The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK; Korean: 조선민주주의인민공화국, Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk), also known as People's Korea and incorrectly referred to as North Korea by bourgeois media, is a socialist country in East Asia. Korea is one nation, but the southern half of Korea is occupied by the US-backed anti-communist Republic of Korea, also known as Capitalist Korea. DPRK's capital city is Pyongyang.
The DPRK is led by the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea. According to its constitution, the DPRK is an "independent socialist state", guided by the ideology of Juche which is a derivative of Marxism–Leninism originally codified by Kim Il-Sung.
While the DPRK distanced itself from USSR's ideological leadership in the 1960s, some authors still consider it a Marxist–Leninist socialist state.
In 2017, DPRK's Minister of Foreign affairs, Ri Yong Ho, stated at the United Nations General Assembly that "The U.S. had put sanctions against our country from the very first day of its foundation, and the over 70-year long history of the DPRK can be said in a sense a history of struggle, persevering along the road of self-development under the harshest sanctions in the world." Ri also stated that the essence of the situation of the Korean peninsula is a confrontation between the DPRK and the US, where the DPRK tries to defend its national dignity and sovereignty against the hostile policy and nuclear threats of the US, and points out that it was the US who first introduced nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula. Ri stated that "The very reason the DPRK had to possess nuclear weapons is because of the U.S., and it had to strengthen and develop its nuclear force onto the current level to cope with the U.S. [...] Our national nuclear force is, to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion".
Minister Ri also clarified DPRK's nuclear policy by quoting Kim Jong-un as saying that international justice can only be achieved when the anti-imperialist independent countries are strong enough, and that possession of nuclear deterrence by the DPRK is a righteous self-defensive measure taken as an ultimate option, pursuant to this principle, and further clarified that the DPRK "do[es] not have any intention at all to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against the countries that do not join in the U.S. military actions against the DPRK."
DPRK representative Kim Song stated at the 2021 UN General Assembly, "If the U.S. wants to see the Korean war, the most prolonged and long-lasting war in the world, come to an end, and if it is really desirous of peace and reconciliation on the Korean peninsula, it should take the first step towards giving up its hostile policy against the DPRK by stopping permanently the joint military exercises and the deployment of all kinds of strategic weapons which are levelled at the DPRK in and around the Korean peninsula."
In 1965 Che Guevara said that the DPRK "was a model to which revolutionary Cuba should aspire"
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was founded on 9 September 1948. The illegitimate government of the occupied portion of Korea (often referred to as South Korea, or Republic of Korea) had been established earlier the same year, when dictator Syngman Rhee, who was referred to as an "imported expatriate" and "extreme rightist" in a CIA document of the time, came to power due to U.S. influence despite many Koreans opposing the holding of separate elections in the south. In DPRK, Kim Il-Sung became the first Premier of the DPRK, a position he would hold until 1972. DPRK soon requested for U.S. and Soviet troops to leave Korea. The Soviets left on 25 September, but the U.S. occupiers refused to leave.
The Occupied Korean government was hostile to socialism and to the DPRK. Even though Western media accuses the DPRK of initiating the Fatherland Liberation War (often referred to as the Korean War), numerous acts of violence were perpetrated by the illegitimate southern government that were tantamount to war—namely the massacre on Jeju Island that targeted communists.
The people of Jeju had been protesting the formation of a separate southern regime and the holding of separate elections in the south, but were eventually violently suppressed by the US-backed southern regime. The death toll was composed of thousands of civilians, many of whom were not affiliated with the Workers' Party of South Korea or communism at all. In addition, the Yeosu-Suncheon rebellion of 1948 was a rebellion among soldiers in the south who began guerrilla-style fights against the military, as the rebelling soldiers refused to participate in the brutal suppression of the Jeju uprising. Suppression of this rebellion by the southern regime led to hundreds of civilian deaths.
Furthermore, paramilitary groups from the Republic of Korea illegally crossed the border into the DPRK on multiple occasions.
In DPRK, a two-year economic plan for 1949-1950 was adopted on the basis of the previous plans of 1947 and 1948, with plans for furthering the socialist transformation of the economy as well as the continued correction of distortions in the economy which were the result of the colonial period. However, this plan had to be suspended due to the escalation of the war in 1950.
Economy
The DPRK has maintained one of the most centralized economies in the world since the 1940s. For several decades, it has followed the Soviet pattern of five-year plans with the ultimate goal of achieving self-sufficiency. DPRK is also one of the most sanctioned countries in the world, and has been subject to sanctions since just after its foundation. The economy is heavily nationalized. Food and housing are extensively subsidized by the state, education and healthcare are free, and the payment of taxes was officially abolished in 1974.[38] The DPRK follows policy of Byungjin, meaning it simultaneously develops its nuclear weapons program and the economy.
A 2020 book published in DPRK summarizes the DPRK's economic line of development as follows: "The DPRK has consistently adhered to the line of building an independent national economy in economic construction. In Juche 42 (1953) it put put forward the basic line of socialist economic construction, developing heavy industry preferentially and ensuring the simultaneous development of light industry and agriculture. True to this line, it laid solid material and technological foundations for an independent national economy. In the 1960s when the hostile forces’ moves of aggression became undisguised, the WPK advanced the line of simultaneously carrying on economic construction and building up defences, thus establishing a socialist industrial state while increasing its defence capabilities."
According to DPRK's constitution, the DPRK regards the steady improvement of the material and cultural standards of the people as "the supreme principle of its activities", and holds that the state "shall provide all the working people with every condition for obtaining food, clothing and housing." Furthermore, the constitution states that DPRK's economy relies on socialist relations of production and on the foundation of an independent national economy, with the means of production owned in some cases by the state and in other cases owned collectively by social cooperative organizations. The eventual goal of the DPRK is to "combine the two forms of property in an organic way", and to gradually transform the means of production owned by cooperative organizations into the property of the people as a whole (i.e., into state property), based on the voluntary will of the social cooperative organizations' members. While the means of production are under the ownership of the working class in the form of state property and social cooperative organizations, property that is owned and consumed by individual citizens is also legally protected, including products of individual sideline activities such as products from kitchen gardens and income from other legal economic activities. This type of personal property is protected by the state and guaranteed by law the right for people to inherit it
The US first imposed sanctions on DPRK during the 1950s. The United States has repeatedly targeted the DPRK with sanctions, citing its nuclear weapons program as their reason.[44] Following the country’s 2006 nuclear test, the US, EU, and others added more stringent sanctions, which have periodically intensified since then. In 2017, sanctions imposed by the UN caused thousands of DPRK workers who had been working abroad to be forced to return to DPRK as well as led to the closure of numerous DPRK companies and joint ventures. Sanctions now target oil imports, and cover most finance and trade, and the country’s key minerals sector. However, 49 countries, including Cuba, Iran, and Syria have violated these sanctions and traded with the DPRK anyways.
According to Foreign Policy in Focus, sanctions on DPRK have "demonstrably failed." FPIF notes that sanctions didn’t deter DPRK from pursuing a nuclear weapons program, nor have they been subsequently responsible for pushing it toward denuclearization, and adds that DPRK has been under sanctions for nearly its entire existence and it doesn’t have a strong international economic presence that can be penalized, and "has been willing to suffer the effects of isolation in order to build what it considers to be a credible deterrence against foreign attack."