Will to Achieve Substantial Progress Reaffirmed

 

In early June, an enlarged meeting of the Fifth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea was held in Pyongyang, the capital city of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, amid the interest and expectation of the international community.

According to the country’s mass media, the meeting made a mid-term review of the implementation of the major policies of the WPK and the state for 2022, set the work orientation and policies of struggle for the second half of the year, and discussed and adopted practical measures for giving a strong and correct impetus to the projects of national importance.

Kim Jong Un, General Secretary of the WPK, made a concluding speech at the meeting.

He first referred to the successes achieved in the aspects of the political activities and management of the state, the country’s development and crisis response and management over the past six months, and clarified the tasks for thoroughly implementing the economic policies of the Party and the state for the second half of the year.

He specified the work orientation and practical measures to be taken by the key industrial sectors including the metal, chemical, electric power and coal industries in the second half of the year.

He set farming and consumer goods production as the most pressing economic tasks for this year.

The meeting referred to practical ways for powerfully accelerating the implementation of the WPK’s agricultural policy. Among them were the issue of making the Party’s new policy of agricultural revolution prove effective from the first year of its enforcement by successfully concluding the farming of wheat and barley that were planted as earlier crops, the issue of directing all efforts to making full preparations for protecting crops from natural disasters as much as possible, the issue of putting manure and cultivation of crops on a higher scientific basis, the issue of increasing the proportion of the farm work done by machines and the issue of intensifying scientific guidance over and state support for farming.

It also stressed the need for light industry to launch a dynamic campaign for production and increased production with the demands of the people in their life as the yardstick.

Kim Jong Un said that the construction sector should complete without fail the important construction projects slated for this year one after another to demonstrate the mettle of the Korean-style socialism to the world.

He pointed to the issue of making agricultural workers realize in practice the validity and vitality of the programme of the WPK for socialist rural construction by making sure that the Cabinet, provinces, cities and counties carry out without fail the first year’s task for rural housing construction which was launched on a full scale this year, the issue of concentrating national efforts on rapidly developing science by holding science and technology as the lifeline of economic development and the issue of resolutely innovating economic management.

Kim Jong Un placed a special emphasis on having a proper viewpoint on education at present.

Saying that education is not an undertaking whose results are immediately visible but a long-term one and that correct efforts for it are a springboard to future development, he called for further intensified guidance and assistance to the nationwide improvement in education, including the Party and policy-oriented guidance on the educational work and technical guidance on educational contents.

He stressed the need to continue to direct great efforts to strengthening the national defence capability.

Saying that the right to self-defence is an issue of defending the national sovereignty, he clarified once again the WPK’s fighting principle of power for power and head-on contest in defending the national sovereignty. And he set forth the militant tasks to be pushed forward forcefully by the armed forces and national defence research sector of the DPRK.

The General Secretary noted: We should open up a new phase of vigorous national development by taking the current harsh and difficult period unprecedented in history as an opportunity for getting stronger and more tested and displaying firm will and spirit of persevering exertion, and do our best to ensure that all the undertakings for this year are correctly executed at the scheduled development speed.

Through the meeting, the WPK showed its will to reverse the current severe situation to a good opportunity for bolstering the country’s own strength, its internal driving force, and make substantial progress in the year 2022, an important stage in implementing the five-year plan of development and transformation.