On January 15 this year, at the Tenth Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jong Un, President of the State Affairs of the DPRK, delivered a policy speech, titled, On the Immediate Tasks for the Prosperity and Development of Our Republic and the Promotion of the Wellbeing of Our People, in which he set forth crucial tasks for the comprehensive development of socialist construction.
Key Agenda Item
The key item of the agenda for the above meeting was how to ensure sustained development and successes in 2024 by building on the achievements made in 2023 and establish a firm footing for the next-term government.
Last year the Korean people made notable progress in their effort for the comprehensive development of socialist construction, for example, increasing the GDP 1.4 times compared with that in 2020, the year before the Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and achieving a surge in the production of major economic indices.
Not content with this, the Workers’ Party of Korea and the government of the DPRK aspire to attain higher goals and reach a faster rate of development.
At the Ninth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK held in the end of last year, 2024 was defined as a year decisive of victory in attaining the goals set forth by the Eighth Congress of the WPK by further raising the offensive spirit in all the sectors of socialist construction, and scientific and feasible decisions were adopted with unanimous approval.
In the policy speech Kim Jong Un underlined the need to adorn the sacred history of development of the DPRK with more definite and innovative successes by ensuring that all sectors of state affairs regard the WPK’s decisions as their lifeblood and carry them out perfectly without any drawback.
Major Task
For the Korean people, who have set for themselves ambitious goals for the comprehensive development of socialist construction, the economy is the main thrust area.
Kim Jong Un has already defined the major task facing the government of the DPRK as continuing to increase the trend of upturn in the national economy and thus put the overall economy on a trajectory of stable and sustained development.
To this end, he specified what needed to be done in all economic sectors, including metallurgical, chemical, machine-building and other key industries, building-materials industry, rail transport, IT, land and environmental protection, urban management and construction.
Of special note regarding the key tasks for the improvement of the people’s living standards is the Regional Development 20×10 Policy, which is designed to eliminate the differences between the capital city and provinces and the imbalance among regions. This refers to a policy-oriented task of building modern regional-industry factories in 20 counties every year; when this rate is maintained for ten years, all the cities and counties in the country will achieve transformation, with the result that a huge step forward will be made towards raising the entire population’s basic material and cultural living standards.
Kim Jong Un also presented tasks to be tackled in developing the country’s science and technology, improving the role of talented personnel, and raising education and public health to the world’s advanced levels.
The above plan and goals will lead to remarkable economic growth and a radical improvement in the people’s living conditions.
