It is the intention of the Workers’ Party of Korea to further consolidate the foundations of the self-supporting economy by concentrating all efforts on economic construction and thus accomplish the cause of building a powerful socialist country in the near future by relying on the foundations.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un has ushered in a new heyday of the self-supporting economic development in the face of unprecedented difficulties for the past decade.

Last year, projects were briskly carried out to shore up the key industries constituting the basic and fundamental backbone of the economy, with the result that significant entities sprang up to increase the power of the independent industry.

The Hwanghae Iron and Steel Complex, which takes the lion’s share in the country’s iron production, built an energy-saving oxygen blast furnace and established the iron- and steel-making system based on the Korean technology, raw material and fuel, thus completely throwing off the century-old yoke of coke.

As part of the bold, development-oriented and realistic goal for putting the metal industry on a Juche basis, the tasks of building more new-type oxygen blast furnaces and increasing production capacity were set forth for the complex and the work for their implementation was pushed forward under the great concern and guidance of the Party and the state and thus the spectacular success was achieved at a go.

The Komdok Mining Complex, an important unit in the mining industry, successfully wound up a project for rationally improving the ore-transporting system. Thanks to the completion of conveyor transport system No. 9 and conveyor transport shaft No. 72, which will play an important role in the present and prospective production of minerals, material and technical foundations were perfected for transporting all minerals that are produced at deep and upper production areas through a long-distance conveyor belt, thus opening up bright prospects for boosting production of nonferrous metal.

The reconstruction of roasting-sulphuric acid process, which will be helpful to the development of the self-supporting nonferrous metal industry, was completed at the Munphyong Smeltery.

This has laid a solid foundation for making a great stride in the economic development of the country and the improvement of the people’s living standards with locally-available resources and technology of the DPRK.

The smeltery gave precedence to the supply of materials and equipment while organizing and conducting the construction projects meticulously and on a scientific basis to complete the manufacture, assembly and installation of different kinds of equipment in a qualitative way. In cooperation with lecturers and researchers of Kim Il Sung University, it fully solved technical problems arising in the operation of production processes including the completion of the designs for production processes, the development of an automatic control program and establishment of the control system and built production and living buildings perfectly.

Last year, many other significant successes were made in increasing the might of the self-supporting industry including the upgrading of the Onchon Tile Factory, a modern tile production base fully equipped with production facilities.

The Korean people will continue to dynamically pave the road of prosperity under the leadership of the WPK which indicated the clear orientation of economic development with the firm faith that a powerful country can be built on the solid foundation of the self-supporting economy.