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April 5, 1955

Record of Conversation with Chairman of the Jagang Provincial People's Committee Illarion Dmitriyevich Pak

This document was made possible with support from ROK Ministry of Unification

FROM THE JOURNAL OF [stamp of N. T.       SECRET

Embassy Counsellor Fedorenko's   Copy Nº 1

A. M. Petrov and Secretariat: [USSR MFA

1st Secretary I. S. Byakov "Secret Far East

Incoming Nº Department

498-if stamp:

4 May 1955"] Incoming Nº

2027s

4/6 May

1955

 

Record of conversation

with Chairman of the Jagang Provincial

People's Committee Illarion Dmitriyevich Pak

 

5 April 1955

 

A conversation was held with I. D. Pak [Pak Ch'ang-sik] at the apartment of Sovinformbyuro representative Cde. Tolstikov on 5 April. Pak had come to Cde.Tolstikov to say goodbye before leaving Pyongyang for his place of work in the province of Jagang.

 

In the conversation which took place Pak told of the results of the latest, 10th KWP CC plenum that had just ended. The KWP CC plenum lasted four days. The following issues were discussed at the plenum:

 

1) the further reinforcement of the class education of Party members;

2) rooting out the bureaucratism exhibited until recently among some officials of Party and government organizations;

3) strengthening procedures for economizing, monitoring, and discipline in the expenditure of financial resources and materials, and strengthening the fight against theft and embezzlement.

4) an organizational issue.

 

Kim Il Sung gave the report about issues 1 and 2, and Pak Chang-ok gave the report about issue 3. More than 100 people registered for the debates about all three issues.

 

About 40 people spoke. On the last day of the plenum's work Kim Il Sung gave a closing summarizing speech about all three issues. His final speech lasted about three hours.

 

Before the start of Kim Il Sung's report, a typed brochure was distributed to KWP CC members containing the points of Kim Il Sung's report about the fourth issue. A definition of the nature of the Korean revolution at the current stage and the substance of the main tasks of the development of socialism in North Korea were given in this brochure. In the concluding part of the brochure the tasks of reuniting Korea into one democratic independent country were spelled out. Pak noted that Kim Il Sung devoted much attention in his report to questions of instilling a class self-consciousness in Worker's Party members. He explained the peculiarities of the Korean working class and the Korean peasantry which, unlike the Russian proletariat and peasantry tempered in three revolutions, received ready-made power with the aid of the Soviet Army. Therefore the working class and peasantry of Korea were not tempered in revolutionary struggle. A small group of partisans waged an armed struggle against the Japanese in Korea, and this could not fail to have an effect on the weakness of the alliance of the working class and peasantry in Korea. Kim Il Sung stressed in his report that to strengthen state power and further develop the revolution in Korea it is necessary to carry out unceasing work to instill a class self-consciousness of workers and peasants and in particular to boost ideological work among KWP members.

 

Kim Il Sung called for elevating the leading role of the Party among the popular masses, diligently mastering Marxist-Leninist theory and correctly applying its theoretical principles in Korean reality. Kim Il Sung said: the Party, equipping its ranks with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, should diligently educate the masses in the spirit of class consciousness, high patriotism and internationalism, and unceasingly strengthen the unity and iron discipline in the Party. The Party should always increase vigilance with respect to enemies, strengthen adherence to Party principles, launch a merciless struggle against all counterrevolutionary elements who try to weaken the work from within or without, put an end to all displays of sectarian politics and left deviations in the Party, and thereby ensure the purity and unity of the Party. The Party has to eliminate such style of work as bureaucratism and abuse of administrative power, to listen to the voice of the masses, to strengthen ties with the masses, and to constantly fight manifestations of complacency and conceit among individual Party members. The Party should educate its members in the spirit of bold, open, businesslike criticism of its mistakes and an irreconcilable struggle against all deviations from the general line of the Party, consistently strengthen intra-Party democracy, and increase the creative work of the Party masses. Our Party, Kim Il Sung said in conclusion, should organize and mobilize millions of the masses to complete the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal national revolution in the entire country on the whole, achieve a democratic reunification and independence of the motherland and build socialism in the entire country through the will of the Korean people.

 

In the report and closing speech Kim Il Sung sharply criticized a group of former members of the Chinese Communist Party headed by Pak Il-U, Kim Ung, and Pang Ho -san. He pointed at the incorrect, essentially hostile, actions of this group. It tried to set the work of the Soviet military specialists against the Chinese military command during the Patriotic War, discrediting the work of the Soviet military specialists.

 

Pak Il-u, presented himself in an incorrect light, declaring that he had been appointed by Mao Zedong for work in the joint Korean-Chinese headquarters and was therefore allegedly independent in his actions from the directives of the Korean military command and from Kim Il Sung in particular. This group spread incorrect views that an incorrect principle was supposedly being pursued when promoting personnel to managerial work in which Koreans who had previously worked in China were being shunted to the background. Exposing this demagogy, Kim Il sung pointed to the fact that there were eight Koreans of Chinese origin, five Koreans of Soviet origin, and four Koreans from South Korea in the DPRK government at that time.

 

Dwelling on the mistakes and shortcomings in the work of the KWP, and in particular stressing the mistakes of the KWP in carrying out the grain purchases, Kim Il Sung sharply criticized individual senior officials who had sought to sugarcoat the real state of affairs in the DPRK.

 

In this connection he criticized Pak Chang-ok and Kim Il for an incorrect estimate of the 1954 harvest which, as has now been established, actually did not exceed 2.3 million tons instead of three million tons.

 

Kim Il Sung also dwelt on the incorrect planning of the harvest of grain crops. For example, it was initially planned to get a grain crop harvest of 4.1 million tons in 1955, then last November this number was changed to 3.6 million tons, and in January of this year the grain crop harvest was reduced to 3.2 million tons and finally only recently was a harvest plan finally approved of 2.730 million tons.

 

In his closing speech Kim Il Sung called upon Party members and leaders of Party and government organizations to organize a struggle everywhere for economy, the establishment of daily monitoring and strict discipline in the expenditure of financial resources and materials, and a national struggle against theft and embezzlement, then saying that theft and embezzlement have taken on large dimensions. He said that approximately 1/3 of all resources and materials is being wrongly spent and partially looted in all sectors of the state and cooperative economy.

 

Those KWP CC members and other Party and government officials who spoke in the debates sharply criticized the shortcomings in the work of individual Party and government bodies, but there was little criticism directed at the KWP CC and government leadership.

 

Pak reported that 1,200 people were present at the plenum - senior officials of national Party, government, and economic organizations and senior officials of Party and government bodies of provinces and districts.

 

We thanked Pak for the information.

 

[signature] (A. Petrov)

[signature] (I. Byakov)

 

Four copies printed

1 - to Cde. Fedorenko

2 - to the DVO

3 - to Cde. Tugarinov

4 - to file

Drafted by Petrov and Byakov

Typed by Sarycheva

Nº 318

13 April 1955

Illarion Dmitriyevich Pak discusses the conclusion of the 10th KWP CC Plenum, where organizational issues within the Party have been discussed.


Document Information

Source

RGANI fond 5, opis 28, delo 314.Translated for NKIDP by Gary Goldberg.

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Original Uploaded Date

2013-02-11

Type

Memorandum of Conversation

Language

Record ID

116309

Donors

ROK Ministry of Unification and Leon Levy Foundation