One day in December last year, the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un attended the inauguration ceremony of regional-industry factories in Jangyon County, South Hwanghae Province, in which he cut the inaugural tape and warmly wished the local people a happy future.

That day he said that it is the cherished desire of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the main goal of its regional development policy to turn all cities and counties of the country into self-sufficient and well-off areas by firmly consolidating the foundations for regional development and radically improving the material and cultural living standards of the local people.

In retrospect, he set forth the Regional Development 20×10 Policy aimed at upgrading the basic material and cultural living standards of the people across the country and worked heart and soul to this end.

At the 10th Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK in January 2024, he stressed the need for the Party to keep hold on and carry out the construction of modern regional-industry factories in 20 counties every year as an unerring policy task, so as to raise a level higher the basic material and cultural living standards of the people in all cities and counties, in another word, across the country within ten years.

In February that year, he attended the groundbreaking ceremony to build regional-industry factories in Songchon County to dig the first spadeful of earth and press the button for blasting, heralding the start of the implementation of the regional development policy. Addressing the event, he said that anyone who is born on this land should lead an abundant and civilized life under the socialist policy of the state, whether they live in the capital city or regions, in towns or mountain villages, and it is the core of the new policy of regional development to see to it that they do so without fail.

Later, at the 11th Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim Jong Un took a measure to formally include in the Party’s new regional development policy the construction of advanced healthcare, scientific, educational, leisure and grain storage facilities in parallel with that of regional-industry factories.

He visited the construction sites of regional-industry factories in Hamju, Jaeryong and Songchon counties, encouraging the builders and solving every problem arising in the construction.

Thanks to his wise leadership, modern regional-industry factories were built in 40 cities and counties, and hospitals and leisure complexes in some cities and counties in a couple of years, thus providing a solid foundation for their independent development.

Today the aggressive implementation of the regional development policy in the new era results in the growing potential for regional development year on year, with the desire of the local people coming true.

Ham Kwang Hyok