DPRK Cabinet Party Committee holds meeting

The Workers’ Party of Korea [WPK] Committee of the DPRK Cabinet (hereafter, the Cabinet Party Committee) held an expanded meeting on 15 March (Wednesday) as a follow-up to the last Central Committee plenum meeting.

DPRK Premier Kim Tok Hun (Kim Tok-hun) and Chief Secretary of the DPRK Cabinet Party Committee Ri Yong Sik (Ri Yo’ng-sik) led the meeting, which was attended by members and candidate members (which is to say a selection of Cabinet Ministers and Commission chairs).  Attending as observers were relevant officials of Cabinet Ministries, Commissions and other national institutions.  The meeting took up a review of the first year in implementing the country’s new rural development policy and the execution of domestic economic policies and the political guidance underscore national economic development.

A report was read out at the meeting.  The report referred said that Kim Jong Un (Kim Cho’ng-u’n; KJU) “provided a new fighting strategy for implementing the program for socialist rural revolution and is wisely guiding the struggle toward a new phase of national development.”  It stressed that the “the important goals for definitely putting the agricultural production on a stable development track and substantially consolidating the political ideological, material and technical foundations of the countryside are the tasks to be carried out without fail by displaying courageous enthusiasm and practical ability.”

The meeting discussed “shortcomings and lessons revealed in the implementation of the Party’s resolutions in the past” and “multi-faceted and concrete action plans for making sure that the Cabinet Party Committee and Party organizations at all levels lay solid foundations for the stable and sustained development of agricultural production.”  The plenum focused on “the matter of arousing all the Party organizations and members to the attainment of the grain production goal and of making the Cabinet Party Committee a powerful propellant in implementing the Party’s strategy for rural development.”

The expanded Cabinet Party Committee plenary session “stressed the need for the economic guidance organs to establish the strict discipline in implementing the national economic plan and accurately conduct the economic operations and guidance in a foresighted way.”  The meeting “highlighted the need to bring about innovations in the state financial and banking work by rapidly solving the urgent problems arising in the strengthening the country’s financial foundation and discipline and improving the banking work.”

The meeting discussed “important issues for all the Party organizations to give full play to the elated mental power and inexhaustible creative power of the masses with a sense of mission they assumed before the Party and the revolution” and it “called upon the Party organizations at all levels to establish the revolutionary discipline and order, redouble their activeness and fighting efficiency and thoroughly orient and subordinate their work to the implementation of  the Party’s policies.”

The Cabinet Party Committee meeting held sideline consultative meetings intended “for working out a thorough plan for the execution of the policy-oriented tasks facing the Cabinet and the state economic organs in accordance with the advanced orientation and fighting program clarified at the 7th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the WPK.” It also prepared a resolution “amid the enthusiasm of the participants determined to attain at any cost the important goals set forth by the Party Central Committee and do their best to carry out the Party’s resolutions unconditionally, thoroughly and correctly.”

Personnel note: Ri Yong Sik has replaced Kim Tu Il (Kim Tu-il) as the Cabinet Party Committee’s Chief Secretary.  Kim was appointed Chief Secretary of the South P’yo’ngan WPK Provincial Committee in the fall of 2022.  It is not clear if this Ri Yong Sik is the same individual who served as Rodong Sinmun editor-in-chief and WPK Propaganda and Agitation Department Senior Deputy Director.