editorial

The Second Plenary Meeting of the Ninth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea held in June 2026 adopted a decision on boosting the coal industry and transforming coal-mining villages across the country on a modern basis.

The plenary meeting stressed that the issue of eliminating the centuries-old backwardness remaining in the coal industry in the era, when the whole country is undergoing changes and advancing, is a strategic task of weighty significance not only in successfully fulfilling the new five-year plan but also in carrying out the next medium- and long-term plans for the prospective development of the national economy, a promise the WPK made to the coal miners and an urgent project that should be launched without delay.

It also referred to the orientations for forming another new front for technologically and culturally transforming the coal industry sector as a whole, along with the construction projects for the Regional Development 20×10 Policy.

The transformation of coal-mining areas across the country is a gigantic undertaking in breadth and depth. Considering that it needs manpower, means, materials and money in no small measure to renovate even a single coal-mining village, it requires huge investment and efforts to technically and culturally upgrade coal-mining areas across the country.

And no one thought that such state measures would be taken at a time when the medium- and long-term projects for stabilizing and consolidating the national economy and bringing about its gradual qualitative development are being pushed forward.

This is attributable to the people-first politics of the Party calling for translating the people’s desires into the most perfect entities without delay in any circumstances.

True to the decision of the Second Plenary Meeting of the Ninth Central Committee of the WPK, the design sector is pushing ahead with architectural designing for the modern transformation of coal-mining villages. The State General Bureau of Design is directing efforts to completing the relevant house distribution and formation plans better than those of houses in the Komdok area, a nonferrous mineral production base, with the designs of the houses in the area as models.

The news that the coal-mining areas across the country will be totally changed for the better has encouraged and delighted all coal miners and their families. The members of the So Un Chol coal-cutting workteam of the Chonsong Youth Coal Mine and other coal miners in different parts of the country have achieved uninterrupted innovative successes as they know that increasing coal production means repaying the Party's loving care and benevolence.

Thanks to the ability of tenacious practice of the Party, which unconditionally fulfils what it promises to the people, the day is approaching when coal-mining villages across the country will be totally transformed.