ON October 17, Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and president of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, gave a commemorative lecture at the central cadres training school of the WPK on the ‘Orientation of the Building of Our Party in the New Era and the Tasks of the Central Cadres Training School of the Workers' Party of Korea’. The Central Cadres Training School was established in 1946 to train Party cadres to fulfill the immediate tasks of the revolution and Party building under the direct guidance of the Central Committee of the WPK.

Kim Jong Un stated that the task of strengthening the Party is getting more intensified than ever before, and is becoming more important as a historic task for the future of the revolution. He noted the glorious role played by the training school in Party building and socialist construction. The responsibility of the training school has even more increased in the present circumstances as it has to ensure the permanence of socialism in the country.

Kim Jong Un mentioned that the last ten years of struggle for strengthening the Party were most crucial and decisive for the existence and the future of the Party. In this period, the WPK had organised one Party Conference (the fourth conference) and two Party Congresses (seventh and eighth Congresses). These meetings had reiterated that the fundamental character of the revolution would be maintained in spite of all the hardships they might encounter. They also discussed and decided on the essential and active development stages in Party building.

Kim Jong Un noted that there are three major successes achieved by the Party in strengthening its organisation: “firstly, it has firmly defended and inherited the ideology and Party leadership; secondly, it has remarkably enhanced its leadership function and role; and thirdly, it has further strengthened its revolutionary character of serving the people”.

In the enlarged meeting of the Polit Bureau of the Party in February 2015, the successes, experience, shortcomings and lessons gained in implementing the tasks were comprehensively reviewed. Accordingly necessary steps were taken to lead the country forward. “Another success achieved in our Party building over the past decade is that the Party's leadership ability has been remarkably strengthened and the fighting efficiency and activity of Party organisations have been enhanced. It is another precious success that the revolutionary nature of our Party as a genuine people's party has been firmly preserved and further strengthened over the past decade”, he said.

Explaining the purpose of the revolution, Kim Jong Un stated that “since the revolution is a struggle to realise the independence of the masses, the Party that leads the revolution must never diverge from the fundamental idea, the basic mission, of taking responsibility for the destiny of the people and defending their interests in any case”. Warning about the dangers of being in power for a long time, he cautioned that the Party has to retain its revolutionary character. “But the longer the political history of the socialist ruling party grows, the less the spirit of serving the people becomes, and the more the possibility of bureaucratic practices reigning over the people become”.

He continued saying that the Party gives top priority to the people's will, demands, interests and convenience and considers them as absolute in adopting and implementing all policies. However, he also brought to notice some weaknesses in carrying out these directions. “The main obstacle to the implementation of the people-first politics of our Party was the wrong ideological viewpoint and style of work prevalent among officials”. In order to overcome this weakness, the Party has “steadily increased the degree of education and struggle, regarding the work for correcting the wrong style of officials as a vital political issue for keeping its peculiar character and nature and guaranteeing its existence and development, and as an urgent task of maintaining a revolutionary and sound political climate within the Party”.

Talking about the struggle that was waged to wipe out these wrong tendencies within the Party and its officials he said: “we declared a war to wipe out abuses of power, bureaucratism, irregularities and corruption, unit specialisation and impositions outside the taxes and took strong organisational and legal measures step by step…The struggle to overcome all sorts of wrong ideological views and work-style, including irresponsibility for entrusted duty and lack of gumption, formalism and self-protection and practices of carelessness about the people's living, was strictly and in detail conducted in every respect throughout the whole Party”. These measures have resulted in the curbing of ‘anti-popular acts of insulting the popular masses and violating their rights and interests, and most of officials have become awakened to a great extent’.

He said that the Party has achieved valuable successes in Party building over the past decade. The present task is identified as to strengthen the Party in five aspects – as a party that is politically mature, organisationally sound, ideologically pure, strictly disciplined and sound in style as required by the new era. “The new five-point direction is very important both in view of the historical lessons of the world socialist movement and in view of the situation in our Party”.

Among these five aspects, improving the Party's political maturity is identified as the central task in steadily enhancing the Party's leadership ability and maintaining and consolidating its correct political traits.

He said, Party committees should ensure that all work is conducted properly through the collective leadership of the Party committee while giving full play to inner-Party democracy. The work of the Party organisations should be turned into the one with people and be viewed as political activities, so as to overcome the tendency of Party work becoming bureaucratic. All Party members are encouraged to play their role as political activists with a high degree of political consciousness and develop leadership abilities.

Kim Jong Un stressed the need to strengthen the fighting efficiency of the Party. He said that precedence should be given to the Party's ideological work before all other works in view of its essential requirement. “Only then is it possible to prevent the change and degeneration of the Party and lead the revolutionary and enterprising development”. He explained in detail the ways for enhancing the effectiveness of the ideological work in conformity with the revolutionary development, the change of the times and the level of consciousness of the masses.

He also pointed out the necessity of intensifying the struggle against anti-socialist and non-socialist practices and the uncompromising struggle against all sorts of opportunistic and counter-revolutionary ideological tendencies in the Party.

Kim Jong Un also emphasised the need to push ahead with the building of the Party's discipline and rectify the Party's style of work in a substantial way. “The Party's attention should be paid to establishing among officials the habit of carrying out the tasks in a responsible way with revolutionary work attitude and manner…For our Party, which intends to be genuine servants of the people, a correct viewpoint and attitude towards the people is a matter that cannot be conceded in any case or under any circumstances”.

He said that if the Party, oblivious of its character and mission for a moment, goes authoritarian to display a certain degree of isms, it will lose its original nature and be forsaken by the people. “All officials should make our Party's outlook and philosophy on the people the motto of their work and life and do their best to effectively develop the work for absolutely serving the people and enrich the Party's traditional method of work with the masses in keeping with the present situation. An official to be trusted at any time and relied on by the masses without worry are, above all, conscientious and honest. Only when a good style of work such as being unconventional, modest and setting an example is supported by conscience and honesty, can it win the recognition of the masses”.

Kim Jong Un noted that if the Party is strengthened in all the fives aspects of political, organisational, ideological construction and building of discipline and style of work, it will be possible to implement not only the immediate tasks for the Party building but would also lead to the strengthening of its leadership ability and fighting efficiency and fulfilling its duty as a revolutionary party responsible for the destiny and future of the people.

“The basic duty of the Central Cadres Training School of the Workers' Party of Korea is to train all the students to be genuine revolutionaries. Another duty of the school is to study, explain and propagate our Party's ideas and theories”, he noted.

“The Central Cadres Training School should study in depth in principle our Party's revolutionary ideology and prove and explain the validity, scientific accuracy and vitality of the newly advanced lines, policies and fighting policies, so as to enrich the treasure house of our Party's ideology and theory”.

Discussing the necessity of a planned education programme, he stated: “It is important to correctly define the school system and the criteria for selecting students as required by the mission and duty of the school and the times and intensify and correctly implement the educational programme so that it can successfully conduct theoretical and practical education with the main emphasis on tempering the Party spirit”.

He expressed his hope that the Central Cadres Training School would train competent Party officials and proficient political activists in whom the Party can entrust the future affairs without anxiety even after 50 years, 100 years and hundreds of years.

Courtesy: KCNA