North Korea’s official newspaper on Saturday stressed the importance of “economic principles” and “scientific analysis” as the country is striving to achieve a recently unveiled five-year economic development scheme.

“Economic workers should stay away from such tendencies of ignoring economic principles and failing to concentrate and causing waste and confusion by not resorting to scientific analysis,” the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party, said in an editorial.

“Only with complete mastery of one‘s own business areas can we guarantee innovation, bold creation and endless moving forward,” the paper added. “Workers should prepare themselves to solve any problem by learning if they do not know something and strengthening their abilities even through overnight work.”

The paper also cautioned against “defeatism” and “self-protecting” tendencies, while urging the people to put national interest ahead of their own comfort.

At a rare congress of the ruling Workers’ Party last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un admitted to a failure in his previous economic development plan in the face of toughened internal and external challenges and disclosed a new scheme focusing on self-reliance.

During a recent party meeting convened to discuss follow-up measures, Kim criticized officials for setting targets too low in power generation, construction and some other areas and replaced a key official of the ruling party‘s economic department. (Yonhap)