The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is a political party in North Korea that was founded on 30 June 1949 as a merger of the Workers' Party of North Korea and the Workers' Party of South Korea. The party sought to reunify Korea under a proletarian dictatorship; the WPSK leadership, led by Pak Hon-yong, was instrumental in convincing the northern branch, led by Kim Il-sung, to pursue the military reunification with force. Kim Il-sung later consolidated his control over the party by purging it of the "domestic" Korean faction (consisting of former local anti-Japanese resistance fighters from World War II) and bringing his own faction of former Manchurian-based guerrillas to power. Kim, a massively-popular war hero, enjoyed the love and support of the North Korean people and many South Koreans when he set out to reunify Korea with the assistance of China and the Soviet Union, but the United States and the South Koreans, assisted by a United Nations coalition, prevented the North Koreans from conquering the south in the Korean War of 1950-1953. The WPK, as the dominant party in the one-party state of North Korea, remained in power for the next several decades, and it presided over prosperity during the 1960s and 1970s before the South Korean "Miracle on the Han River" and the ensuing economic boom of the 1980s overtook the stagnating North Korean economy. The WPK later moved away from communism as it adopted the Korean form of Marxism-Leninism, Juche, and its militarist Songun policy. In 2009, the party edited its preamble to remove all references to communism, as it sought to pursue a political ideology that was uniquely Korean. Under Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, the party moved to legitimize the rule of the Kim family, which established a hereditary government. The WPK's Politburo and Central Committee had very little power, with the head of state ultimately serving as supreme leader.
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