By Hyonhee Shin
SEOUL (Reuters) – 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, state media KCNA said on Monday, amid concerns over chronic economic challenges.
Kim attended an inauguration ceremony of the Sinpho City Offshore Farm on Saturday, 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 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, visiting the site several times.
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,” calling 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 told the ceremony, according to KCNA.
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. 23-27, 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 Sunday.
(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Chris Reese)
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