Great golden age of construction brings great transformation (2)
February 11, 2026The Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea held in December 2021 put forward a plan for bringing about a new revolution in construction to continue to carry on the heyday of construction in the capital, open up an era of regional changes and radically improve the living environment of the people across the country in the coming 20-30 years.
The Second Grand Short Course of Officials in the Construction Sector was run in February 2022.
The letter clarified the issue of forming a mountain gorge city, a cultured mining town, with houses in distinctive styles in the Komdok area, while building 50 000 modern flats in Pyongyang, and vigorously pushing ahead with the housing construction in provinces, cities and counties on an annual basis as decided by the WPK Congress and that of building a larger number of modern educational and public health facilities.
It also detailed the issue of building cultural recreation grounds and tourist resorts for the people in the celebrated mountains and scenic spots across the country to blend in so well with the beautiful natural scenery, continuously creating parks and recreation grounds peculiar to towns and villages throughout the country and adding more modern service facilities to them and others.
It served as a great programme which should be followed to bring about a new revolution in construction.
The tremendous changes which have taken place in the City of Samjiyon, called the highest village under the sky, can be claimed to be the epitome of the WPK’s grand plan to give the country a facelift by bringing about a new radical turn in construction.
In retrospect, the respected General Secretary decided to build the then Samjiyon County with Mt Paektu, where the Korean revolution started, as the perfect one in the world and the richest county in the country and transform the whole country with it as an example, and energetically led the project to spruce up the Samjiyon area.
He examined more than 8 800 formation plans and gave field guidance over the project several times in 2018 alone.
While visiting the City of Samjiyon in November 2021, he proudly reviewed the successful implementation of the four-year construction project of the City of Samjiyon as planned and intended by the Party, and gave detailed instructions on the issues arising in developing the Samjiyon area more splendidly as a destination of study tour of revolutionary battle sites and tourist resort, including the issues of flawlessly paving the roads in the city in line with the changes in the living environment of the city and additionally building hotels.
On his visit to Samjiyon in July 2024 again, he made the rounds of several places of the area and unveiled the plan to develop it into a model mountainous city in the northern part of the country, a combined mountain tourist resort of a distinctive style and a four-season mountain tourist destination in order to satisfy the cultural and emotional demands of the people on the highest level. He said that Mother Nature in the Mt Paektu area consisting of primeval forests and mountains is the valuable resources of the country to be proud of, a tourist and cultural zone of Mt Paektu should be built wonderfully to become a favourite haunt of the local and world people and it should be ensured that tourism industry serves as a major driving force of regional development.
In December last year modern hotels were inaugurated in the City of Samjiyon.
That day, he went round the Ikal and Milyong hotels and expressed his will to more wonderfully turn the City of Samjiyon into an innovative, civilized city representing the country’s tourism culture.
After setting an example of regional construction in the new era through the construction of the City of Samjiyon, the WPK brought about surprising changes in the Komdok area, too.
In October 2020, a few months before the Eighth Congress of the WPK took place, the respected General Secretary visited the reconstruction site of the flood-hit Komdok area by train crossing a makeshift gorge railway bridge and unveiled a grandiose plan, calling for building there a mountain gorge city unprecedented in history.
At the Eighth Congress of the WPK and the plenary meetings of the Party Central Committee, he stressed on several occasions the need to push ahead with the construction in the Komdok area as scheduled and indicated the concrete orientation and ways for building the houses in a qualitative way by focusing on ensuring their stability so that they would not suffer damage by any flood.
Every year ideal streets were built magnificently in the capital city of Pyongyang and agricultural workers became owners of new, modern houses in the rural villages across the country. As if responding to this stirring reality, the Komdok area rose up as a mountain gorge city and mining town.
Following the reconstruction of the Komdok area, several disaster areas underwent a complete change, leaving no traces of their past.
As he went to the flood-stricken Sinuiju area in North Phyongan Province in July 2024 and matured a plan for relieving the sufferings of its inhabitants as early as possible while looking round the flooded area on board a small rubber boat, the respected General Secretary decided not to simply rebuild the afflicted areas, but transform them into model and textbook entities of urbanization, modernization and civilization of rural areas by turning a disaster brought by nature into a watershed in regional development.
As a result, the decision on rapidly repairing the flood damage in North Phyongan and Jagang provinces was adopted at the 22nd Emergency Enlarged Meeting of the Political Bureau of the Eighth WPK Central Committee held on the train which came to a halt in the flooded area.
The respected General Secretary took measures to dispatch the People’s Army units and organize and send regiments of Party members to the flood-hit areas and personally saw off the young people leaving for the reconstruction in the afflicted area of North Phyongan Province, placing great trust in them as a special detachment sent by the Party.
And then he visited again and again the housing construction site in the rugged afflicted area and pointed out in detail problems arising in the construction such as landscaping and elevation planning.
As a result, new standards were established in the flood-hit areas from the city formation to every structure, road facility and illuminations and they were landscaped on a high level to go well with the mountainous areas.
Thanks to the new revolution in construction, numerous earthly paradises hailed by the people sprang up across the country.
Many structures built in the great golden age of construction in the new era have successfully embodied modernity, convenience and aesthetic quality and more diverse spheres and realms of life have been steadily explored and developed, making the Korean people enjoyers and personification of the new civilization.
The Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area, a leading coastal tourist town of national treasure value, was inaugurated and modern public service bases embodying practicality, diversity and formative and artistic value on a high level were built in the area of Mt Paektu, which has been developed into a distinctive mountain tourist complex and four-season mountain tourist resort.
The Hwasong area, whose development was planned and launched for the purpose of solving the housing problem in the capital city of Pyongyang, has been provided with all structural elements and functions as a single administrative district of a city. An architectural group equipped with hot-spring cure and service facilities and comprehensive service bases on the highest level was built in an excellent place of Onpho with beautiful landscape and a holiday camp with another specific feature sprang up in the Yombunjin area, renowned as a scenic attraction on the east coast. And modern hospitals and leisure complexes built in the capital city and different parts of the country are praised as the palaces protecting the people's health and laughter.
All these are the precious fruits of the noble outlook on the people of the Workers' Party of Korea, which regards the people’s laughter as the symbol of the socialist system, and the epitome portraying the looks of the state and people of the DPRK that will enter a new world of more advanced civilization in the near future.
THE PYONGYANG TIMES