The preamble to the charter of the Korean Workers' Party (KWP) declares that "he present task of the is to ensure the complete victory of socialism in The fundamental documents of both party and state. The urgent priority accorded to the goal of unconditional unification has been fused into
At the same time, the political quest for Korean reunification may be said to have formally commenced.įor the DPRK government, the reunification of Korea-on the DPRK's own terms-has been an overriding policy objective since its very inception.
Years of political and administrative unity came to an official end for the Korean nation. With the establishment in 1948 of a Soviet-sponsored Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the northern half of the peninsula and a U.S.-supported Republic of Korea (ROK) in the South, a thousand Partition of Korea relentlessly hardened into a de facto and then a de jure division of the peninsula into two mutually hostile states. Initially envisioned as a convenient arrangement to expedite the processing of an impending Japanese surrender, that "temporary" That almost casual act proved to be the turning point for modern Korean history. For over half a century, the political dynamics of the Korean peninsula have been framed by a single hasty-and fateful-decision: an August 1945 agreement between Washington and Moscow that Korea would be temporarily partitioned at the thirty-eighth