Exploits for Country’s Liberation That Will Shine Down through All Ages-Down-with-Imperialism Union－First Vanguard Organization of Korean Revolution

 

In mid-June 1926, Kim Il Sung moved from Fusong to Huadian to enter Hwasong Uisuk School.

He analysed and judged the education provided at Hwasong Uisuk School from a unique point of view and a critical approach.

He avidly read The Communist Manifesto and other books on Marxism-Leninism, and studied the revolutionary principles expounded in those classics in connection with the actual situation of Korea. In the course of this, he was convinced that the way ahead of the Korean revolution lay in overthrowing Japanese imperialism, liberating the country and building a new society where the masses of working people, including workers and peasants, would be well-off. He considered it necessary to train genuine revolutionaries of a new generation, unaffected by sycophancy and factionalism, in order to pave a new way for the Korean revolution, and started this work among the students of Hwasong Uisuk School.

As a result, the tide of sympathy for the new thought increased day by day among the students, and the overwhelming majority of them accepted the progressive idea.

The genuine road of the Korean revolution, the road of its independent development, was explored and its hardcore elements were prepared. Based on these preparations, Kim Il Sung actively conducted the work to form a revolutionary vanguard organization.

Late in September 1926, he called a meeting of the hardcore elements by the Huifa River, where he stressed the need for an organization that would undertake the Korean revolution, and called on pushing forward the preparations for its formation.

On October 10, he held a preliminary meeting and brought for discussion the name of the organization and its character, fighting programme and rules and regulations.

On this basis, he formed the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU) on October 17, 1926 in Huadian.

At the inaugural meeting, he delivered a speech, titled, Let Us Overthrow Imperialism. In the speech, he put forward its fighting programme with the immediate task of defeating Japanese imperialism, the sworn enemy of the Korean people, and achieving Korea’s liberation and independence, and with the final objective of building socialism and communism in Korea and, further, destroying all imperialism and building communism throughout the world.

According to the unanimous desires and will of all the participants, Kim Il Sung was elected head of the DIU.

The DIU was a genuine communist, revolutionary organization of a new type, the first of its kind in Korea.

Its formation served as the starting point of the struggle to found a party in Korea. This constituted the root of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Thanks to the formation of the DIU, the Korean revolution greeted a new era of advancing on the basis of the principle of independence, and the communist and national liberation movements in Korea made fresh progress with clear-cut fighting objectives and strategies.