economy

Strategic plan based on long-cherished desire

The respected General Secretary Kim Jong Un unveiled a grand blueprint for the construction of rural dwelling houses at the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea after the Eighth Congress of the WPK, taking the transformation of all farm villages across the country into rich and cultured ideal socialist villages as his long-cherished desire and regarding it as an important undertaking that he should carry out without fail for the rejuvenation and development of the state and for posterity.

The building of modern farmhouses in all rural communities throughout the country was not an easy decision to make at the time when the country was in a difficult economic situation and was facing huge and important construction tasks.

However, the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK specified in detail the orientation, tasks and ways for the construction of rural dwelling houses and took unprecedentedly preferential measures, according to the steadfast will of the General Secretary to provide the agricultural workers with the best living environment in the world by washing away the long-lingering historical dirt from the rural areas and building ideal socialist villages good to live and work in.

Since then, this undertaking has persistently been carried out and the news on moving into new houses in the socialist rural communities has been released continuously during the term of the Eighth Party Central Committee.

Definite switch to scientific farming, great change in grain production structure

According to the grand blueprint unveiled by the Eighth Congress of the WPK, grain production rose every year in the agricultural sector, as it overfulfilled the plan for 2024 by 7 percent and produced a higher grain output in 2025.

At the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK, the General Secretary said that it is the Party’s strategic outlook on development to develop the country’s agriculture into an advanced one and achieve the stable and sustained growth of agricultural production with science and technology as the major driving force behind agricultural development, and indicated in detail the matters arising in steadily adhering to the scientific farming-first principle and the ways to deal with them.

As a result, modern agricultural science research bases sprang up across the country, the informatization level of agricultural production improved and scientists and researchers visited every nook and cranny of farms in plains and mountains to guide them in scientific farming and diffuse and introduce in time new agricultural research findings even to the lowest unit of agricultural production.

Farms across the country were filled with pride in high yield and high income distribution as they competitively introduced various advanced farming methods and excellent agricultural sci-tech products, including nutrient cold-bed rice seedlings, electrical pulse processing device and phytosine.

The change, which took place in the country’s grain production structure thanks to the crucial decision of the Party, was a revolution in agricultural production which made a breakthrough in fully solving the food problem while providing the people with an affluent and civilized dietary life.

According to a new agricultural policy of the Party on powerfully pushing rice and wheat farming, wheat cultivation areas have increased every year and many areas and units produced a high yield of wheat.

Material and technological foundation for sustained growth consolidated

The General Secretary put it forward as a priority task in ensuring the stable development of agriculture to readjust, reinforce and perfect the irrigation system of the country so that farming can be done safely, unaffected by any drought and flood, and powerfully led the struggle to carry out the task.

He clarified the orientations and ways for restoring the irrigation system and structures, expanding irrigation areas and making the non-paddy field irrigation structures last long at the Eighth Congress of the WPK and the fourth and sixth plenary meetings of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party and took necessary measures while frequently acquainting himself with the problems arising in the grand nature-remaking project in the whole period of the project.

Huge tasks for the irrigation of paddies and dry fields planned for 2023, the first year when the irrigation project started in earnest, were completed in a matter of two months and other irrigation projects were successfully carried out every year including the desalination of Lagoon Kangnyong and the Hwangju Kindung waterway project, with the result that the area of paddies and non-paddies in which irrigation was realized during the term of the Eighth Party Central Committee amounted to hundreds of thousands of hectares in the country.

Substantial progress has also been achieved in rural mechanization.

The General Secretary stated at the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Party Central Committee that the plan of the Party Central Committee was to develop the Kumsong Tractor Factory into a comprehensive factory capable of producing various highly-efficient farm machines along with tractors with great horsepower and concentrate investment in major farm machine factories and research sector and thus completely upgrade the country’s farm machine industry. Afterwards, he put his heart and soul into the realization of rural mechanization.

A rare sea of farm machines was spread in the agricultural province of South Hwanghae, the proportion of farm work done by machines across the country was increased more than planned in 2023 and the variety of farm machines got greater in number in 2024. Last year, the proportion of farm work done by machines witnessed an over 2 percent increase as compared to the previous year.

In addition, yearly goals were achieved according to the farm machine development plan, including the completion of the first- and second-stage modernization projects of the Kumsong Tractor Factory and the upgrading of many farm machine production units.

The land of the country has been further widened.

The Party pressed on with tideland reclamation by putting it forward as a nationwide patriotic undertaking of everlasting significance.

It set forth long-term objectives, yearly tasks and ways to fulfil them, ensured that necessary preparations were made in a foresighted way so that farming could be done as soon as the networks of facilities were completed in reclaimed tideland and took proactive measures to increase the area under cultivation to the utmost, including the restoration of farmland which sank or was buried due to flood in the past.

National efforts were concentrated on the reclamation of waste land and tidal flats and as a result a vast area of land was registered as farmland and a network of facilities for thousands of hectares of reclaimed tideland was built to be used for cereal production.

Model entities representing advancement of countryside

Model entities representing the advancement of the socialist countryside sprang up in different parts of the country.

The construction of the Ryonpho Greenhouse Farm was set as the priority task among the major national construction policy-oriented tasks for 2022 at the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Party Central Committee. Accordingly, the large-scale greenhouse farm, a large farming area epitomizing modern civilization, was built in the Ryonpho area, where only the strong wind had blown from the sea, in a matter of some months. In 2024, a new farming town rose up in the Kangdong area in Pyongyang as a world leading vegetable production base, which is ahead of the Ryonpho Greenhouse Farm for one generation in the level of intelligent management and intensive farming.

In accordance with the grand plan and under the direct guidance of the General Secretary who was determined to transform the border area into a developed area embodying modernity, originality and national identity, different types of greenhouses, a vegetable processing factory, storage facilities, a sci-tech research and diffusion base, greenhouses for experimental cultivation and bases for cultural and leisure activities were built distinctively to unfold a thrilling view of a large greenhouse group unprecedented in history, a large farming town, in the area of Wihwa Island in Sinuiju City of North Phyongan Province.

The Kwangchon Chicken Farm was completed as a modern farm, which would greatly contribute to the improvement of the people's dietary life and the development of the country’s poultry farming, and as a smart and standard farm, which is flawless in all aspects.

Besides, a modern comprehensive stockbreeding base and rural dwelling houses were built in Songgum-ri of Kangdong County, while many other stockbreeding bases were newly built or renovated including the veterinary medicine production base of the anti-epizootic centre of the North Hwanghae Provincial Rural Economy Committee, the milch cow branch of the Hungsang Milch Cow Farm of the South Hamgyong Provincial Rural Economy Committee, the Haeju Pig Farm of the South Hwanghae Provincial Rural Economy Committee and the Hyesan Milch Cow Farm of the Ryanggang Provincial Rural Economy Committee.