Skip to content

July 16, 1973

On the Visit of a PRP Party and Parliamentary Delegation to the DPRK

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Department for Neighboring Countries

Section People’s Republic of Poland (PRP)

 

To: Far Eastern Department

From: Embassy Warsaw, for your information and files.

 

Excerpt from Warsaw Embassy Information Report 34/73 from 3 July 1973.

Berlin, 16 July 1973.

 

On the Visit of a PRP Party and Parliamentary Delegation to the DPRK

 

Between 30 May and 5 June 1973, a party and parliamentary delegation of the PRP headed by Comrade Stanislaw Kania, candidate of the Politburo and secretary of the PZPR [Polish United Workers’ Party] Central Committee, visited the DPRK. As the deputy head of the PZPR International Department, Comrade Suika informed, the delegation had no instructions to deal with concrete issues of bilateral cooperation. Instead the visit was about gathering information on positions of the DPRK on important questions of current international developments.

 

The visit was considered as useful. It succeeded in learning about Korean positions. Yet this was not the result of official talks. Here the DPRK representatives gave only general and stereotypical answers to questions from the Polish side. For that reason, the Polish delegation decided to use its scheduled courtesy visit with Kim Il Sung to obtain more information. The conversation lasted about 3.5 hours. As Comrade Suika remarked, it was a frank talk and Kim Il Sung proved himself to be an open and rational person. Comrade Suika added that in the DPRK there exists a tightly structured system of information. Even politburo members only repeat Kim Il Sung statements without being able to comment on them. All statements Kim Il Sung made during our meeting were steno-graphed and distributed in the KWP Central Committee apparatus as actual political instructions. The day after their meeting with Kim, the Polish comrades noted changes in positions of their partners and how many issues were now commented with the same phrases Kim Il Sung had used during the meeting.

 

[…] Kim Il Sung explained that DPRK and KWP had, and have, arguments with the PRC and the CCP. Even before the Cultural Revolution, neither the thesis “let 100 flower bloom,” nor the people communes’ movement, nor the labeling of the Soviet Union as an “imperialist country” were supported. The USSR is the first country of socialism, the revolution originated from there. Korea has learned from the Soviet Union about Marxism-Leninism and the principles of building socialism. The PRC applied pressure on the DPRK but we did not bend. They called us revisionists. Along the border the Chinese installed loudspeakers calling on our people to abandon the revisionist regime of Kim Il Sung. The DPRK did not react to that: “That does not turn us into opportunists but just perseverant Marxist-Leninists.” In the North the DPRK has two large socialist states as neighbors. In the South there is imperialist Japan and a more than one million strong army of our enemy. If we provide hints about bad relations with our socialist neighbors in the North, it weakens our position vis-à-vis the enemy in the South. You [Poles] are far away but we have a border with the PRC.

 

The KWP had an invitation to the recent party congress in Albania but it did not send a delegation since they anticipated attacks against the Soviet Union and also against Poland. And indeed, at the congress a [pro-Maoist exile fringe] chairman from a “Communist Party of Poland” spoke.

 

The KWP delegation that attended Ho Chi Minh’s funeral [in September 1969] once held talks in Beijing on its way back. On the agenda was the improvement of relations with the PRC. The Korean side had listed two basic conditions in order to achieve that.

 

  • Non-interference in the internal affairs of the DPRK—including the dismantling of the speakers along the border;
  • Non-interference in DPRK relations with the Soviet Union.

 

The PRC accepted both, and since then relations improved. The DPRK does not allow on its territory any insults against either the USSR or the PR China. The DPRK wants to do everything in its power for the unity of the communist world movement and the socialist states.

 

Comrade Suika asserted that the DPRK is interested in getting closer with European socialist countries in full awareness of the close alliance of these countries with the Soviet Union. The DPRK attempts, by the way of this detour, to demonstrate where it stands. Such is too dangerous in its direct relations with the Soviet Union. These relations can only develop in balanced proportion to relations with the PR China.

 

[…]

 

The East German Embassy in Warsaw reports on the improvement in relations between North Korea and China after the Cultural Revolution.

Author(s):


Document Information

Source

PolA AA, MfAA, C294/78. Obtained and translated by Bernd Schaefer.

Rights

The History and Public Policy Program welcomes reuse of Digital Archive materials for research and educational purposes. Some documents may be subject to copyright, which is retained by the rights holders in accordance with US and international copyright laws. When possible, rights holders have been contacted for permission to reproduce their materials.

To enquire about this document's rights status or request permission for commercial use, please contact the History and Public Policy Program at [email protected].

Original Uploaded Date

2013-04-04

Language

Record ID

116676