North Korea focuses 2nd plenary session on rural development
Seoul, Dec 29 (EFE).- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over the second session of the plenary meeting of the Workers’ Party Central Committee and presented proposals to improve rural development, state media reported Wednesday.
“The plenary meeting mainly dealt with the immediate tasks for the proper solution to socialist rural questions,” KCNA reported.
The text said that during the second session, which took place on Tuesday in the North Korean capital, Kim “made a historic report of important significance in the socialist rural development.”
“He set forth medium- and long-term development strategies and major tasks for attaining the grand goal of rural development in line with the realistic conditions and the requirement of the times for the overall development of our style socialist construction, before advancing detailed ways for its implementation and taking important revolutionary measures,” added KCNA, which did not specify what the aforementioned plans and objectives are.
The discussion on rural development takes place amid economic hardships in the country.
In addition to being hemmed in by sanctions and extreme self-imposed isolation over the pandemic, North Korea has suffered major natural disasters that have further compromised the production of basic grains for the survival of its 25 million people.
Pyongyang on Monday inaugurated this fourth plenary meeting of the Workers’ Party’s eighth Central Committee of the year.
The regime has not specified how long the current plenary meeting will run for, although it is believed that it could end around Dec. 31.
Previous plenaries have lasted between one and four days and that which was held at the end of December 2019 ended on the last day of the year, with the North Korean media releasing Kim’s closing message on Jan. 1, in replacement of the traditional New Year’s speech.
Analysts hope that the leader’s closing speech will include a message to the United States, which this year repeatedly offered to reactivate the stalled talks on denuclearization.
However, Kim rejected the offers, arguing that Washington maintains a “hostile policy, and has advocated continuing with the development of weapons of mass destruction. EFE
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