The period of comprehensive development and rejuvenation of socialist construction is a new period of dramatic change and upsurge which begins with strikingly contrasting the past and present of local areas and which unfolds along with a new world where local areas undergo transformation.

General Secretary Kim Jong Un mapped out a long time ago a plan for building local cities and rural villages, including provincial capitals, along with Pyongyang Municipality in keeping with their local features and made a new history of local construction and development as he created precious models one after another by dint of energetic guidance.

He emphasized the importance of turning cities and counties into civilized and prosperous strategic bases of the socialist state and into advanced areas with their own inherent characteristics by carrying on local construction on a large scale at the Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, plenary meetings of the WPK Central Committee and the first short course for chief secretaries of the city and county Party committees. In his historic policy speech "On the Orientation of Present Struggle for a Fresh Development of Socialist Construction" delivered at the Fifth Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK, he clarified the direction and ways to achieve a new development appropriate to the DPRK by boldly eliminating the backwardness of the times in local areas.

He also stressed the need to open up an era of change of local areas by bringing about a new revolution in construction to radically transform the living environment of the people at the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea which indicated the route of advance in 2022, and pointed to the necessity to hold up the torch of a revolution in local and rural construction in the important letter he sent to the participants of the second grand short course for the officials in the construction sector.

Under his leadership the City of Samjiyon was built as a textbook example of local construction and a model of mountainous city.

This year an enormous undertaking was conducted on a full scale to positively promote and broaden good experiences accumulated in building the city and thereby turn all cities and counties in every part of the country into livable areas preserving their specific characters and epitomizing modern civilization.

Cities and counties drew up and have pushed plans with a mid- and long-range perspective on the basis of in-depth study of their regional features and situations.

Particularly, they put in efforts to build every structure as a distinctive, non-repetitive and practicable one reflecting not only natural and geographical characters of relevant areas but their unique economic conditions and customs.

To this end, they work hard to build up design and specialized construction institutions and develop and use good-quality finishing materials with local resources.

In the course of this, foodstuff, garment and daily necessities factories and a paper mill were completed in Kimhwa County in June as models of local industry and standard factories.

Cities and counties are also undergoing a sea change in their appearance.

For example, Rason City in the northern tip of Korea is turning into a wonderful border town while producing by itself such building materials as steel bars, cement, bricks, tiles, electric wires and coating materials.

The same is the case with Hoeryong City which is mostly mountains and located in the northern end of the country.

Phyongsong Indoor Stadium, Phyongsong Youth Open-air Theatre and other structures were built in South Phyongan Province and several construction projects were completed in other parts of the country.