Pyongyang, August 24 (KCNA) -- Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, inspected the Kumsong Tractor Factory on Aug. 23.

Accompanying him were Jo Yong Won, member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau and secretary of the WPK Central Committee, O Su Yong, member of the Political Bureau and secretary of the WPK Central Committee, and Kim Yo Jong, vice department director of the WPK Central Committee.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un was greeted on the spot by the director of the Vehicle Industry Guidance Bureau under the Ministry of Machine-building Industry and leading officials of the relevant sector and the factory.

Looking round the remodeled room for education in the revolutionary history and room dedicated to the factory's history, he highly appreciated the fact that the factory has conducted in an effective way the education in the undying leadership feats of President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il who devoted themselves to the development of the Juche-based tractor industry. And he asked the officials and employees of the factory to fulfill their noble mission and duty in the struggle for implementing the programme for the rural revolution in the new era, with the pride of living and working at the glorious working place.

Then, he went round different parts of the factory to learn in detail about its renovation and modernization and production.

When visiting the Kumsong Tractor Factory in November 2017, he said that the factory is a historic one associated greatly with guidance feats of the President and the Chairman. And he set forth a vital task for turning it into a core and advanced factory which plays a leading role in realizing the comprehensive mechanization of agriculture and can serve as a model of the vehicle industry and into a factory where cultured way of production and life is perfectly established, and personally settled the important problems for carrying it out.

He also indicated the detailed orientation and ways for turning the factory into a world-level one, ranging from the issues of designing, modernization of production processes, professional construction unit and labor force to the issue of forming an executive commission for updating and a group of designers and dispatched able construction forces. And over the past five years, he has paid deep attention to the factory, taking important Party and state measures to push ahead with its modernization project.

True to his on-the-spot instructions and the resolutions of the plenary meetings of the Party Central Committee, the officials and employees of the factory, together with soldier-builders, finished the first-stage updating project in close cooperation with scientists, technicians and workers at the relevant units last year. They are now stepping up the second-stage project while striving to develop and make modern tractors and farm machines in a larger quantity.

Kim Jong Un acquainted himself with the updating of equipment, the creation of production capacity and the construction conducted during the first-stage modernization project.

He highly praised the factory for having realized in the main the automation of major production lines, through its strenuous efforts to attain the modernization goal without fail, and laid a foundation for producing tractors with less cost price, practical efficiency and fine appearance by conducting a dynamic mass technical innovation movement to improve the performance of tractors and solving lots of technical problems arising in the production of parts.

And he appreciated the fact that the factory has manufactured and installed new efficient equipment and steadily updated equipment to raise the productivity and precision and ensured the full operation of equipment in the work by arousing the enthusiasm of employees, thus expanding its annual tractor production capacity and producing various kinds of modern farm machines.

He also expressed satisfaction over the fact that major production buildings were newly built or renovated on a modern basis through a dynamic construction project to renew the factory better as required by the developing reality and provide good working environment and the work to arm the employees fully with modern science and technology has been conducted in an effective way through the normal operation of sci-tech learning space.

He seriously examined the second-stage modernization now under way at the factory and set again the goal to be attained by it.

Stressing that to map out a realistic strategy for the development of farm machines and make a radical leap forward in the farm machine industry is the most urgent issue in solving the food problem, the foremost fundamental in our grand revolutionary struggle for achieving the great cause of building a rich country with strong army and, at the same time, an important work for the eternal prosperity of the Korean revolution, he said that very important is the duty of the Kumsong Tractor Factory which holds a key position no one can substitute for in realizing the comprehensive mechanization of agricultural production.

When the practicality and efficiency of modernization now under way at the factory are closely examined, there is progress to some extent, but irrational problems exist in view of the prospective development of the farm machine industry envisaged by the Party Central Committee, he said, and indicated in detail the scale and target of modernization to be held fast to and carried out thoroughly by the factory in the new struggle.

He said that the factory should not confine its modernization target only to the visible goal for current agricultural production, but set a practical target for freely and satisfactorily producing and supplying efficient and quality tractors and farm machines suited to the specific conditions and requirement of our countryside by establishing the farm machine production process with comprehensive and modern features in keeping with the world standard and providing a large-scale production base and stubbornly attain it.

All the farm machine production sectors should be updated to activate the production and thus radically increase the country's agricultural productivity and this is an important matter which brooks no delay, he said. And he gave a task for the relevant field to survey in detail the estimation of the country's overall agricultural infrastructure and agricultural technical capability and present the data on it so that the long-term farm machine development strategy can be discussed and deliberated at the 9^th Plenary Meeting of the 8^th WPK Central Committee to be convened at the end of the year.

He expressed expectation and belief that the officials and employees of the factory, by carrying forward the proud tradition of the Chollima workers of the preceding generation who made the first tractor with their bare hands, fully displaying the spirit of self-reliance, would vigorously turn out in the struggle to attain the goal set forth by the Party Central Committee and thus become reliable models in the van of the drive for developing the country's machine industry and carrying out the rural technical revolution.

Responding with a pledge of devoted implementation to the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un who visited their factory again and showed deep trust in them and redoubled their high sense of honor and important mission in defending the outpost of the rural technical revolution, all the officials and employees of the factory made a firm pledge to fulfill their heavy responsibility and duty for the farm machine production front in the ongoing worthwhile historic advance for opening up a new era of rural development.