger role than usual. Institutions such as the Central Committee, the Executive Policy Bureau, the Central Military Commission (CMC), the Politburo and the Politburo's Presidium have much less power than that formally bestowed on them by the party's charter, which is little more than a nominal document. Kim Jong-un is the current WPK leader, serving as Chairman and CMC chairman.

The WPK is committed to Juche, an ideology which has been described as a combination of collectivism and nationalism; and at the 4th Conference (held in 2012), the party charter was amended to state that Kimilsungism–Kimjongilism was "the only guiding idea of the party". At the 3rd Conference (held in 2010), the WPK removed a sentence from the preamble which expressed the party's commitment "to building a communist society", replacing it with a new adherence to Songun, the "military-first" policies developed by Kim Jong-il. The 2009 revision had already removed all references to communism. Party ideology has recently focused on perceived imperialist enemies of the party and state; and on legitimizing the Kim family's dominance of the political system. Before the rise of Juche and later Songun, the party was committed to Marxist–Leninist thought as well, with its importance becoming greatly diminished over time.

The party's emblem is an adaptation of the communist hammer and sickle, with a traditional Korean calligraphy brush. The symbols represent the industrial workers (hammer), peasants (sickle) and intelligentsia (ink brush).