government; the capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would be Seoul, not Pyongyang. Kim Il-sung was the appointed head of government of the new state, with Kim Tu-bong heading the legislative branch. A year later on 24 June 1949, the Workers' Party of Korea was created with the merger of the WPNK and the Workers' Party of South Korea. Kim Il-sung was not the most ardent supporter of a military reunification of Korea; that role was played by the South Korean communists, headed by Pak Hon-yong. After several meetings between Kim Il-sung and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, North Korea invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950, thus beginning the Korean War. With American intervention in the war the DPRK nearly collapsed, but it was saved by Chinese intervention in the conflict. The war had the effect of weakening Soviet influence over Kim Il-sung and the WPK. Around this time, the main fault lines in early WPK politics were created. Four factions formed: the domestic faction (WPK cadres who had remained in Korea during Japanese rule), the Soviet faction (Koreans from the Soviet Union), the Yan'an faction (Koreans from China) and the guerrilla faction (Kim Il-sung's personal faction). However, Kim Il-sung would be unable to further strengthen his position until the end of the war. Kim Il-sung's consolidation of power (1953–1980) Relations worsened between the WPK and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) when Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, began pursuing a policy of de-Stalinization. During the Sino–Soviet conflict, an ideological conflict between the CPSU and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Kim Il-sung manoeuvred between the two socialist superpowers; by doing so, he weakened their influence on the WPK. By 1962 Kim Il-sung and the WPK favored the CCP over the CPSU in the ideological struggle, and "for a few years North Korea almost unconditionally supported the Chinese position on all important issues." The primary conflict between the WPK and the CPSU during this period was that Kim Il-sung did not support the denunciation of Stalinism, the creation of a collective leadership, and the theory of peaceful coexistence between the capitalist and socialist worlds. Kim Il-sung believed peaceful coexistence to be synonymous with capitulation and knew that de-Stalinization in North Korea would effectively end his unlimited power over the WPK. The result of the souring of relations between the CPSU and the WPK was that the Soviet