(LEAD) N. Korea to hold ruling party plenary meeting on agriculture this month

(ATTN: UPDATES with more details in last 3 paras)
By Kim Soo-yeon

SEOUL, Feb. 6 (Yonhap) -- North Korea plans to hold a plenary meeting of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) in late February to discuss issues related to agricultural development, its state media said Monday.

At a politburo meeting of the WPK's Central Committee held the previous day, the North unanimously decided to convene the seventh enlarged plenary meeting of the party late this month, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The move is aimed at reviewing last year's achievements in the country's rural revolution and discussing the "immediate farming issue and long-term goals for the agricultural development," the KCNA said in an English-language statement, without elaborating on what the immediate farming issue is.

"It is very important and urgent task to establish the correct strategy for the development of agriculture and take relevant measures for the immediate farming," it added.

If held, the upcoming party session will take place just two months after the secretive North convened the longest-ever, six-day WPK plenary meeting in late December last year. The North has usually held party plenary meetings once or twice per year.

Observers said the North's rare move points to its urgent need to cope with chronic food shortages in a bid to improve people's livelihoods.

North Korea is known for chronic food shortages that have been apparently aggravated in recent years due to typhoons, flooding and the COVID-19 pandemic.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called for the thorough implementation of the five-year economic development plan this year, presenting 12 major goals in the economic sector during the party meeting held in late 2022.

South Korea's unification ministry said the North's plan to hold another key party meeting in just two months is apparently unusual, albeit not unprecedented.

"The government will keep close tabs on the North's food situations, as it plans to discuss the agricultural issue as a single agenda item for the upcoming session," the ministry's spokesperson Koo Byoung-sam told a press briefing.

North Korea's crop production is estimated to have reached 4.51 million tons last year, down 3.8 percent from a year earlier, according to a report by the South's Rural Development Administration.

sooyeon@yna.co.kr
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