The vast gravity-fed Hwangju Kindung Waterway was completed in North Hwanghae Province last year.

The establishment of the new large-scale irrigation system fulfilled a long-cherished desire of the farmers in Hwangju Kindung Plain for doing farming without worries about water shortage and laid a foundation for increasing grain, vegetable and fruit production by irrigating vast paddy and non-paddy fields without using pumping equipment.

It is associated with the great pains taken by the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un who wisely led the efforts to complete the waterway as a monumental edifice in the era of the Workers’ Party.

While always paying close attention to the agricultural development of the country, he put forward important tasks on laying foundations for agricultural production free from crop failure by further perfecting agricultural irrigation and clarified goals for irrigation construction for carrying them out at major meetings of the Party and the state.

In order to solve the problem of irrigation water for Hwangju Kindung Plain and its surrounding areas with little water resources, he issued an order of the President of the State Affairs of the DPRK on March 5 2020, a significant day marking the 74th anniversary of the promulgation of the law on agrarian reform, and specified the orientation and ways for the construction of the waterway.

According to his plan, members of the waterway construction division, who performed great feats in major construction projects such as the Paengma-Cholsan Waterway, Miru Plain Waterway and South Hwanghae Provincial Waterway, launched into the project with a 100 000-cubic-metre blasting on June 2 2020 and simultaneously pushed ahead with the building of main and feeder canals from Lake Yonthan to the Turungdong Reservoir.

The waterway project, the sixth in the history of construction of large-scale gravity-fed waterways in the country, was a gigantic nature-harnessing project involving the removal of more than 4 million cubic metres of rock beds and earth and placing of over 110 000 cubic metres of concrete and the building and laying of waterway tunnels in more than 20 sections and various structures and irrigation diving pipes in over 500 places.

They displayed the spirit of self-reliance and fortitude and ingenuity to invent and introduce new construction methods, thus finishing the project two years earlier than planned.

The completion of the Hwangju Kindung Waterway turned vast areas in the granaries of Hwangju and Yonthan counties into fertile land irrigated with life-giving water and rich earth capable of yielding crops safely unaffected by the vagaries of the weather, thereby proving its vitality with each passing day.

Farmers at the Samhun and other farms under the North Hwanghae Provincial Rural Economy Committee said that they had never expected that water of Lake Yonthan could reach there and that although they leant only on dry-field farming for water shortage in the past, they are now doing paddy rice farming in large areas thanks to the favour shown by the country.

“It was very difficult to fill the reservoir with water in the past, but now water flows into it by gravity. It is really a spectacle,” said a keeper of the Turungdong Reservoir.

Agricultural workers in Hwangju Kindung Plain are now filled with enthusiasm to repay the favour shown by the country which established another new gigantic irrigation network in the western region of the country, regarding the perfection of the irrigation system as one of important state affairs vital to rural development.