The Seventh Enlarged Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea was held from February 26 to March 1. It discussed the issue regarding the agricultural sector as its first agenda item.

A strategic issue to be solved without fail

The rural question is that of farmers and agriculture that should be solved without fail in the whole course of building socialism and communism.

The WPK has advanced the lines and policies of rural construction in every period and at every stage of the revolution and construction and wisely led the efforts to this end. As a result, the agricultural productivity increased, a clear progress was witnessed in improving the living environment in the countryside and other achievements of great significance were made in the rural construction.

However, the WPK has strictly adhered to its policy on steadily improving the people’s living standards.

It held several meetings including important Party meetings concerning the agricultural sectors, in which it attached great importance to the rural question as a strategic one which should be settled without fail in accomplishing the cause of building socialism and communism.

The Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth WPK Central Committee held in December 2021advanced a rural revolution programme in the new era. It discussed the issue of putting the country’s agriculture on a definitely upward stage and opening up a new great era of effecting drastic development of Korean-style socialist countryside by pushing forward the rural development under the uplifted slogan of “For the new victory of socialist rural construction!”

The Fifth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth WPK Central Committee (June 2022) set farming as the most urgent of the economic tasks and importantly mentioned the issue of carrying out without fail the first year’s task for the rural housing construction launched on a full scale in 2022. The Sixth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth WPK Central Committee (December 2022) stressed the need to direct greater efforts to the construction of rural dwelling houses on the basis of the experience accumulated in 2022 and specified the tasks and ways to which the agricultural sector should give priority.

The attempts of hostile forces to stifle the DPRK, which persisted from one decade to the next and from one century to the next and even in recent years, and the successive disastrous abnormal weather laid obstacles to the agricultural production and development of the country. And there is few prospects for the quelling of the worldwide health crisis.

This being the situation, the WPK always attaches great importance and top priority to the policy of stabilizing and improving the people’s living by realizing self-sufficiency in food.

The Seventh Plenary Meeting of the Eighth WPK Central Committee set the attainment of grain production goal as the first target of the 12 major goals for the national economic development and discussed the issue of agriculture as its first agenda item.

A new era of rural development

At the plenary meeting, the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un clarified the plan to vigorously usher in a new era of rural development as required by the stage of the overall development of socialist construction.

The meeting set it as a priority task in ensuring the stable development of agriculture to accelerate the completion of the overall irrigation system in order to cope with abnormal climatic phenomena, and raised the reclamation of tidelands and expansion of cultivated areas as another crucial task of the state to be dynamically hastened for the agricultural development of the country.

It also discussed specific problems concerning the preparations for farming, river improvement, land amelioration, realization of farm mechanization, the work of making scientific research units in the agricultural sector up-to-date, guidance over agricultural production and rural housing construction.

All these require large amounts of human and material potentialities.

In particular, as the work to attain the goal of socialist rural construction is a gigantic and serious revolution, it is necessary to set a scientific stage and goal and wage a purposeful struggle in order to successfully solve the rural question.

At the meeting, Kim Jong Un said that nothing is impossible as long as there are the powerful leadership system established throughout the Party and the united strength of all the people. And he ardently called for attaining this year’s grain production goal without fail and successfully achieving the long-term objectives of agricultural development for the sake of comprehensive development in socialist construction and self-dependence of the state and wellbeing of the people.

It is the way of advance for the Korean revolution to bring about miracles and changes by inspiring the masses to display their mental strength and achieve greater success whenever it faces difficult and huge tasks.

Thanks to the inexhaustible strength of the masses of the people who faithfully support the leadership of the WPK, a new era of change in local areas and rural development is being unfolded in the country.

Last year, as part of the efforts to implement the rural revolution programme in the new era, the first-stage modernization of the Kumsong Tractor Factory was successfully carried out and thousands of farm machines and hundreds of combined rice threshers manufactured by the working class in the munitions industry and machine-building industry were sent to all farms and workteams in South Hwanghae Province, the agricultural province of the country.

As the rural housing construction which started from 2022, modern, cultured and diverse dwelling houses are mushrooming one after another in the countryside, as suited to the characteristics of mountainous, lowland and coastal areas.

Jungphyong and Ryonpho greenhouse farms were splendidly built in North Hamgyong and South Hamgyong provinces located in the northeastern part of the country. And a large greenhouse farm is being built in the Kangdong area of Pyongyang.

The movement for overcoming unfavourable weather conditions and increasing per-hectare yields have produced many high-yielding farms, workteams and farmers across the country.

The Korean people will dynamically accelerate socialist construction, ushering in the new era of rural development under the leadership of the WPK.

Jo Kwang Hyok