North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has visited a newly built chicken factory and called for increasing poultry production for a "substantial change" in the people's standards of living, state media reported Monday.

Kim visited Kwangchon Chicken Farm in Hwangju County of North Hwanghae Province on Sunday, accompanied by his daughter, known as Ju-ae, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

He underscored the need to "constantly increase the production capacity so as to provide the people with much more meat and eggs," the KCNA said, adding that the country is planning to build another chicken farm in Pyongyang this year.

The visit comes as North Korea has been focusing on boosting grain production due to the country's chronic food shortages, which have resulted in reported deaths from starvation in some regions.

Kim also called for taking the farm as a standard model for modernizing poultry factories across the nation to "bring about a substantial change in the people's living," the report said.

In July 2020, the North's leader visited the construction site of the Kwangchon chicken factory. The North's state media claimed at that time that the factory could produce thousands of tons of meat and tens of millions of eggs per year.

Kim's latest visit appears to be aimed at portraying himself as a leader who cares about the people's lives in the new year. His daughter Ju-ae also made a rare public appearance at economy-related sites, after mostly accompanying her father to military events before.

Ju-ae, believed to be born in 2013, made her first public appearance on Nov. 18, 2022, when Kim Jong-un brought her to the launch site of a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile.

Since then, she has made a total of 24 public appearances and 19 of them have been military events, according to South Korea's unification ministry handling inter-Korean affairs.

Ju-ae has attended economy-related events only twice so far, including the groundbreaking ceremony of a new street in Pyongyang's Sopho area in February 2023, it added.

The National Intelligence Service, South Korea's spy agency, said recently it sees Ju-ae as Kim Jong-un's "most likely successor," citing her public activities and the level of the North's respect toward her. (Yonhap)