sports

As the midsummer heat began, many people go to the swimming and wading pools to cool their bodies.

The Rungna Water Park, Mangyongdae Wading Pool and other swimming pools at various service units are the favourite summer haunts for the Pyongyang citizens, men and women, old and young alike. Most popular among them is the Munsu Water Park, which has a full house every day.

Visitors enjoy themselves, playing in the water both at the indoor and outdoor wading pools.

Seen at the indoor wading pool covering some 16 000 square metres are innocent children dabbling in the water under the care of mothers, people reducing fatigue while having a shower bath, those with their bodies soaked in Jacuzzi and others laughing a hearty laugh as they drink cooling beverages under the banana tree, presenting unusual sights.

Everyone knows that swimming or dabbling requires high energy consumption.

At the steep slide of the outdoor wading pool, young people and schoolchildren show off their bravery as they slide it down cheerfully as if they fly down in a moment. The middle-aged people are so excited that they exclaim as they come out of the water slide like a labyrinth.

And many people double up as they see people on the double wading instruments slide down in high spirits, but soon lose balance as they fall into the water and flounder about under the capsized instruments.

Meanwhile, there are head-to-head swimming contests between visitors at the swimming pool, while others feel refreshed as if they are bathing on a beach by leaving their bodies under the waves at the wave pool.

The people crowd everywhere in the water park, but the children’s water park is the most cheerful of all.

It livens up as it is summer vacation and many children come to enjoy themselves here. They spend a pleasant time having a shower bath, sliding down the frog- and elephant-shaped water slides and shooting water guns through the spray of water from the goldfish-, doggy- and other toy-shape fountains.

Working people on a visit to Pyongyang from Jagang Province, the northern part of the country, expressed satisfaction, saying they felt relieved and refreshed as they visited the Munsu Water Park that they had seen only on TV and enjoyed themselves playing in the water and having a shower bath.

“The water park is always crowded with visitors,” said Kim Song Mi, an attendant of the water park. “But the water of all pools is examined every four hours regularly to always provide visitors with service in a clean environment.”