The environment refers to the natural environment and the living environment that affect survival and development of human beings.

These include the atmospheric environment, the water environment, the land environment, the underground resource environment, the forest environment, the marine environment, the scenic environment, the urban environment and the rural environment.

Protecting and managing these circumstances, which directly and indirectly affect human beings, are of great significance in ensuring cultural life.

With the development of science and technology, the utilization of the natural environment is increasing, and only when the environment is protected and managed well can it protect people’s health and provide them with a better living environment.

The DPRK Law on Protection of Environment stipulates that institutions, enterprises, organizations and citizens should preserve the natural environment, make it advantageous for health promotion and cultural and emotional life and protect and manage it well.

The DPRK Law on Protection of Environment is aimed to make the country’s mountains and rivers more beautiful, protect and promote the people’s health and provide them with a cultural and hygienic living and working conditions by establishing a strict system and order in environmental management, preservation and creation of natural environment and prevention of environmental pollution.

In our society where a human is regarded as the most precious being and everything serves to promote the well-being of the masses, protecting the environment is preferred to the production and construction.

The DPRK Law on Protection of Environment stipulates that it is an important requirement for environmental protection to take thorough measures for environmental protection prior to production and construction, and that the state should see to it that institutions, enterprises and organizations take preferential measures for environmental protection before conducting production and construction and steadily modernize the material and technical means for environmental protection.

Our country, which makes the demands and interests of the popular masses the first consideration, assumes strict legal responsibility for the environmental destruction that harms the people’s health.

The DPRK Law on Protection of Environment stipulates that if one does harm to people’s health and the property of the state, social cooperative organizations or citizens by destroying the environment, he must redintegrate it or the corresponding damage must be repaired.

People have long wished to live without illness.

To provide the people with a cultured and hygienic living environment through good environmental protection is an important condition for ensuring the people’s longevity in sound health. Thus, in our country buildings and facilities causing pollution are controlled legally so as not to harm the people’s health.

The DPRK Law on Protection of Environment also stipulates that institutions, enterprises and organizations should reduce the consumption of fossil energy such as coal and oil and actively exploit renewable energy resources such as solar, geothermal, wind and tidal power as required by the environmental protection and sustainable development of the economy.

Besides, institutions, enterprises, organizations and citizens are legally and rigorously regulated to protect and manage the environment well, including that cutting of scenic forests around cities and villages, roads and railways, lakes and marshes and streams and damage to and destruction of natural scenery are avoided.

Thus, the DPRK Law on Protection of Environment is a superior law which thoroughly guarantees the people’s life and health and better living environment.

Rodong Sinmun