culture

Girl steals the show

Song Rye Yong, a student at Pyongyang University of Publishing and Printing Industry, is a master of memory who squarely reached the top three at the Fourth Memory Contest of University Students in November last year.

Though she was placed third, her ability shown in the contest made the first- and second-placers feel fearful about the next contests and jury members and experts hold positive expectations for her.

According to her tutor Kim In Chol, she came third in total rankings, but won three individual events, the highest number of the top three. 

On the first day of the contest, Song won the event of random number memory in an hour (memorizing 3 600 random numbers), drawing attention of the participants.

On the second day, she also took first place in the memory of speed numbers, a competition to see who memorizes more numbers more correctly in five minutes, and the memory of virtual events and dates with 560 in the first event and 148 in the second one, stirring up the atmosphere of the contest.

Naturally, the participants and judges focused their attention on her who won first place in succession every day from the beginning of the contest.

Be cautious of obsession

On the third day of the contest, she took part in the memory of cards in an hour under the participants’ unusual gaze, but regrettably failed to earn a high score.

The event took place in the form of memorizing the presented data, remember them and write them down on writing papers in a fixed time. It required the contestants to write up from the bottom, but Song Rye Yong wrote the data in the wrong way, that is, downward from the top.

As a result, Song got 10% discount in the score and failed to reach the top three in the event. The psychological impact she felt from it was fatal to the later events, said Kim In Chol.

In the memory of speed cards which followed, she recorded 17.6s. But it was lower than her training record at ordinary times.

 “Looking back on the course of the contest at that time now, I realized that the score I earned in the memory of one-hour cards was more than I deserved. It was such a serious mistake as a doctor puts together cut fingers in order without seeing the palm and back of the patient’s hand,” recalled Song. “I failed to grasp even the small writing paper in sight. As a result, my fault was revealed that I had been wedded to super speed reading only for its own sake. Attaching importance to details and proper maintenance of mental stability are the basis of SSR, but I forgot the essence of it.”

If she is too single-minded in everything, terrible consequence may occur–this is the lesson she drew from last year’s contest, she said, adding she would do her best not to show such a fault in the next contest.