Wojciech Jaruzelski, Kim Il Sung i zbliżenie na linii PRL–KRLD w latach osiemdziesiątych XX wieku
Wojciech Jaruzelski, Kim Il Sung and the Rapprochement of Communist Poland and North Korea in the 1980s

Summary/Abstract: The article’s author shows how Wojciech Jaruzelski’s direct contacts with Kim Il Sung affected the state of relations between communist Poland and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Jaruzelski first travelled to North Korea in 1977 and it seems that his positive attitude towards the country began to take shape after this visit. Indeed, in the conclusion of his report, he recommended deepening multifaceted cooperation with North Korea. In the 1980s, as the PRL leader, he was already shaping national policy towards Pyongyang. In 1984, he received Kim Il Sung in Poland, and in 1986 he travelled to North Korea as the only First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party in the history of communist Poland to do so. He was highly feted there and signed a friendship and cooperation treaty, formally raising relations with the DPRK to the highest possible level. Under his leadership, Poland responded positively to almost all initiatives from the North Korean authorities, resulting in very intensive bilateral contacts in the second half of the 1980s. These contacts were only curtailed as a result of the democratic changes initiated in Poland in 1989.

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