The year 1954: In the year after the victory in the Fatherland Liberation War, 113 youth shock brigades were dispatched to hundreds of reconstruction sites across the country to restore 915 coal and other mines and enterprises, 317 irrigation facilities and over 10 000 hectares of land.

1958: After the national conference of young builders of socialism was held in March, over 2 300 young men and women volunteered to develop coalfields in South Phyongan Province and other young people completed in August the broad-gauge railway line between Haeju and Hasong, which had been thought to take three-four years, in a matter of 75 days.

June-November in 1959: More than 6 000 youths volunteered for fishery stations in the East and West Seas of Korea.

1961-1969: Over 1.5 million young men and women volunteered to work at difficult and labour-consuming sectors and some 2.6 million joined 70 000-odd youth shock brigades, while the numbers of youth workteams, youth workshops (pits) and machines named after Minchong (Democratic Youth League of North Korea) and Sarochong (League of Socialist Working Youth of Korea) increased respectively to at least 3 580, some 520 and 3 800.

Early 1970s: A railway line was laid between Ichon and Sepho, during which 13 young people earned the title of Labour Hero and lots of others received official commendations.

1975: To mark the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea, youths constructed railways extending for 34 kilometres, electrified railway lines stretching for 111 kilometres, improved more than 44 330 hectares of cold and damp land, picked out stones in over 167 290 hectares of land, manufactured some 940 machines named after Chongnyon Chungsong (youth’s loyalty) and built 980-odd pits, over 20 000 hectares of youth fields and 1 280 youth fish farms.

Late 1970s: After middle school graduates volunteered as farmers to form the youth sub-workteam for the first time in August 1977, the number of such sub-workteams increased to hundreds in 1978 and 2 009 in 1979 across the country.

1983-1988: Young people completed the first stage of the northern railways construction project despite the biting cold of northern areas.

Late 1990s-2000: At least 50 000 young men and women turned out to build the Youth Hero Motorway in a little over 700 days.

2015: On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, young people carried out a huge amount of work, or the equivalent of ten years’ task, in a little over 120 days in the construction project of the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station, thereby creating the legend of heroic youth of finishing the dam of its unit 1.

2016: A total of over 1.2 million young people participated in the shock brigade activities on the occasion of the Seventh Congress of the WPK.

2021: More than 10 000 young men and women volunteered to take difficult and challenging jobs, true to the spirit of the Eighth Congress of the WPK.