Under the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea to bring earlier the overall development of socialist construction by pushing ahead with the rural revolution, laudable successes have been achieved in establishing a perfect irrigation system in the rural economy in recent years.

Since olden times, it has been said that “afforestation and water conservancy are the foundation of farming”.

The cherished desire of the Korean farmers was also to become the masters of land and water as well.

President Kim Il Sung put his heart and soul into the irrigation of paddy and dry fields to ensure that the agricultural irrigation system was completed in the main in the 1960s. Chairman Kim Jong Il ensured that the irrigation system of the country was upgraded by taking proper measures to build large-scale gravity-fed waterways during the period of the Arduous March, a hard time for the DPRK.

But its irrigation system was heavily damaged with the passage of time.

It was important to reorganize the irrigation system given the climatic features of the country that it has a long spell of dry weather in spring and that of rainy weather in summer and in order to protect the crops from the drought and flood and the ever-worsening disastrous abnormal climate that hit the country every year and set up a scientific cereal production system.

Under the circumstances, the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea was held in December 2021. It marked an occasion of epochal significance in settling the irrigation problem which is vital for farming and laying the foundations for sustainable development of agricultural production.

At the plenary meeting General Secretary Kim Jong Un advanced the programme for a rural revolution in the new era, which mainly aims to model the rural communities throughout the country on the Juche idea and make them materially well off, unveiled a plan for readjusting and reinforcing and further perfecting the country’s irrigation system and set the goals of irrigation construction to be attained until 2025.

Powerful construction forces were committed to the irrigation project, the design for strengthening the irrigation system to be perfect even after 50 and 100 years was accelerated and cement, steel and others needed for the irrigation construction were produced and supplied properly in all parts of the country.

As a result, the irrigation project which was defined as the country’s top priority task was carried out at lightning speed and a miracle of perfecting the irrigation system covering hundreds of thousands of hectares of paddy and dry fields was created in three years.

The projects for the desalination of Lagoon Kangnyong and the building of the Chongchon River-Phyongnam irrigation waterway and the Hwangju Kindung waterway were completed, providing a sure guarantee for the farms, which had suffered from severe water shortage year after year, to overcome the whims of the weather and steadily increase crop yields.

The WPK’s decision to gratify the desire of agricultural workers to reap rich harvest in every autumn year after year is writing a new history of irrigation on this land.