In the DPRK rural villages are taking on a new, splendid appearance every year.

The local residents say that their villages were once shabby but now it became an old story.

The lovely and attractive houses that blend well with surrounding parks and gardens unfold unusual scenes that have never been seen before.

The villagers are so enthralled by the landscape that they like to take photos against the background of it. A farmer in Tapsang-ri, Unsan County, North Phyongan Province, boasted that he does not envy urban dwellers as his village has nice dwelling houses, beach volleyball and badminton courts and a wading pool.

Every house competitively grows fruit trees and flowers.

The sound of music comes out of the windows of each house encircled by fruit trees until late at night, and young people share dreams about their future under the bright lamps.

Everyone tends every tree and blade of grass in their neighbourhood with affection, voluntarily does good things and helps each other.

The new environment makes the inhabitants foster strong attachment to their workplaces and hometowns, and waves of scientific farming are sweeping every field. Farmers are filled with a determination to repay the benevolence of the country with a rich harvest.

All these have not come on their own.

To develop all the rural villages in the country on the socialist line and in conformity with regional features is an important strategic plan of the Workers’ Party of Korea. It is determined to provide the rural population with the best living environment in the world and achieve the overall development of the state. Therefore, it attaches top priority to that mission.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un has made tireless efforts to bring this plan into successful fruition.

One August day last year he revisited the flood-hit areas in Uiju County, North Phyongan Province. That day he said: As we are to build new houses in Uiju County, we should bring about a radical change in the county by building a highly-civilized and modern residential district as good as those in urban cities. The county should be built into an ideal “cultured rural city,” which is furnished on a high level with all the elements related to urban management, ranging from supply of electricity and tap water to sewage treatment.

Shortly ago, a groundbreaking ceremony of a 450-hectare greenhouse farm and vegetable science research centre took place in the county, true to his intention to bring any project for the people into reality without fail whatever the difficulties.

His ideal for the cultured socialist countryside and his wholehearted devotion to the people grow intense day after day and year by year.

New types of rural houses, different from those built last year, will be constructed this year, and every year the Party sets higher standards for the construction of rural houses, said Han Chol, a staffer at the National Design Administration who had taken part in the designing of the rural housing projects for three years.

Under the guidance of Kim Jong Un , the rural environment in the country spruces up with the lapse of time.

Pak Chol