Politics

The young Korean people embroidered heroic epic stories of miracles and innovations in the annals of the country’s prosperity.

The youth workteam movement was created in the course of fulfilling the national economic plan for 1947, the first of its kind in the country after national liberation in 1945, and the number of youth workteams increased to over 400 in 1949, with the result that the monthly production plans were overfulfilled by 50 to 100 percent.

Young people also performed brilliant feats in the post-war rehabilitation in the 1950s.

Thanks to the vigorous activities of youth restoration parties in all parts of the country, electric furnace No. 2 was restored to its original state in less than two months at the then Kangson Steel Works and the Sunghori Cement Factory started cement production 17 days after the war. In 1954 alone, 113 youth shock brigades were organized in hundreds of reconstruction sites across the country, rehabilitating 915 coal and other mines and enterprises and 317 irrigation objects and restoring over 10 000 hectares of land.

After the national conference of young builders of socialism held in March 1958, the Phyongnam youth coalfield was developed, the Chongnyon (youth) Street sprang up in the East Pyongyang area, the first stage of the large-scale Kiyang irrigation project was completed and the Haeju-Hasong broad-gauge railway construction project was carried out in a matter of only 75 days.

The construction of the Kanggye Youth Power Station and medium- and small-size hydroelectric power stations was completed and several railway lines were electrified including the one between Pyongyang and Sinuiju from 1961 to 1969.

In August 1977, 55 graduates of Sinanju Women’s Senior Middle School (at the time) in Anju City volunteered to work at a farm and formed the first youth sub-workteam. With it as the beginning, lots of young people followed suit and organized youth sub-workteams and workteams. Youth sub-workteams organized in 1978 alone numbered several hundred and the number of youth sub-workteams and workteams at farms increased with the passage of time.

In the 1970s young people built 34km-long new railways, electrified 111km-long railway lines, improved over 44 330 hectares of cold and damp land, removed stones from some 167 290 hectares of land,  secured more than 980 pit faces, brought over 20 000 hectares of land under the plough and built 1 280 youth fish farms.

In the 1980s the High-Speed Youth Shock Brigade members built ore dressing plant No. 3 of the Komdok Mining Complex, the Grand People’s Study House, the Mangyongdae Amusement Park, Pyongyang Department Store No. 1, the Changgwang Health Complex, Changgwang Street (first stage) and many other monumental structures. From December 1983 when the construction project of northern railway line started, they stepped up the project over three times faster than before in the biting cold of the northern highlands to finish the construction of all structures in the first-stage section of the project till August 1988.

In the 1990s over 4 000 young men and women volunteered to work at difficult and labour-consuming sectors of socialist construction in less than three months after the national conference of young activists. Young people fully demonstrated their might in the main railway construction projects including the railway line between Wonsan and Mt Kumgang and railway electrification projects and completed the Youth Hero Motorway in 700-odd days.

Young builders constructed the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station in the freezing cold of the northern highlands and finished it in October 2015 and completed Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station Unit 3 in 2016.

Many youth league officials and young people volunteered to work at major units of socialist construction after the Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The Korean youth splendidly built Jonwi Street and a new modern rural town and fairyland villages in the lower reaches of the Amnok River in 2024 and turned out for the construction of the Sinuiju Combined Greenhouse Farm in 2025.