North Korea’s Kim lauds new fish farm, calls for regional development

SEOUL – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has celebrated the completion of a new fish farm in the east coast and called for developing rural areas, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Dec 30, amid concerns over chronic economic challenges.

Mr Kim attended an inauguration ceremony of the Sinpho City Offshore Farm on Dec 28, which is built in the coastal town where the country also operates a submarine base and has tested submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

The farm, designed to grow and process scallops, kelp, sea cucumbers and sea urchins among others, was a centrepiece of Mr Kim’s “Regional Development 20×10 Policy” aimed at building modernised factories in at least 20 remote counties every year for the next 10 years. 

Mr Kim lauded the farm as “a peculiar creation for regional transformation in the area, which had been only a white beach with pine trees five months ago”.

He also called for further progress in rural development nationwide.

“This is a start of the important undertaking whereby to ensure steady progress in socialist construction, aspiring after simultaneous and multiple development on a nationwide scale,” he said at the ceremony, according to KCNA.

Mr Kim has been pushing to modernise the farming industry and rural communities as the country’s economy relies heavily on agriculture but continues to grapple with food shortages amid sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes as well as seasonal impacts from natural disasters.

At a key year-end assembly of the ruling Workers’ Party held from Dec 23 to 27, Mr Kim urged efforts to speed up the initiative and open another fish farm elsewhere for a trial programme based on the experience from Sinpho, KCNA said separately on Dec 29. REUTERS