June 19, 1964 is the day when Kim Jong Il (1942-2011), eternal General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, started working at the Party Central Committee. This day is regarded as a meaningful day when the building of the WPK gained a momentum in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Already in those days when he started working at the Party Central Committee, he had a clear view of how to build a socialist ruling party.
He consistently asserted that the Party should be built into a genuine motherly party that takes responsible care of the people’s destiny. He wrote many works, providing solutions to the theoretical and practical questions in relation to it, like Let Us Turn Party Work Thoroughly into Work with the People, We Should Look After the People’s Living in a Responsible Manner as a Mother Would Do with Her Children, Party Officials Should Acquire Traits Appropriate to Officials of a Motherly Party and On Paying Close Attention to People’s Living.
These works became textbooks in the building and activities of the WPK.
Kim Jong Il encouraged all the Party officials to always go among the masses, share weal and woe with them and lend an ear to them, ensuring that they took responsible care of the destiny of the people as well as their problems of food, clothing and housing.
While on his continuous field-guidance journey, he unceremoniously mingled with the people, inquiring into their living conditions and even accepting a pregnant woman’s request to name her child which was due. He reflected the demands and aspirations of the people in Party policy and spared nothing for the happiness of the people. Typical examples are the fact that he ensured that the floor of the lobby in the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital was covered with 100-odd tons of natural jewels and coloured stones for the women, and the fact that when a factory was planned to be built at the upper reaches of the river in the Hamhung area, he took measures for moving the site of the factory to another place, saying that it may contaminate the drinking water.
The Korean people follow the WPK, calling it a motherly party.
The enrichment of the Juche idea that is the guiding ideology of the WPK and the era of independence, is directly linked with this day.
After starting working at the Party Central Committee, he conducted energetic inquiries and ideological and theoretical activities, making a comprehensive analysis of the major philosophical ideas of the world. On this basis, he elucidated the originality and superiority of the Juche idea, and defined it as the integral system of the idea, theory and method of Juche. His treatise, On the Juche Idea, aroused a storm of interest across the world as soon as it was made public.
He made public many works that provide clear-cut answers to the theoretical and practical problems arising in all realms of social life, to say nothing of the building of the Party, the state and the economy.
In the latter half of the 1990s he developed in depth the theory of the Songun idea, the root of which is the Juche idea. As it was led by the Songun idea and Songun politics, the Workers’ Party of Korea could successfully lead the struggle for defending the sovereignty of the country, destiny of the people and socialism in the period when socialism was collapsed in several countries and the allied imperialist forces’ anti-DPRK moves grew more undisguised.
In 1985 a book, titled, Dictionary of Criticism on Philosophy was published in France. The dictionary was compiled by a renowned professor at the philosophy institute of Paris University No. 10 and other scholars. It makes a sharp analysis and assessment by the authors, according to their view, about the philosophical ideas prevalent now in several countries, in particular, the social and political theories advocated by Marxist political parties. What is noteworthy is that every entry word, except the Juche idea, in the dictionary has critical comments. The absolute truth of the Juche idea is approved by the whole world.
Indeed, June 19 was a watershed for the building of socialist ruling party and a new independent world.