Pyongyang, October 23 (KCNA) -- Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, gave a banquet for officials, labor innovators, scientists and technicians of South Hamgyong Province.

Present there on invitation were officials, labor innovators, scientists and technicians from South Hamgyong Province including those from the February 8 Vinalon Complex, the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex, the Ryongsong Machine Complex, the Hungnam Smeltery, the Taehung Youth Hero Mine, the Ryongyang Mine, the Tanchon Magnesia Factory, the Tanchon Port construction site, the Ryongjon Fruit Farm, the Tongbong Co-op Farm of Hamju County.

Kim Jong Il warmly congratulated them on their laudable successes made in the efforts to make a breakthrough towards the fulfillment of the national economy plan and consolidate the nation's economic foundation.

Pak To Chun, alternate member of the Political Bureau and secretary of the WPK Central Committee, made a speech at the banquet.

He said that it was Kim Jong Il who worked out plans and worked heart and soul to lead the province to technologically update the factories and enterprises which were in no better shape than debris and push back the frontiers of latest science and technology but commended its officials, workers, scientists and technicians for those feats.

You are the most privileged in the world to receive such profound solicitude from the leader and such legendary loving care and happiness can be enjoyed only by his soldiers, he added.

The participants in the banquet renewed their firm determination to carry through the intentions of the Party by developing the high-pitched labor drive that raged in South Hamgyong Province into a dynamic drive for building a thriving nation and making it serve as a banner of victory for bringing about a greater surge in the nationwide march towards 2012, the centenary of birth of President Kim Il Sung.

Present at the banquet were senior officials of the party and armed forces organs Kim Jong Un, Ri Yong Ho, Kim Ki Nam, Choe Thae Bok, Jang Song Thaek, Kim Jong Gak, Pak To Chun, Choe Ryong Hae, Thae Jong Su, Mun Kyong Dok, U Tong Chuk and other members of the Political Bureau and members of the WPK Central Committee and Central Military Commission and officials of the NDC and armed forces organs.