Story Associated with the Name of the Country
In the days of making preparations for the founding of a republic, Kim Il Sung, leader of the new Korea, paid close attention to the work of deciding on its name.
He said that the name of the country should be the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a reflection of the independent, genuinely democratic and people-oriented character of the Republic and the fundamental objective and immediate tasks of the Korean revolution.
At that time, factionalist elements picked a quarrel with his opinion.
They held that the name was too long, and that others did not name their countries in that way.
One day in early July Juche 37 (1948) Kim Il Sung learned about the opinions raised in choosing the name of the country. Pointing out the claims of the factionalists, he told the officials concerned that we should name the country on our own initiative to meet the demands of the people, adding: Everything is good if our people like it and if it suits our actual situation, no matter what others may say; the name of our country is unique from a theoretical and class point of view.
Some time later, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea deliberated the item of naming the country and instituting the national flag and national emblem with regard to the founding of the Republic. The meeting first deliberated the name of the country. The proposal suggested by Kim Il Sung was the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The absolute majority of the participants in the meeting welcomed the proposal. The factionalist elements, however, opposed it, claiming that the word people should be deleted from the name because it would bring hindrance to the unified front, and that there was no need to cause confusion among the people by putting the transitional explanation democratic as the Korean people had to build communism in the end.
After a moment of thinking, Kim Il Sung said: Some people insist that we should delete the words people and democratic in the name of the country; this is an absolutely wrong view resulting from their misunderstanding of the duty of the developing Korean revolution at the present stage and, in particular, their ignorance of the fact that we are waging the revolution when the country is divided.
He stressed that it was most reasonable to name the country the DPRK in consideration of the prevailing reality of the divided country and the fundamental objective and immediate tasks of the Korean revolution.
In this way, the official name of Korea came into being.
2021-09-09
