In relation to ever-worsening air, water and soil pollution, the international community has called for intensifying the activities to protect the ecological environment.

September 7 was set as the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies at the UN General Assembly held in December 2019 to reduce the air pollution and protect the human health.

On this occasion, Ri Kyong Sim, department director of the DPRK Ministry of Land and Environment Protection, told KCNA:

The DPRK government has striven for environment protection.

This year alone, it revised and supplemented the main environment protection laws to protect the air and other ecological environment and guarantee the civilized health and living conditions and paid deep attention to updating the environmental criteria and strengthening the state activities for environmental protection.

In particular, the government has intensified the supervision over pollution sources, including the air pollution sources exceeding the environmental criteria, while strictly carrying out the environmental impact assessment prior to development and construction. And works were intensified to reduce the urban pollution by exhaust fumes from automobiles, establish an environment monitoring system and manufacture and introduce new air pollution measuring apparatuses.

It has also urged all the members of society to take active part in the ecological environment protection work, conducting the dissemination of common knowledge and the publicity on the environment protection through media.

Meanwhile, the Ministry organizes various works such as a short course of officials in the environment field at all levels for updating the environmental criteria and sci-tech lectures by areas and sectors with the said day as an occasion.