In January 1980, the DPRK organized technical innovation shock brigades by involving competent technicians, workers, inventors and officials in all economic sectors and units.

The technical innovation shock brigades were named after April 15 in October that year with a well-knit command system. Since then, they played a pivotal role in solving technical innovation problems arising in factories and enterprises.

The April 15 technical innovation shock brigade movement has fully demonstrated its advantage and might in developing the country’s economy and improving the people’s living standards over the past four decades.

The shock brigades contributed greatly to shining the 1980s as the annals when a golden age was opened up in socialist construction and making the national economy Juche-based, modern and scientific. During the Arduous March and forced march, when the country was experiencing trying ordeals, they were instrumental in reviving the factories and enterprises that had stopped operation and revitalizing the country’s economy. In the course of this, a UHP electric arc furnace which could be claimed to be the essence of the modern metallurgical industry was built and the flames of CNC and industrial revolutions in the new century were kindled throughout the country.

In recent years, the technical innovation shock brigades across the country made notable successes one after another in further consolidating the foundations of the self-supporting economy and laying foundations for improving the people’s livelihood.

Those at the Hwanghae and Kim Chaek iron and steel complexes contrived and introduced hundreds of technical innovation plans to establish an iron production system based on oxygen blast furnace. The one at the Chonsong Youth Coal Mine under the Sunchon Area Youth Coal-mining Complex laid several kilometre-long cableways for the transport of coal for the first time in the country, as well as hundreds of metres of ground cableways for carrying muck.

Last year, the General Federation of Science and Technology of Korea hosted the national technical innovation competition to mark the 40th anniversary of the April 15 technical innovation shock brigade movement.

The nearly one-year-long competition drew hundreds of shock brigades from leading economic, basic industry, agricultural, fishery and light industry sectors. During the competition, thousands of technical innovation goals were attained and hundreds of valuable innovations and original ideas introduced, .

During the past four decades, the shock brigades invented and introduced over 2.6 million valuable technical innovation plans and resolved lots of sci-tech problems through over 120 rounds of sectoral competitions.