Pyongyang, January 1 (KCNA) -- A banquet was given at the People's Palace of Culture on December 31 to mark the hopeful New Year 2025. Present there were labor innovators and persons of merit who were invited to the celebrations of the New Year after making great contributions to glorifying 2024 as a year of gigantic changes and leap forward, to be specially recorded in the history of the country, through their sweat and sincere efforts with pure patriotic conscience. The venue of the banquet was filled with boundless gratitude and reverence for the great Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee which values the loyalty and uprightness of ordinary working people devoting themselves to the prosperity of the country and holds them in public esteem. Attending it were Pak Thae Song, member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and premier of the DPRK Cabinet, Jo Chun Ryong and Choe Tong Myong, secretaries of the WPK Central Committee, and other senior officials of the Party, government and armed forces organs. The national anthem of the DPRK was played. Pak Thae Song made a congratulatory speech at the banquet. Upon authorization of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, the speaker warmly congratulated the labor innovators and persons of merit who took part in the grand banquet with the pride of having devoted themselves to the vanguard of the all-people struggle for prosperity of the country. All the assets and successes shining along with the absolute position of the DPRK were provided by the patriotic citizens with indomitable pioneering spirit, heroic stamina, warm blood and sweat, and their noble conscience and undaunted struggle laid a foundation for bringing about the sure success and change in 2024, he noted. He said that the struggle in the new year marking the 80th founding anniversary of the glorious Workers' Party of Korea and the 80th anniversary of Korea's liberation requires the strong and energetic efforts of all the people. He expressed belief that all the participants would launch an intensive campaign for increasing production and performing new miracles in the drive to implement the decisions of the Eleventh Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK by fully displaying their single-minded loyalty and patriotism in supporting the Party and the state, saying the strong foundations for prosperity, secured by dint of self-reliance only and in our own way, and the people's self-respect and patriotic spirit, which have grown stronger, will surely bring about the implementation of the five-year plan and record the 9th Congress of the WPK as a glorious one in history. All the participants toasted the good health of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, the prominent leader of our state and dear father of the people, and for the new victory in 2025 when a greater stride will be made toward prosperity.