The Spring National Footwear Exhibition-2024 took place at the Pyongyang Yokjon Department Store between April 23 and 29 under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Light Industry.

The spring exhibition, held on the theme of “Convenience, aesthetic beauty and solidity of footwear”, was aimed at directing effort into improving the quality and increasing the varieties of products by sharing and diffusing sci-tech achievements and experiences gained in the production of footwear and promoting fierce competition between the production units.

More than 190 000 pieces of footwear in 710-odd kinds produced by several units including the Ryuwon and Sinuiju footwear factories and the Wonsan Leather Shoes Factory were presented to the exhibition, along with more than 50 research findings released by the footwear industry sector.

True to the decisions of the Ninth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea which set forth improving the quality of consumer goods as an important issue, every unit exhibited the achievements they have made in their efforts to diversify the products in terms of kind, shape and colour, namely iconic footwear which can symbolize and represent them.

“Now our factory widely encourages the development of new products. It exhibited dozens of kinds of trainers developed this year to the recent exhibition and they were very popular,” said Son Hyon Sok, chief engineer of the Ryuwon Footwear Factory.

Among them were the trainers for young people which gave a sense of lightness and activity by offering a sharp contrast in colour to the outer rims and soles to suit their psychology and seasonal characters, those for adults which improved the endurance and cold resistance of the sole and those for children whose outer rims were made with materials of various colours to suit the children's minds. All of them were designed to fully satisfy the demands of customers.

The Rason Samryong Trade Company exhibited 26 varieties of products in 12 kinds.

Its staffer Ho Chol Jin said that the kinds of products has increased from six to twelve in the course of a vigorous technical innovation campaign to improve the quality of footwear.

During the exhibition many-sided technical exchanges were encouraged between production units and scientific research institutions through a sci-tech presentation, experience-sharing meeting and symposium.

“As the number of exhibition increases, the modes of exchanges get diversified through the sci-tech presentation, experience-sharing meeting and symposium and their qualitative level and depth are improved. This year, all efforts are directed to raising the qualitative level of the shoes of students,” said Ri Nam Dok, staffer of the Central Committee of the General Federation of Science and Technology of Korea.

At the sci-tech presentation the design of the sole of trainers for schoolboys, which helped easily design distinctive and elegant patterns by making effective use of several programs to increase the designing speed and meet the demand for shoe-mould, the design of padded winter boots for children, which is convenient to wear and increases the cutting efficiency to more than 89 percent by analyzing the sizes of feet and psychological characters of children, and several other proposals drew the attention of jury members and participants.

There was a heated debate at the symposium to correctly fix the shoe sizes of students from primary school to university and accordingly prepare shoe tree and production equipment in line with the situation that factories specializing in the production of shoes for students are built in all provinces.

“It is the intention of our Party to radically improve the quality of shoes in the near future by digitizing and informatizing the footwear industry in the period of implementing the current five-year plan. Exhibitions are important occasions for hastening it,” said Choe Sun Chol, section chief of the Ministry of Light Industry.