Pyongyang -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK) said on Monday that improving the people's living standard is the country's main task at present.

"We (the ruling Worker's Party) should successfully realize the noble intention and plan of our party, which regards the improvement of the people's living standard as the supreme principle in its activities," said the new year editorial carried by three main official newspapers, Rodong Sinmun, Joson Inmingun and Chongnyon Jonwi.

The annual joint new year editorial described the year 2006 as "a year of great victory" and claimed that the year 2007 will be "a year of great changes."

"The main task in the present general march is to direct primary effort to rapidly improving the standard of the people's living and ... to step up technological updating to put our economy on a modern footing and display its potentials to the full," said the editorial.

The editorial also said agriculture would still be the base of the country's economy.

"We should, as in the past, keep up farming as the great foundation of the country and make an epoch-making advance in solving the problem of food for the people," the editorial said.

"We should run the economy by our own efforts, our own technology and our own resources with a determination that we must build a socialist paradise by ourselves," it added.

As a tradition, DPRK always issued a joint editorial by the three main newspapers on the first day of the New Year to announce its important policy on politics, defense and economy.