2025 was a year when the DPRK powerfully promoted its economic development on the strength of science and technology.

Scientific circles rise up

True to the plan and intention of the Workers’ Party of Korea which set it as an important task to increase the role of the scientific field in 2025, scientists and technicians achieved successes in scientific research conducive to economic development and improvement of the people’s living standards.

Those at the State Academy of Sciences developed the technologies for producing reduced iron and synthetic fuel oil based on coal gasification. The research findings they produced on the basis of the Korean-style pressurized pneumatic fine coal gasification technology make a great contribution to easing the shortages of steel materials and fuel oil by relying on locally available technologies and resources.

Scientists of the Nano-engineering Branch of the State Academy of Sciences introduced an advanced technology for producing biological adhesive binder for metallurgy relying on local technology and raw materials into the refractory production process at the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex. The establishment of this technology opened a prospect for producing various kinds of quality refractories in the sector of metallurgical industry and made it possible for it to take a step forward in increasing its Juche and independent characters.

The Modernization Institute of the State Academy of Sciences updated the industrial information system development environment “Mirae 102” 4.0, a core technology of industrial information system, at a high level. The updating of the core technology of industrial information system in Korean style provided a guarantee for putting the national economy on a modern and IT basis at a higher level.

Besides, the State Academy of Sciences has also attained lots of successes, including the increase in the proportion of domestic production of equipment to be installed at regional-industry factories and the establishment of the Korean-style paper production technology and the technology for the desalination of Lagoon Kangnyong, which guarantees the sustainable growth of agricultural production.

The Academy of Agricultural Science completed the cultivation technologies of grain crops and nutrient cold rice seedlings to minimize the flood damage and increase agricultural production.

Several scientific research institutions also presented many research findings conducive to building up the foundations for the development of light industry, public health, fisheries, poultry farming and other sectors.

Intense desire for research and creation throughout the year

Scientists and technicians in the educational sector were also full of burning enthusiasm to contribute to social progress and development with knowledge and technology.

Kim Il Sung University developed a new piece of Korean-style advanced analytical equipment and introduced it into the large oxygen plant of the Hwanghae Iron and Steel Complex. With the introduction of the infrared gas analyser newly developed by the scientists of the nonlinear optics research group of the Physics Faculty of the university, winners of the country’s first natural science prize, oxygen plant workshop No. 3 is making remarkable progress in scientific and normal operation of the large oxygen plant, which is leading to success in the production of iron based on the Juche-oriented iron-making techniques.

The scientists of the university developed a heat treatment technology urgently needed in the machine-building industry. It is reportedly a Korean-style cost-, electricity- and labour-saving and environment-friendly technology to produce quality gears with ordinary carbon steel without using expensive alloy steel materials. The university also developed and introduced a technology for boosting the efficiency of the gas generator process and an artificial intelligence-based boiler combustion optimum air control system and made a noncontact leak detector for water supply pipeline to contribute to modernizing the production processes and improving urban management.

Kim Chaek University of Technology achieved notable successes in scientific research into further strengthening the foundations of the country’s metallurgical industry.

It solved the scientific and technical problems arising in increasing the production of pig iron and improving the performance of oxygen plants at the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex and made and introduced measuring instruments and analysers with high accuracy. And it fixed the technical indices of the pig iron production process of the energy-saving oxygen blast furnace newly built at the Hwanghae Iron and Steel Complex, solved the scientific and technical problems arising in the normal operation and application of the active quicklime pilot production process and provided a technical guarantee for improving the quality of heavy rail steel.

In addition, it introduced a rational blasting method into the Musan Mining Complex, contributing greatly to successfully carrying out the 2.5 million-cubic-metre blasting.

The university also solved the scientific and technical problems arising in the chemical, machine-building and electric power industries and various other sectors of the national economy including the establishment of a slow effective granular urea fertilizer production line at the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex, development of a tractor engine with improved performance and completion of the design of an efficient high-frequency preheater.