On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work

On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work
Speech to Party Propagandists and Agitators, 28 December 1955

Cover page of 1973 English edition
Author	Kim Il Sung
Subject	Juche
Publisher	Foreign Languages Publishing House
Publication place	North Korea
Published in English	1973
Pages	33
OCLC	51370245

On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work, also known as the "Juche speech", was a speech delivered on 28 December 1955 by Kim Il Sung. The address mentioned his Juche ideology by name for the first time. It is considered one of Kim's most important works and a "watershed moment" in North Korean history. Views differ if the speech used the term juche to launch an ideology or more conservatively to assert that the Korean people were the subject of the revolution. The former believes that Juche, as a distinct ideology, was developed by Hwang Jang-yop on his re-discovery of the speech. The speech was published for the first time in 1960 and in many subsequent, heavily edited revisions since.

Details on when Kim Il Sung delivered the speech and where remain unclear or have been backdated. The speech was delivered against a backdrop of factional strife within the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) in reaction to the Korean War, de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, the Soviet–Yugoslav thaw, and economic reconstruction. Kim criticizes Soviet Korean propaganda workers of "dogmatism" and "formalism" by citing Soviet practices they had naively adopted to Korean conditions. Most of the speech is not about Juche, but about ways to win South Koreans' hearts and minds through propaganda.