He, conducted by leading officials of the factory, went round the room devoted to its history.

He said the factory has turned into a reliable tool producer making a positive contribution to the nation's machine-building industry over the past dozens of years thanks to the wise guidance and meticulous care of President Kim Il Sung.

Then he made the rounds of the drill shop and other places of the factory to acquaint himself in detail with the technical equipment and production there. He warmly encouraged the workers waging a drive for increased production, counting every minute and second.

He expressed satisfaction with the fact that the workers of the factory are dynamically advancing toward the eminence of a thriving nation full of conviction and optimism, while displaying the heroic stamina of the Korean working class still today with the same vim and vigor with which they manufactured tools from scratch despite ordeals in the difficult postwar period. He highly appreciated their fighting spirit.

It is one of the prerequisites for the development of the machine industry to satisfactorily settle the problem of tools, a basis of the machine-building industry, he said.

Noting that the industry of the DPRK is now putting the production on a high-speed and precision basis by comprehensively introducing the production system equipped with Juche-based CNC machine tools, in particular, and making leaping progress, pushing back the frontiers of science and, accordingly, requiring more tools of a high level commensurate with it, he said, earnestly calling upon the workers of the factory to intensify the drive for bringing about a radical turn in the tool production.

He said that when the supply of modern tools based on the latest science and technology is fully ensured, the nation's Juche-based industry with the machine-building industry as the core will be put on a higher stage.

In order to bring about a radical turn in the tool production it is necessary for the tool factory to conduct its technological updating in a bold and big way and fundamentally change its appearance, he noted, advancing the militant tasks to be fulfilled by the factory to turn itself into a model factory in the era of Songun equipped with the latest technology within one year.

It is a very huge task to complete the vast project for the technological updating of the factory in a matter of one year but it is quite possible to wind up the project ahead of schedule thanks to the inexhaustible mental power of the heroic Korean workers intensely loyal to the Party and the revolution and the strong support of the powerful Juche-based industry, he noted.

He expressed expectation and conviction that the workers of the factory would register shining achievements in the drive to bring about a radical turn in the tool production and thus contribute to putting the national economy on a Juche-oriented, modern and scientific basis.

He was accompanied by Kim Phyong Hae, chief secretary of the North Phyongan Provincial Committee of the WPK, Kim Ki Nam, secretary of the WPK Central Committee, and Pak Nam Gi and Jang Song Thaek, department directors of the WPK Central Committee.