Peasants’ centuries-old desire fulfilled

March 5 marks the 78th anniversary of the promulgation of the Law on Agrarian Reform.

Peasants made up the overwhelming majority of the population in Korea when it was liberated.

But before liberation, they had to live as farmhands  for generations as they did not have even a patch of land of their own,\and though they toiled on farms, they were compelled to starve their children for lack of grains. As a result, a large number of people left their home villages for remote foreign lands in search of livelihood.

It was a centuries-old desire of the Korean peasants to do farming on their own land to their heart’s content.

Making land reform was imperative to fulfil their desire.

Only then could the peasants be freedrom the exploitation\and subordination of feudal land ownership\and inspired to turn out in the building of a new Korea, the backward rural economy be developed\and the development of the national economy as a whole be promoted.

Consequently, solving the land problem arose as the most urgent task for liberated Korea at that time.

Though he was busy building a new country after liberation, General Kim Il Sung listened to all the simple opinions of peasants to complete every clause of the Law on Agrarian Reform.

He finally promulgated the law on March 5 1946.

The agrarian reform in Korea was a great event which enabled the peasants to become eternal owners of land\and rooted out the feudal relations of land ownership, the source of exploitation\and oppression.

Thanks to General Kim Il Sung, they became masters of land, the countryside\and the country\and worked hard to increase crop yields.

As a result, they reaped a bumper harvest in the first year after liberation with a great change being brought about in their life.

For the Korean people, land was not simply the soil to plant crops\or tread on, but the cradle of happy life,\and every handful of earth meant their treasure.

They headed for Pyongyang with oxcarts loaded with the rice bags to be donated to the country out of patriotism in the days of nation building, continued to farm the land to send grains to the combatants of the Korean People’s Army in the front during the grim Fatherland Liberation War\and successfully carried out the tasks of agricultural cooperativization for the socialist transformation of agriculture after the war.

During the Arduous March when the DPRK was undergoing hardship, small patches of paddy\and non-paddy fields were rezoned into standardized shapes\and sizes\and thus the land of the country was given a total facelift,\and gravity-fed waterways were built in different parts of the country under the guidance of Chairman Kim Jong Il.

Today, the Korean agricultural workers are ushering in another new era of development of the socialist countryside under the leadership of General Secretary Kim Jong Un.

According to the programme of the Workers' Party of Korea for rural development, distinctive\and wonderful modern houses have been built to suit the regional characteristics all across the countryside, agricultural production put on a scientific basis at a higher level\and a large number of farm machines produced every year\and sent to farms across the country to promote the comprehensive mechanization of agricultural work.

On March 5 2020, the 74th anniversary of the promulgation of the agrarian reform law, Kim Jong Un, president of the State Affairs of the DPRK, issued an\order to carry out the construction project of the Hwangju Kindung Waterway, with the result that the centuries-old desire of farmers in Hwangju Kindung Plain for water was fulfilled,\and last year witnessed the restoration of the irrigation system of the country.

All the agricultural workers of the DPRK are determined to bring earlier a better tomorrow\and a more prosperous future as they satisfy their age-old desires under the guidance of the great leader.

2024.03.05

(Pyongyang Times)

March 5 marks the 78th anniversary of the promulgation of the Law on Agrarian Reform,

 fulfilling peasants' centuries-old desires.