The association was the first permanent anti-Japanese national united front in Korea working on the principle of democratic centralism with its monolithic programme, rules and organizational system.

An urgent task in the middle of the 1930s was to organize a permanent united front and rally the anti-Japanese patriotic forces from all walks of life under it.

President Kim Il Sung, who penetrated deep into the situation at home and abroad and the requirement of the developing revolution, put forward a policy for organizing the permanent united front involving all the anti-Japanese patriotic forces at the historic Nanhutou meeting and buckled down to its realization.

He explored the way of rallying the whole nation in the sacred war for liberating Korea during the arduous march from Nanhutou to Donggang and at campfires of bivouacs and personally mapped out the programme, inaugural declaration and rules of the anti-Japanese national united front.

On this basis, he declared the foundation of the ARF at the Donggang meeting on May 5, Juche 25 (1936)

At the meeting, he delivered a report "Let Us Further Develop the Anti-Japanese National United Front Movement and Lead the Overall Korean Revolution to a Fresh Upsurge" and made public "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".

With the foundation of the ARF, the anti-Japanese national united front movement in Korea rapidly developed into an organizational and systematic one across the country and on a nationwide scale in close combination with the anti-Japanese armed struggle. It helped more vigorously arouse all the anti-Japanese forces to the struggle for liberating Korea.