DESCRIPTION:
The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is the founding and ruling political party of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). The WPK is the sole governing party of North Korea, although it coexists with two other legal parties making up the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. It was founded in 1949 with the merger of the Workers' Party of North Korea and the Workers' Party of South Korea.

The WPK is organized according to the Monolithic Ideological System and the Great Leader, a system and theory conceived by Kim Yong-ju and Kim Jong-il. The highest body of the WPK is formally the Congress; however, a congress has not been convened since the 6th in 1980. Although the WPK is (in theory) organizationally similar to communist parties, in practice it is far less institutionalized and informal politics plays a larger role than usual. Institutions such as the Central Committee, the Secretariat, the Central Military Commission (CMC), the Politburo and the Presidium have much less power than that formally bestowed on them by the party's charter. Kim Jong-un is the current WPK leader, serving as First Secretary and CMC chairman.

The WPK is committed to Juche, and at the 4th Conference (held in 2012) the party charter was amended to state that Kimilsungism–Kimjongilism was "the only guiding idea of the party". At the 3rd Conference (held in 2010) the WPK removed a sentence from the preamble expressing the party's commitment "to building a communist society", replacing it with a new adherence to songun (military-first politics). Party ideology has recently focused on perceived imperialist enemies of the party and state, and on explaining the Kim family's dominance of the political system.

The Party's symbol is an adaptation of the communist hammer and sickle, with a traditional Korean calligraphy brush (used for writing) symbolizing the "working intellectual".