Attending it were Jo Jong Ho, chairman of the Rason City People's Committee, officials concerned and people of the city from the DPRK side and Zhang Anshun, secretary of the Yanbian Autonomous Region, Jilin Province, Committee of the Communist Party of China, Tian Baozhen, consul-general to Chongjin, and other officials concerned from the Chinese side.

Congratulatory speeches were made at the ground-breaking ceremony.

Hwang Chol Nam, vice-chairman of the Rason City People's Committee, in his speech noted that the work for joint development and operation of the Rason Economic and Trade Zone is progressing apace thanks to the joint efforts of peoples of the DPRK and China.

The ground-breaking ceremony is another progress in developing and activating the Zone, he said.

The Zone Management Committee will play an engine role in further deepening the DPRK-China friendship and activating the Zone, Hwang stressed.

Chen Weigen, vice-governor of the Jilin Provincial People's Government, said the ceremony shows that the China-DPRK cooperation in the Zone entered a new stage of development.

The vice-governor stressed the need to concentrate efforts on accelerating the progress of major cooperation projects on the principles of government guidance, priority to enterprises, marketing rule, reciprocity and co-prosperity, developing the combined land and maritime transport route and building and perfecting basic establishments on a phased basis.

Chen hoped that officials of the two countries would closely cooperate with each other, as befitting their posts fixed by the two sides, and pool efforts so as to successfully build and operate the Zone and thus register a new page in the history of bilateral cooperation.

Then announced was the list of the management staffs of the two sides who will work at the Rason Economic and Trade Zone Management Committee.

The participants laid a monument to the ground-breaking ceremony.