Pyongyang, March 31 (KCNA) -- Under the wise leadership of President Kim Il Sung, the Korean people fulfilled the three-year plan for postwar rehabilitation in two years and eight months and began carrying on the five-year plan in Juche 46 (1957).

The five-year plan envisaged the building of foundations of socialism and the development of the DPRK, an agriculture state, into a socialist industry-agriculture state.

At the plenary meeting of the C.C., Workers' Party of Korea held in December 1956, the President advanced a slogan "Let us produce more, practice economy, and overfulfil the five-year plan ahead of schedule!", which appealed to all party members and other working people to tap all the internal reserves and raise the rate of operation of equipment to the maximum.

Soon after the meeting, he dispatched senior officials of the party and government to factories and farms throughout the country.

Early on the morning of December 28 that year, he visited the then Kangson Steel Plant to discuss increasing steel output, urgently needed for the nation's economy.

He convened there a consultative meeting of the plant's officials and frontrunner workers. He informed them of the basic agenda discussed at the December plenary meeting, details of the five-year plan, internal and external situation and the bottlenecks in topping the next year's economic quota.

He said the Party was pinning hope on the working class, the driving forces of the revolution, stressing the nation's economy can be put on its track only when they turn out 10 000 more tonnes of steel.

In response to his call, its workers produced 120 000 tonnes of billets in a blooming mill with an annual capacity of 60 000 tonnes, overriding passivism, conservatism and mysticism about technology, thus sparking off the Chollima Movement.

Chollima, which means a horse galloping 400 km a day, symbolically contains the revolutionary mettle of the Korean people pushing ahead with socialist construction at the highest speed.

The President also went to the then Hwanghae Iron Works, Hungnam and Sinpho areas, Mundok and Sukchon counties and other factories, farms and fishing grounds across the country, to encourage all the people to turn out in the Chollima movement.

The movement resulted in world-startling innovations in all fields of socialist construction.

The then Kim Chaek Iron Works produced 270 000 tonnes of pig iron out of the blast furnace with an annual capacity of 190 000 tonnes, while the then Hwanghae Iron Works erected a large-sized blast furnace in less than a year.

The machine-building industry succeeded in manufacturing a tractor in 30 days, a lorry in 40 days, an 8-meter turning lathe, a 3 000-tonne press, an excavator, a large-sized water pump, a bulldozer and many other modern machines and equipment by its own efforts.

More than 13 000 machine tools were manufactured in a year.

Some 9 900 irrigation facilities were installed to supply water to more than 377 000 hectares of farmland.

Jangjingang Power Station was rehabilitated and large and minor power stations, including Jangjagang Power Station were built.

The tasks to hit the goal of gross industrial output value for the 5-year plan were carried out in two and a half years and the quota for major industrial products fulfilled or overfulfilled on all indices of products in four years.

As a result, the country could have solid foundations for socialism and the DPRK developed into a socialist industry-agriculture state with self-supporting national economy.