The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), commonly known as North Korea, formally came into existence on 9 September AD 1948. On that day, Kim Il-sŏng, proclaimed the establishment of the new state. Kim had been the leader of the North Korean Communist Party and head of the government in the Soviet-controlled northern half of the Korean peninsula since 1945. Meanwhile the American Military Government governed the south.

When attempts at re-unification failed, two separate regimes were established north and south of the thirty-eighth parallel in 1948. Both regimes called for reunification and much fighting took place between the two sides, eventually erupting into full-scale war in June 1950. A temporary armistice, which still remains in force, was signed in 1953, dividing the peninsula along the thirty-eighth parallel, roughly where the war had begun. The cost of the war was great with some four million killed, wounded or missing, three million of them Korean.

After the war, the DPRK, remained firmly under Kim Il-sŏng’s control. In the early 1980s Kim appointed his son Kim Chŏng-il to be his successor. Following the death of Kim Il-sŏng in 1994, Kim Chŏng-il formally assumed leadership of the ruling Workers Party in 1997 and of the DPRK government in 1998.