culture

There is Lake Kumsong with crystal-clear water glittering in the sun, surrounded by thick forests where mountain birds chirp sweetly. On the lakeshore there stands a fine cosy building. 

It is the Sasumgol Branch of Samthan Primary School in the city of Tokchon, where two pupils study at present.

This branch is situated in a remote mountain area, which is far from the seat of Tokchon and which takes about an hour to reach by ship, but the children's happy laughter and loud voices of reading ring out through the village.

At the branch school, the ceremony of hoisting the national flag is held every Monday morning and on national holidays and anniversaries as in all other schools in the country.

When two pupils look up to the sacred flag of the DPRK as they hoist it with their teacher, the villagers are wrapped in solemn feeling.

According to the teacher, Kim Un Hye, the branch school was splendidly renovated ten years ago.

Officials of Tokchon and Samthan Primary School worked out a plan to build afresh the branch school in the mountain village in a splendid way, true to the policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea on bringing about a radical turn in education, and put in a great deal of effort to implement it. It was a small building, but required a lot of materials and a huge amount of work.

It demanded much labour only to build a road from the city seat to the village.

It would be an easy way to bring children to the seat for education, but they would have to make a long commute, which would not be good in implanting in them an attachment to their home village. Therefore, the officials opted for a difficult way.

The construction of the school building began thus and the officials made long trips to secure even one material and worked day and night with builders to build the road.

After the branch school was completed and the blooming girl teacher came to work there from the city seat, the bell for the first lesson rang there.

Though she had volunteered for the branch school, Kim Un Hye felt worried if she would be able to keep to the path she chose in the valley where only the howls of wild animals were heard all day long, she recalled.

In the year after the new building was completed, the news of field guidance provided by the respected General Secretary Kim Jong Un at the newly-built Mindulle Notebook Factory was published. The pupils of the branch school asked their teacher when they would be able to write letters in such notebooks.

Kim Un Hye was unable to answer them readily.

But soon after that, they were the first to be provided with Mindulle notebooks in the city.

The children were so happy to see the nice coloured notebooks from Pyongyang that they jumped up and down, while adults were so moved to tears for the paternal love shown by the Party for the children.

Afterwards, hearing the sound of the familiar ship whistle resounding across the lake, the schoolchildren studied to their heart’s content as they always received new uniforms, Sonamu bags and school things before others in the city.

“I keenly felt that where we live and study is not a remote locality but a place that adjoins the yard of the office of the Party Central Committee and where state benefits reach before other places,” said the teacher.

Such story is not only heard at Sasumgol Branch School in the city of Tokchon.

The Party and the state take the same loving care of children all across the country, including the mountain village in Mubong-dong in the city of Samjiyon, the first village under the sky, and Al Island in the city of Rason at the northern tip of the DPRK.