The university is an agricultural cadre-training institution.

President Kim Il Sung founded a centre for training agricultural cadres of North Korea, the predecessor of the university, on March 11, Juche 36 (1947). He made sure that the work for training cadres was conducted nonstop even in the days of the hard-fought Fatherland Liberation War and clearly indicated the orientation and way for developing the work of the university in every period of the developing revolution.

Leader Kim Jong Il named the university Kim Po Hyon University on August 11, 1994, reflecting the will to let it train cadres who would carry forward the patriotic spirit of Kim Po Hyon, and led it to improve its education.

The teaching staff of the university have devoted all their wisdom and energies to training agricultural cadres, true to the education policy of the Workers' Party of Korea, and are firmly preparing its students as pillars for the socialist rural construction.

A meeting to mark the day was held on Friday.