50th Anniversary of Changsong Joint Conference

50th Anniversary of Changsong Joint Conference
In August 1962 President Kim Il Sung, founding father of socialist Korea, convened the joint conference of local Party and economic officials at Changsong, a mountainous county located in the northern part of Korea. At the conference, he made a concluding speech, titled Let Us Radically Improve the People’s Living Standards by Strengthening the Role of the County and
Further Developing Local Industry and Agriculture. In his speech he set the county as a unit directly guiding the comprehensive development of Korea’s agriculture and local economy and as a base that links the towns with the countryside so as to coordinate in a unified and comprehensive way the guidance of the ruling party and the state to countryside. He also clarified that all the areas of the country should be developed evenly by ensuring full support of the city to countryside and assistance of industry to agriculture.
The President, who cherished it as his lifelong wish to make our people eat rice and meat soup, wear silk clothes and live in tile-roofed houses, acquainted himself in detail with living conditions of the people of Changsong known as a far-off area unfit for human inhabitation, and clarified the ways for improving their standards of living. Saying that the people in mountainous areas should make effective use of mountains so that they could be well-off, he elucidated the
ways for developing animal husbandry and local industry by exploiting  ountains well at the county and for increasing their cash income by organizing various kinds of odd jobs widely.
Since the Changsong joint conference, tremendous changes were brought about in the improvement of the county people’s standards of living by making good use of mountains, operating local-industry factories at full capacity and turning to good account the idle and raw materials. As a result, Changsong has become known throughout the country as a region of “treasure mountain” and “golden mountain.”
Thanks to the deep concern and energetic guidance of Kim Jong Il who  developed the ideas and added lustre to the exploits of President Kim Il Sung, the vitality of the Changsong joint conference has been further demonstrated.
Kim Jong Il made public his work The Position and Role of County in Socialist Construction, already in his university days in 1964 to enrich the ideas of the President on the position and role of the county and led the work energetically to put forward Changsong as an exemplary unit that ushered in a new historical chapter of a “golden mountain” and develop it into a socialist fairyland. He made a 65th visit to Changsong County in October 2002 and clarified the ways for further developing the local industry as required by the IT era of the new century, and visited it again in November 2010 to show a new path to the development of the local industry.

True to his instructions, the people of Changsong launched a drive to expand the production  capacity of the factories in the county including a foodstuff factory, textile mill and paper mill, and put them on a modern and scientific basis. In the course of this, the total output value of the county increased four times greater in 2009 than in 2001. Technical equipment of all the factories in the county have been updated as required by the 21st century. The Changsong Foodstuff Factory, with an aim of holding supremacy in the processing of wild fruits, has pushed ahead with the work of introducing CNC technology in its production lines including those of wine and confectionary and perfecting sterilization. The
factory is now striving to make a domestic monopoly of its specialties. At the textile mill, efforts are being made to replace the existing looms with efficient flexible shaft ones, upgrade the quality of felts now in production and turn out a larger quantity of woolen underwear, mufflers and other daily-use articles with by-products. The county is channelling its efforts into developing animal husbandry. As a result, the number of grass-eating animals including sheep, goat and cattle has increased so as to produce cheese and other kinds of dairy products and processed meat, while securing the sufficient supply of locally-available raw materials. A mass drive is also being carried on in order to plant
good species of trees in larger quantities and gather various kinds of wild fruits such as pine nuts, wild walnuts, fruits of Crataegus pinnatifida, wild grape, fruits of Actinidia arguta and acorn, edible herbs such as mushroom, aralia shoots and anise, and medicinal herbs such as Herba Epimedii, Frustus Schizandrae and Radix Astragali. The house of culture was reconstructed on a modern basis, and a library, a restaurant street and dwelling houses were newly built in the countyseat, and the public establishments including kindergartens and creches refurbished recently. Thus, the county has assumed a completely new appearance. Those changes are witnessed in numerous cities and counties all across the country including Maengsan County in the central mountainous regions of the country, Riwon County along the coast of the East Sea and Hoeryong City in the northern tip. They are all turning out their
specialties that are as good as those made in state-run enterprises in terms of item, quality and packing.
The rapidly-developing local industry of this country makes the people witness the realities of Korea vibrant with the building of a thriving nation.