Comrades,

Today we are holding another groundbreaking ceremony for the new year’s project to build 10 000 flats, just as we have done without fail over the past four years.

With the 10 000 flats to be built this year, the construction of 50 000 flats in Pyongyang, which has progressed full steam ahead since the Party congress, will enter the final phase.

At this significant moment, when we are to launch into the fourth-stage housing construction in the Hwasong area, I am reminded of how strenuously we have worked over the whole course of the past four years to achieve amazing exploits and hasten the schedule for transformations. I also recall with deep emotion the loud cheers that rang out year after year to celebrate the completion of the new streets for the people.

Thanks to your ennobling spirit and devotion to the capital city construction, Pyongyang has turned into a more splendid city as we wished. Its dignified and vibrant looks instil great confidence and courage in the people across the country as they are greeting a period of massive transformations.

This is precisely a proud record of the times and a high appreciation of the immortal exploits and glorious feats you have achieved through a stubborn and vigorous struggle to honour our Party’s cherished desires with miracles of creation.

As we can see in reality, the yearly construction of 10 000 flats in Pyongyang has been promoted most steadily during the eighth term of the Party Central Committee.

In this period, despite the persistent difficult conditions facing our state, the economic sectors have built up their capacities, the overall national economy has definitely entered a phase of sustained growth, and new records have been set up in various aspects of state affairs thanks to the outstanding successes unprecedented in the history of the Republic.

Let me cite a few examples. In the period of the five-year plan set forth at the Eighth Party Congress, the electric power industry has maintained a remarkable trend towards increased production while steadily expanding its scope of upturn; cement production has attained a record high; and the agricultural sector has also entered a trajectory that is secure enough to keep a high and stable level of grain production.

In particular, housing construction in Pyongyang has become the most stable and rapidly growing sector, with the perfect and unconditional fulfilment every year of the ambitious plans that, in consideration of the long-term requirements, were added to the goals decided on by the Party congress. In 2024 the growth rate in this sector reached a striking level of 391% as against 2020.

The construction projects that have progressed country-wide over the past four years, particularly the yearly construction of 10 000 flats in the capital city, have made a record of great transformations, a record so outstanding that the phrase groundbreaking accompanied by inauguration has come into common use. This can be called the greatest of successes that we can be proud of before the world.

I said this in Ragwon County two days ago.

To be frank, these days I am really tired and busy attending inauguration and groundbreaking ceremonies that have been scheduled one after another. We are facing such moments of drastic change.

This is a fact that clearly proves how many goals we have advanced and are striving to achieve for the prosperity and transformation of the country.

Amid this strenuous struggle our belief in our own strength has become firmer, and we have fostered an indomitable fighting spirit and self-confidence to advance our cause.

The belief in our own strength and self-confidence–this is the most important of all, a spiritual asset that is more precious than our wealth in physical form.

Availing myself of this significant opportunity to launch a new struggle for the development of the capital city construction onto a higher plane, I extend warm thanks and militant greetings to all the builders who are taking a vigorous step forward to attain more ambitious goals with the dignity and pride in having performed brilliant exploits in the worthwhile construction work.

I also express my heartfelt thanks to the officials and workers in the relevant sectors for having raised the fierce flames of a leap forward and increased production to provide a guarantee for the implementation of our Party’s construction policy and inject vigour into it.

Comrades,

Now construction has become a major realm of our struggle, and it is expanding its position at the centre of the times.

We are engaged in the struggle to move from a revolution to a more gigantic one and from a stage of development to a higher level of transformation. In the course of this struggle, construction is gaining an extraordinary significance and power.

Construction is precisely investment in, and pioneering of, the future.

The revolution in construction is the essential prerequisite for our Party’s development strategy for bringing about epochal changes on this land, and the implementation of all important policies of the Party and the state is, without exception, accompanied by construction, regardless of sectors, units and regions.

It can be said that the historic cause for comprehensive rejuvenation of our state and improvement of the people’s well-being begins with construction, moves ahead with construction and comes to accomplishment with successful construction.

It would be no exaggeration to say that construction, among others, intuitively expresses our politics, helps us get nearer to attainment of our ideals of civilization and prosperity, and rapidly increases the wealth of our country.

Construction not only plays the role of a powerful weapon for steady advance and development of our state, but also exerts, as an ensemble of the national strength, a leading, powerful influence on the efforts to transform the economy, science, technology, culture and all other fields.

The obvious signs of our country improving its appearance and the rapid succession of remarkable changes in different fields of state and social life, never seen in the history of our nation building, are directly associated with the miraculous development our architecture has achieved amid the flames of a new revolution in construction.

With the extensive construction projects now underway across the country, the trend of irreversible change and upturn is becoming more and more dominant, and our cause is gaining greater momentum for its dynamic advance.

When construction consists in the main front that is decisive of the advance of our revolution, the main factor in its successful implementation can be said to be how we understand and confirm once again the purpose and character of our construction struggle.

The groundbreaking ceremony we are having at the moment serves as a meaningful occasion for refreshing our understanding of what is the true aim our Party and state pursue in dynamically pushing ahead with the gigantic construction projects with such great efforts, and how the dynamic advance of our struggle and our own style of change and development is being achieved.

This housing construction site in the Hwasong area is vivid proof of the people-first politics and a clear symbol of our cause that is making a more vigorous advance and higher leap forward day by day towards the goal of a powerful country.

This can be said to be the core and character of the grand construction campaign that will stir the Hwasong area.

The fourth-stage project in the Hwasong area will include various modern amenities as well as 10 000 flats.

To build the Hwasong area into a model administrative district in Pyongyang, where everything needed for the life of the residents is well furnished–this is the idea I have put forward and maintained since the beginning of this whole project.

Therefore, I have ensured that the master plan and designs for construction in the Hwasong area were worked out through greater effort, with a concept different from that of previous street formations, and that the construction itself has also been conducted to this end.

It is true that the amenities to be built this year in this area are functional buildings which are large in scale and demand high technical requirements. To build them together with 10 000 flats is by no means an easy task.

But this plan is linked with the people’s demands, and so we must put it into reality without fail and we will do it.

This is our Party’s consistent principle of struggle.

If the Hwasong area with new wonderful flats is furnished with these immaculate amenities, it will be turned into a model urban-block formation, a beautiful and magnificent place where the formative artistic beauty and advanced civilization are in good harmony.

Comrades,

Housing construction in Pyongyang should continue until the Party’s plan is turned into reality to provide its citizens with perfect conditions for leading a civilized and happy life without any inconvenience.

Today, availing myself of this opportunity, I would like to outline some of our Party’s policy-oriented plans for the capital city construction.

We plan to implement with serious intent the policy of extending streets of Pyongyang towards Kangdong as the second stage after winding up the construction in the Hwasong area.

As major scientific research institutes, technical colleges and military academies are to be built in Taesong District, we are going to have tens of thousands of modern flats built in the area between the Hwasong area and Songmun-dong in Samsok District.

This will form another wonderful scientific, cultural and dwelling area in Pyongyang.

In addition, we will transform such culturally backward metropolitan areas and suburbs as Tungme-dong in Songyo District, Wolhyang-dong in Moranbong District and Hadang-dong in Hyongjesan District, thereby eliminating and renovating all the elements unbecoming of the appearance of the capital city in its overall formation.

These initiatives will be reported to the Party congress and handed over as a major task of the next-term Party Central Committee.

Comrades,

The fourth-stage project in the Hwasong area, which our Party has courageously shouldered for our most precious people, is the crystallization of the unyielding offensive spirit of us, revolutionaries, who are faithful to our unchangeable mission, and the whole area of construction here is the epitome that intensively shows the spirit peculiar to the Workers’ Party of Korea that wages the revolution uninterruptedly and the onward march of our state that advances towards the future with a great ambition.

The enthusiasm for creation and vigorous fighting spirit to be displayed in the Hwasong area will redouble the unrivalled strength and courage at the construction sites across the country and further boost the advance of our state.

Although this project is large in scale, I am convinced that it will surely bear good fruit thanks to the strong drive and practical abilities of the commanding personnel and the confidence and soaring morale of all the builders.

The Hwasong area will soon become more famous not only as a cradle of the happy and civilized life of the people but as a land of history, which tells new miraculous tales of indomitable socialist Korea.

Elite capital city builders, a source of pride for our Party,

The 80th founding anniversary of our glorious Party and its Ninth Congress that will be specially recorded in history will witness the immortal exploits to be performed by you, who are boundlessly loyal to the Party’s ideas and cause.

Our capital city should be most beautiful and greatest in the world.

For the great appearance and eternal prosperity of our capital city,

For the civilization of our state and for the happy life of our people,

Let us turn out more courageously in the great struggle.

Long live Pyongyang, the great capital city of our motherland–our beloved, proud, dignified and glorious city!