The Workers’ Party of Korea set forth the strategic task of developing cities and counties in an independent and many-sided way in the first short course for chief secretaries of city and county Party committees held in March.

During the whole course of socialist construction, the WPK has vigorously pushed ahead with the political, economic and cultural construction with cities and counties as the regional bases and consistently led the struggle to eliminate the differences between workers and peasants, industry and agriculture and urban and rural areas and rehabilitate and develop the country in a comprehensive way.

In the DPRK, each city or county is a local administrative section taking up a two hundredth of the total area of the country. It is the general goal of the Party’s policy of strengthening cities and counties to turn every city and county into civilized and prosperous strategic bases of the socialist state and developed regions with their own characters.

To develop cities and counties is an essential prerequisite to improving the people’s livelihood for the WPK which regards constant improvement of their material and cultural standards as the supreme principle of its activities.

The improvement of people’s living standards can be achieved by easing the food problem and ensuring proper production and supply of consumer goods. Therefore, it is important to develop local industry and rural economy.

Local industry is effective in producing minor goods with low demand and is also capable of satisfying the growing and changing demands of the people by flexibly reorganizing its production since the technologies applied to it are relatively simple. Only when the rural economy is developed, is it possible to strengthen the material and technical foundations of rural areas and properly solve the food problem and ensure the supply of raw materials for foodstuffs and medicines and fancy items.

In the DPRK, cities and counties are the regional bases that lead the local economy.

Each of them has a number of factories in different sectors including foodstuff, daily necessities, textile, papermaking, building materials, machine and other industries as well as rich natural resources and reserves.

So, the DPRK sees to it that cities and counties develop their local economy according to regional characters and improve the livelihood of their residents, while making full, effective use of physiographic advantages and natural resources from mountains and the sea.

The enhancement and development of cities and counties constitutes an important undertaking to bring about the country’s overall prosperity. To attain this goal, it is necessary to develop different domains of politics, the economy and culture at the same time and evenly across the whole country.

In the DPRK, cities and counties are the political bases and all-embracing units of cultural development as well as regional bases of economic development. The lines and policies of the Party and state are carried out through cities and counties and the connections between central and local areas and urban and rural areas are established through them. Local education, public healthcare and cultural affairs also develop with cities and counties as the centre.

That is why the WPK puts the main stress on the development of cities and counties at the present time of implementing the first year’s tasks of the new five-year plan for national economic development.

Having set practical strategies for development and prospective goals that suit their regional characters, cities and counties of the DPRK now push ahead with them purposefully and consciously and according to yearly plans.