Eighty-four years have passed since President Kim Il Sung founded the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland (ARF), the first anti-Japanese national united front in Korea, on May 5, Juche 25 (1936).

The foundation of the ARF marked a historic occasion that gave the banner of great unity to the Korean people aspiring after unity of the whole nation and ushered in the rise of the revolutionary unity.

Regarding it as the key issue decisive of victory of the revolution to rally the whole nation under the banner of patriotism, the President set forth a policy on forming a permanent united front organization involving all the anti-Japanese patriotic forces at the Nanhutou meeting in the mid-1930s and pushed ahead with the preparations for carrying it into practice.

He personally worked out the programme, rules and inaugural declaration of the ARF in spare times between marches and difficult battles and at campfires of billeting areas.

On this basis, he proclaimed the foundation of the ARF at the historic Tongjiang meeting.

His report "Let Us Further Develop the Anti-Japanese National United Front Movement and Lead the Overall Korean Revolution to a Fresh Upsurge" and "The Ten-Point Programme of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland", "The Inaugural Declaration of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland" and "Rules of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland" made at the meeting stirred up all its participants. The participants elected him as the chairman of the ARF, reflecting the unanimous will and desire of the Korean people.

After the birth of the ARF, the anti-Japanese national united front movement had rapidly developed in a more organized and systematic way on a nationwide scale in close combination with the anti-Japanese armed struggle. And it made it possible to build up the internal forces of the revolution with the organizational network of the ARF as a stronghold and reinforce the mass foundation for founding the party.

The ARF spread out its affiliated organizations from the northern part of Korea to the rest of Korea and even to vast areas of northeast China and Japan and was developed into a pan-national organization embracing hundreds of thousands of members to contribute to putting an end to the Japanese imperialists' colonial rule and liberating Korea.

(KCNA - May 4, 2020)