After 60 years

This year marks the 60^th anniversary of the Joint Conference of Representatives of Political Parties and Public Organizations in North and South Korea (April North-South Joint Conference), which was a pan-national meeting for reunification of divided Korea.

After Korea was liberated from the military occupation of Japan in 1945, the United States drove its army into south Korea under the mask of “liberator”. In a machination to permanently occupy Korea, the US brought up the Korean issue to the United Nations and railroaded a “resolution” for a separate election and a cook-up of a puppet regime in south Korea, which cast a dark shadow of national and territorial division over the Korean nation that had lived as a homogeneous nation for 5,000 years.

To cope with the trying situation, President Kim Il Sung put forward the line of forming a united front for grand national unity. In March 1948, when the US was making more blunt attempt for “a separate election and separate government” in south Korea, he addressing the 2^nd Congress of the Workers’ Party of North Korea and the 25^th Meeting of the Central Committee of the Democratic National United Front of North Korea, put forth a policy to establish an all-Korean unified democratic government by the Korean people’s own efforts and initiated to hold a joint conference of representatives of political parties and public organizations in north and south Korea. He then saw to it that concrete measures were taken for its realization. Thus, his letters and invitation cards were sent to not only the patriotic democrats, but also the pro-US and anti-communist rightists in south Korea.

Responding to Kim Il Sung’s noble idea, a large number of representatives of political parties and social organizations of south Korea and politicians crossed the 38^th parallel drawn by the US, northward to attend the April North-South Joint Conference held in Pyongyang from April 19 to 23 that year.

The conference was participated in by 695 representatives of 56 political parties and social organizations in the north and south Korea which had a total membership of over 10 million, and also by overseas Koreans.

President Kim Il Sung delivered a report, The political situation in North Korea, at the conference. He gave a comprehensive analysis on the political situation of the country, and elucidated the task of the Korean people to struggle against the US imperialists’ scheme of dividing Korea and establish an all-Korean unified democratic government. His report received full support from the participants. The conference adopted a resolution on the political situation of Korea and an appeal to all the Korean compatriots. They solemnly declared that the Korean people would never recognize the puppet regime to be cooked up by a separate election, but would establish by themselves a genuine unified government on a democratic principle, while appealing to the whole Koreans to turn out in the struggle to check and frustrate the separate election in progress in south Korea under the supervision of the “UN Temporary Commission on Korea,” an aggressive tool of the US imperialists. The conference then decided on the organization of a national committee of struggle against the separate election in south Korea and the line of its work, proposed by Kim Il Sung.

The meeting demonstrated that the political parties and social organizations in the north and south of Korea, though they were different in their political views and class stands, can successfully unite with each other based on the common national idea in the struggle to achieve reunification and independence of Korea, and vigorously carry out a nationwide struggle to check the national division and establish an independent unified government by dint of the great unity of the nation.

President Kim Il Sung’s lofty idea of national reunification is brilliantly succeeded by leader Kim Jong Il.

After Kim Il Sung’s demise (July 8, 1994), Kim Jong Il made public work Let Us Carry Out the Great Leader Kim Il Sung’s Instructions for National Reunification, on August 4, 1997, in which he expressed his will to unchangeably inherit and carry out the President’s instructions to the last.

His iron will and courageous determination enabled the first inter-Korean summit meeting in the 55-year-long history of national division to be held in Pyongyang in June 2000 and adopt the historic June 15 North-South Joint Declaration. With this as a momentum, the reunification movement of the Korean nation has met a new turning point and the hostile and confrontational north-south relations of dozens of years have switched to the “by-our-nation-itself” one.

October 4 last year witnessed another inter-Korean summit meeting in Pyongyang and the adoption of the “Declaration for Development of North-South Relations and Peace and Prosperity” that provided the Korean nation with a more concrete and detailed milestone for Korea’s reunification.

The present reality in the Korean Peninsula that shows a stronger tendency towards reunification reminds people of the exploits of President Kim Il Sung who created a good tradition of great national unity.

The day of national reunification, the wish of the President, will soon break.