The year 2024 will mark an important milestone in implementing the regional development policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Since long time ago the cities and counties of the DPRK have steadily endeavoured to improve the living standards of their residents by relying on the locally-available raw materials.

In recent years the WPK has advanced it as the ultimate goal in strengthening the cities and counties to turn all of them into strategic bases of the cultured and prosperous socialist state and into developed regions with their peculiar features.

On the basis of the valuable experience of regional-industry development created in Kimhwa County, Kangwon Province, the 19th Enlarged Meeting of the Political Bureau of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK put forth the Regional Development 20x10 Policy and the Tenth Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly defined the policy as a state policy.

According to the policy, the WPK is supposed to keep hold on the construction of modern regional-industry factories in 20 counties every year as an unerring policy task, carry it out successfully on such level as Kimhwa County and thus raise the basic material and cultural living standards of the people in all cities and counties, in another word, across the country onto a higher level within ten years.

This year is the first year of implementing the policy of regional development in the new era.

Regional-industry factories in Songchon, Jangphung, Kosan and various other counties took on shape in a matter of several months after their groundbreaking ceremonies, and preparations for operating such factories to be built are briskly under way in various parts of the country.

At a consultative meeting of officials concerned with regional economic development held in July on the seashore in Sinpho, South Hamgyong Province, Kim Jong Un stressed that developing and making good use of their natural and economic resources in regions is very important in nurturing the independence and driving force of the regional economic development and, furthermore, in developing the country’s economic potentials in a unified and development-oriented way.

Not long ago, he advanced a new orientation of building a medical establishment, sci-tech dissemination centre and grains management facility in each city and county in parallel.

It is not long before the reality will prove the validity and vitality of the WPK’s policy on developing the regional economy by making the best possible use of the mountains in mountainous areas and of the sea in coastal areas and all the people across the country will enjoy a more abundant life.

Jong Hwa Sun