Korean Social Democratic Party

The party was established in Pyongyang by Cho Man-sik on 3 November 1945 as the Korean Democratic Party.[5][6] It quickly gained support from Christian businessmen and intellectuals, as well as well-off workers, and had around half a million members after only a few weeks.[5] However, the party was blamed for a series of anti-communist and anti-Soviet riots, and after Cho opposed the results of the Moscow Conference in December (which was supported by the communists and Soviets), he was arrested by the Soviets.[5] Cho's arrest led to many of the party's leaders moving to Seoul in South Korea, where they set up a new headquarters;[5] the party nominated five candidates for the May 1948 Constitutional Assembly elections in South Korea, winning one seat, taken by Yi Yun-yong.[7]

In North Korea the party was taken over by new leadership headed by communist Choe Yong-gon and subsequently joined the pro-Soviet Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, after which it became subordinate to the Workers' Party of Korea. Its candidates were given 35 seats in the August 1948 elections and eleven in 1957. In 1959 and 1960 all of the party's offices were shut down by the government.[5] It was subsequently reduced to four seats in 1962 and one in 1967 and 1972. In 1980 it adopted its current name.[8]

From 1982 until the early 2000s, the party distributed its party journal abroad in Korean and English translation. Since the mid-2000s, its party journal is only available online.[9]

The 1990 elections saw the party awarded 51 seats.[10] It had 52 seats following the 1998 elections and 50 after the 2009 elections.[11][12] It retained the same number of seats in the 2014 elections.[13]

The party is currently headed by Kim Yong-dae, whose title is Chairman of the Central Committee of the Korean Social Democratic Party,[14] and vice-president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly since the election of 2009. As of January 2007, the party had more than 30,000 members.[15]

The Korean Democratic Party was renamed Social Democratic Party in 1981. The likely reason for the new name was that social democracy is considered an acceptable, even admirable, ideology by foreigners. Since then, the party has been used in North Korean propaganda targeting foreign sympathizers. Because of the ostensible social democratic ideology, which is intelligible to foreigners, the Social Democratic Party is used in such propaganda much more than the other legal minor party, Chondoist Chongu Party. In the 1990s, KSDP published a periodical magazines in Korean and English. These magazines sought to simultaneously convince foreigners that North Korea has a multi-party system with independent parties but that, paradoxically, minor parties in North Korea support the Workers' Party of Korea without reservation.[16]

Theoretically, the party adheres to national social democracy befitting Korea's historical conditions and national characteristics and its basic political motto is "independence, sovereignty, democracy, peace and the defence of human rights".[17]

It is part of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, a coalition with another legal party in the DPRK, the Chondoist Chongu Party, alongside the Workers' Party of Korea.

Different to its usual portrayal in official propaganda, in the late 1980s the party's journal began to feature texts raising criticism of governmental policies. This ranged from calls to give more support to people with disabilities or improve the petition system to raising the benefits of allowing more than one candidate per election district and have voters decide which one is elected.[18]

• Workers Party of Korea
• Chondoist Chongu Party
• List of political parties in North Korea

• Programme and Rules of the Korean Social Democratic Party. Pyongyang: Central Committee of the Korean Social Democratic Party. 1970s. OCLC 82330677.

• Official website at Ryomyong, the website of the National Reconciliation Council (in Korean)