Elite Divisions of Party Members from Capital City

Among the stirring events in 2020 in the DPRK is a story about the elite divisions of Party members from the capital city, Pyongyang.

In August and September flash floods and typhoons simultaneously hit several parts of the country including North and South Hamgyong provinces in succession, causing severe damage and leaving numerous flood victims homeless.

Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un designated the reconstruction campaign as the forefront to which the Workers’ Party of Korea should direct all its efforts and ensured that the major civilian construction forces and Korean People’s Army units were immediately dispatched to the afflicted areas.

On September 5, he convened on the spot an enlarged meeting of the Executive Policy Council of the WPK Central Committee for organizing the campaign for recovery from natural disasters in North and South Hamgyong provinces and decided to unburden himself of the problem of providing strong support to the reconstruction projects to Party members in the capital city.

He then wrote an open letter “To All the Comrade Party Members in the Capital City of Pyongyang” in a typhoon-afflicted area.

In a single day after the publication of his open letter, hundreds of thousands of Party members in the capital city volunteered for the reconstruction campaign. And on September 8, the elite 12 000 strong divisions of Party members in the capital city held an oath-taking meeting at the plaza of the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, before leaving for the reconstruction sites by train, land and sea.

The disaster-stricken areas were unfamiliar places far from the capital city of Pyongyang, and the damage was enormous beyond their imagination.

As soon as they arrived at the reconstruction sites, they launched into the building of dwelling houses rather than their own barracks and pushed ahead with the repair of damaged roads and river improvement project simultaneously. They did not only reconstruct the damaged areas. With warm affection of Pyongyang, they wholeheartedly consoled the people in the afflicted areas and offered sincere assistance to them so that they would cope with the aftermath of the disasters as soon as possible.

After completing their tasks of housing construction for the people in the disaster-stricken areas before October 10, the 75th founding anniversary of the WPK, the divisions of Party members in the capital city volunteered to work in other areas.

Single- and low-storey houses for hundreds of families were splendidly built in a little over 70 days in the damaged areas of North and South Hamgyong provinces which were reduced to rubble by natural disasters, and roads and rivers reconstructed to withstand any flood.

“We carried out the reconstruction projects assigned by the Party in a short span of time at the highest level. The sacred name of the elite divisions of Party members in the capital city gave us incredible strength and courage,” says Jong Myong Gil, department director of the Pyongyang Municipal People’s Committee who was a member of the division.

The divisions will remain etched in the minds of the Korean people as an honorable title exhibiting the original people-friendly features of the WPK and its invincible might along with the year 2020 beset with unprecedented difficulties.

2020-12-30