There are countries where national days are celebrations. There are countries where they are exercises in collective memory. And then there is North Korea, where 9 September is part celebration, part political ritual and part declaration that the state itself has survived.
Every year on 9 September, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea celebrates the Day of the Foundation of the Republic, commonly known simply as 9·9.
On 9 September 1948, the DPRK was formally proclaimed in Pyongyang, with Kim Il Sung becoming the head of the new government. In 2026, North Korea marks the 78th anniversary of that event.
Korea after 1945
To understand 9 September, you have to return to the chaotic years immediately after the Second World War.
Japan’s colonial rule over Korea ended in 1945, but liberation did not produce a unified independent Korean state. Soviet forces occupied the northern part of the peninsula, while American forces occupied the south.
What was initially supposed to be a temporary division around the 38th parallel increasingly hardened as relations between Washington and Moscow deteriorated.
By 1948, the Cold War had effectively arrived in Korea.
On 15 August 1948, the Republic of Korea was established in Seoul. Less than a month later, on 9 September, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed in Pyongyang.
Two Korean governments now existed, each claiming legitimacy over the peninsula.
The division that had begun as an occupation arrangement was becoming a geopolitical reality.
And it remains one today.
Why 9 September matters
For the North Korean state, 9 September is not presented merely as the anniversary of a government being created.
It is portrayed as the birth of an independent socialist Korea.
Official North Korean narratives place Kim Il Sung at the centre of the story, describing the creation of the DPRK as the culmination of the anti-Japanese struggle and the establishment of a state supposedly built around sovereignty, independence and the working population.
Outside North Korea, the story is naturally viewed differently. The foundation of the DPRK is inseparable from Soviet influence, the emerging Cold War and the political division of Korea.
Both perspectives tell us something important.
States rarely remember their creation as administrative history. They turn it into mythology.
North Korea has simply done this more thoroughly than most.
Pyongyang on 9·9
National anniversaries in North Korea are highly choreographed.
Officials traditionally visit revolutionary sites and monuments, flowers are placed before statues of former leaders, cultural performances take place and Pyongyang can host mass dances, fireworks, parades and other public events.
For the 78th anniversary in 2026, senior party and government officials visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the mausoleum containing the bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. A flower basket from Kim Jong Un was also placed at statues of the two former leaders.
North Korean state media also reported a street parade and evening gala in Pyongyang as part of the anniversary celebrations.
The visual language is familiar: enormous national flags, disciplined crowds, monumental architecture and carefully coordinated public ceremonies.
But the symbolism is more important than the spectacle.
Everything communicates permanence.
The Republic was created. The Republic survived. The Republic continues.
9 September as foreign policy
National days are also opportunities for diplomacy.
This year’s anniversary offers a particularly revealing example.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin both sent messages to Kim Jong Un marking the 78th anniversary. Both stressed their desire to continue strengthening strategic relations with Pyongyang.
That matters because the geopolitical world surrounding North Korea is changing.
For decades, China was overwhelmingly North Korea’s most important political and economic partner. Russia has now become substantially more important as Moscow and Pyongyang deepen military, transport and strategic cooperation.
So even a birthday message tells us something about North Korea’s place in the world.
The country may be isolated from much of the international system, but it is not geopolitically alone.
The power of a date
Perhaps the most interesting thing about 9 September is how an ordinary number becomes part of national identity.
9 September 1948.
A date printed in textbooks, repeated in speeches, displayed on banners and reconstructed through ceremonies generation after generation.
Most people living in North Korea today were born decades after the country’s foundation. Yet the event remains politically present.
That is what national mythology does.
It compresses history until something that happened almost eighty years ago feels as though it happened yesterday.
And North Korea is a country built perhaps more consciously than almost any other around historical memory: liberation, revolution, war, reconstruction, resistance and survival.
More than a North Korean holiday
It would therefore be a mistake to see 9 September simply as another colourful North Korean spectacle.
It marks one of the decisive moments of twentieth-century Asian history.
The political order created in 1948 survived the Korean War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, famine, international sanctions, economic isolation and repeated predictions that the state would eventually disappear.
Seventy-eight years later, it is still there.
Whatever one’s opinion of the North Korean political system, that longevity is historically remarkable.
On 9 September, Pyongyang celebrates more than the foundation of a republic.
It celebrates the fact that the republic still exists.
And perhaps that is the real meaning of 9·9.
In one of the most rapidly changing regions on Earth, North Korea’s annual message remains remarkably consistent:
We are still here.