culture

The Korean Central TV hosted a show on the theme of “New year celebration of child prodigies” on the occasion of lunar New Year’s Day and introduced children with great natural abilities for painting, oral narration, singing, telling phone numbers after listening to the sound of dial of smart phone, remembering cards and others.

Among them was Choe Il Hwan at Kyonghung Kindergarten of Pothonggang District, who put the cards picked by several children out of 52 cards back to their original places.

Once he remembers a pack of cards, he can tell the cards from the first to the last or from the last to the first and bring the cards back to the original positions even if several of the cards are picked out by anyone else.

“Il Hwan spoke fluently when he was a year and six months old and enjoyed watching animations when he was two years old. And he used to tell all the lines in animations after seeing them only once,” said his mother Yun Myong Suk.

It is said that when he began to read and write, he often saw illustrated juvenile story books and remembered the pages of their pictures and stories, to the surprise of his villagers.

Jon Yong Ok, a teacher at Kyonghung Kindergarten of Pothonggang District, found the bud of his unusual talent, excellent memory, and developed it to the full.

She, who has so far trained many child prodigies with excellent intellectual faculties, said that she found out his special ability when he was in the lower class.

“When I taught Korean language, counting, singing and games, he correctly understood everything he saw and heard and always answered my questions before anyone else. Once, he surprised me as he copied a clever paduk move he had once seen on the paduk board. Children’s intellectual faculty begins to develop on a full scale when they are 5-6 years old and I wanted to help him give full play to his memory in the period,” said Jon.

At first, she taught him abacus and Rubik Cube to develop his intellectual faculty and began to teach the knack of memory as his visualization ability gradually improved.   

Il Hwan has great powers of concentration and likes to hear stories. So she trained him to recognize the 52 cards according to his likings with pictures suited to the juvenile mind while repeating the training to remember them with interesting stories.

In the course of it, he acquired a habit of seeing and remembering everything correctly and was highly appreciated for showing excellent memory for playing cards at the 14th national contest of kindergarten children with outstanding talents held last year.

He entered primary school this April.