The situation in our country underwent a radical change after liberation. When the anti-fascist world war was brought to a victorious conclusion thanks to the decisive role played by the Soviet army, the system of barbarous Japanese imperialist rule in Korea also collapsed. The way was opened up for building a Korea for the Koreans, for building a new country and a new life in conformity with our people’s will and demands.

As the Korean people were liberated from long years of oppression, their revolutionary enthusiasm and creative power burst forth like a volcano, and this great force has radically changed Korean society in the past year.

The democratic reforms carried out in north Korea during this period have put an end to all colonial and feudal relations which so long retarded the development of our country’s economy and culture, and paved the way to unhindered development. The past year was indeed a year of great progress and change the like of which would ordinarily take scores or hundreds of years to achieve.

The political consciousness of the Korean people has heightened to an unprecedented degree in the course of the bitter struggle with the enemy. Korea today is precisely the people’s Korea, a Korea governed and built by the people themselves.

North Korea’s democratic reforms are also of great significance internationally. Democratic social reforms as thoroughly carried out as those in our north Korea are rarely to be seen in other countries which have taken the road of creating a new life after the Second World War. North Korea’s democratic reforms are a heartening example to the peoples of many Eastern countries who hope for freedom and democracy. Today north Korea is not only the strategic base for democratic advance in the whole of Korea, but it also plays the role as the cradle of democracy in the East.

The agrarian reform put an end to feudal relations in land ownership, which were the main cause of the backwardness and stagnation of Korean society, and laid the basis for democratic advance in Korea. In north Korea the tillers have become the owners of land, and landlords and the tenant system have been eliminated once and for all.

The peasants now work their own land and are able to use their crops to improve their own life and to expand production after delivering 25 per cent as agricultural tax in kind to the state. The agricultural tax is used not for the enjoyment and enrichment of the exploiters as in the past, but for the development of the national economy as a whole, including agriculture, and the improvement of the people’s living conditions.

The democratic Labor Law has freed factory and office workers from heavy, forced, colonial-type labor and has ensured them fundamental rights in work and life, thus making it possible for them to bring their enthusiasm and creativity into full play.

The nationalization of industries has turned the industrial establishments, the mainstay of Korea’s economy, which were owned by the Japanese imperialists and the traitors to the nation, into the property of the people, thereby destroying the basis of imperialist exploitation and laying the economic foundations for the building of an independent, sovereign state. Thus the factories, mines, railways, communications, banks, etc., formerly used by the imperialists and comprador capitalists to bleed the Korean people white, have now been turned into the people’s property dedicated to the prosperity and development of our country and improvement of the welfare of the working masses. This measure taken by the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea clearly expresses the thoroughgoing and progressive nature of the democratic reforms carried out in our country.

In addition, the Law on Sex Equality has emancipated the women of north Korea from thousands of years of humiliation and ill treatment and from a twofold and threefold oppression, enabling them to enjoy equal rights with men and be active in all spheres of politics, the economy and culture.

As all these facts expressly prove, democratic north Korea today clearly points out the road for all the Korean people to follow, and the democratization of Korea and its full independence can be achieved only by relying firmly on the democratic base in north Korea.

The U.S. invades north Korea in 1950. Upwards of 2 million Koreans are killed in the conflict. The war cools down in 1953, but has never officially ended.

However, many difficulties lie on the road of building democracy in the country, and our struggle is extremely arduous and complex. This is because the aggressive army of US imperialism is stationed in south Korea, seeking to turn our country into a colony once again, and because a gang of quislings who have become its lackeys and are trying to sell out Korea to imperialism as a colony again are running wild. Today, the US military government monopolizes all power in south Korea and is doing everything it can in its desperate effort to suppress the democratic forces and gain a foothold for reaction.

As under Japanese imperialist rule in the past, the people of south Korea are groaning under the savage oppression and tyranny of domestic and foreign forces of reaction and are stranded in the misery of poverty, deprived of all rights.

The anticommunist leader of south Korea, Syngman Rhee is the first president of south Korea from 1948 to 1960. By 1949, President Rhee had imprisoned thirty thousand people accused of being communists, and 80 percent of all court cases involved charges against suspected communists.
Immediately after the start of the Korean War, between the end of June and the beginning of July 1950, the Korean government arrested, detained, and executed members of the Bodo League. The year prior, in June 1949, the Korean government organized the Bodo League with the intention of encouraging those associated with the leftists to turn themselves in so that they could be loyal ROK citizens. Around 300,000 people across the nation applied for membership at this time. The Korean government set a target quota for recruitment in each region, which led to many people applying for membership without ever having had any relations with leftists or leftist activities. With the start of the Korean War however, the government began arresting and killing Bodo League members, fearing that they may collaborate with the North. The Bodo League massacres were the largest mass killings during the Korean War period. It is estimated between 60,000 and 200,000 people were killed.
Rhee is forced to flee the country when protests break out after the contentious 1960 election and police shoot demonstrators. He dies in exile, living his last five years in the United States.

The masses of the people are completely denied even the elementary freedoms—freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religious belief, and so on. So thousands of patriots are being cruelly tortured in police dungeons and prisons for the “crime” of loving their country and of calling for democracy and the independence of the country. Leaders of the people are shot down in broad daylight by reactionary terrorists, and democratic political parties and public organizations are being wrecked by the terrorism of the traitorous Syngman Rhee gang openly protected by the US army. Right in front of a courthouse, the reactionaries shot and killed one of the middle-school boys who were demanding that the trial in the so-called "forged-note case" be opened to the public.

Patriotic scholars and teachers are dismissed from the schools, and schools are closed down one after another. Patriotic workers in the field of culture are placed under surveillance, beaten up and thrown into jail without justification.

Far from carrying out agrarian reform, Americans and reactionary profiteers are concentrating the land formerly held by the Japanese in their own hands. The south Korean peasants are still groaning under the yoke of the feudal system of high-rent tenancy.

Far from instituting a labor law, they are slaughtering workers with planes, tanks and machine guns merely because they have taken part in demonstrations. The situation is such that one is sentenced to eight years in prison for making a speech urging the promotion of the labor movement. The workers of south Korea are being driven hard like beasts of burden, subjected to the same cruel colonial oppression and exploitation as in the past.

Far from nationalizing the key industries, the US military government authorities declare the industrial establishments formerly owned by Japanese imperialism to be their property. They pay lip service to industrial rehabilitation, but actually they are wrecking even those few factories which are in operation and converting south Korea into a market for US commodities. The traitorous Syngman Rhee clique is guilty of treacherous act of selling the country. It has already sold mining and trading concessions to American capitalists and is now openly selling the country’s valuable resources to American big businesses.

Far from granting women equal rights with men, they have increased concubinage, licensed and unlicensed prostitution and the professional entertainer system. Many women suffer unbearable humiliation as playthings of the rich and powerful.

The true worth of a political party or a policy must be assessed not by its words or statements but by the practical activities of that party, or by the concrete facts showing whose interests that policy represents and defends. In the past year the reactionary politicians in south Korea made innumerable speeches and promises and pledges over the microphone and from public platforms. What, however, have they actually brought the Korean people? Even the brazen-faced Syngman Rhee clique can no longer conceal its true colors which have now been exposed by the stark facts in all their nakedness before all the Korean people. Far from introducing democracy, the traitorous Syngman Rhee clique has done nothing but tyrannize south Korea and sell the country to the United States as a colony, on orders of its US masters.

Swarms of jobless people roam the streets. Hungry people, begging bowl in hand, crowd the government offices, raising a hue and cry. Youths and students fall under rifle fire, schools are closed down. Newspapers, magazines and other press organs are closed one after another. Patriots are constantly arrested, jailed and murdered. Meanwhile, pro-Japanese elements and traitors to the nation resort to despotism and abuse power, as if the days of their glory had retumed. This is the true picture of south Korea, a lawless land which the US army rules like a lord.

In striking contrast to north Korea, which is advancing in the direction of genuine democracy and national independence, south Korea is moving backward along the path of reaction and colonial enslavement under the fascist reign of terror of the US imperialists and their stooges, the traitorous Syngman Rhee clique. Thus, the southern half of our country is occupied and converted into a colony by the US imperialists, and this very fact presents difficulties to the solution of the Korean question.

The most important task facing the Korean people today is to overcome the anti-popular and reactionary line pursued in south Korea at an early date, carry out thoroughgoing democratic reforms in south Korea, as was done in north Korea, and thereby build a new, unified, democratic independent and sovereign Korea.