The youth shock brigade movement in Korea was begun on the initiative of President Kim Il Sung. He organized the spring plowing and harvest shock brigades during the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle to provide the tradition of the said movement. He also formed a democratic youth league shock brigade during the Pothong River improvement project after the country's liberation from Japan's colonial rule to launch the youth shock brigade movement.

In the period of the hard-fought Fatherland Liberation War, the President gave a vital instruction on waging diverse mass innovation movements among the young people in accordance with the wartime environment, thus inspiring them to be performers of heroic feats.

In the period of building a basis for socialism, the youth shock brigade members could complete the vast Haeju-Hasong railway project within 75 days, thanks to the energetic guidance of the President.

Chairman Kim Jong Il had led the young people to make a breakthrough in difficult sectors of socialist construction through shock brigade activities.

In August Juche 55 (1966), he entrusted the youth shock brigade with the task for tideland reclamation, a difficult project intended to turn a barren island into a silk zone, and guided its members to finish the project as soon as possible.

In the latter half of the 1990s when the country was undergoing hardship, he assigned youths to the task for building the then Pyongyang-Nampho Motorway. When they completed this project in a short period, he highly appreciated their feat and named it "Youth Hero Motorway".

True to the great leaders' idea of valuing the youth, Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un showed warm love and deep trust for the youth shock brigade members building a power station in the country's northern highland so that they could work heroic miracles in the construction. When the power station was completed, he personally named it "Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station" to convey the young builders' feats to posterity.

The youth shock brigade movement, developed under the guidance of the peerlessly great persons, is strikingly displaying the vitality of the Workers' Party of Korea's idea of valuing the youth.