The home-visiting group of students in their final year at Korea University of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan visited the statues of President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang on September 24.

The members of the group laid bouquets before the statues of the great leaders and made bows to them. 

Kim Song Nam, director of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, met and had a friendly talk with Keo Mackhaphon, Laotian ambassador to the DPRK, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang on September 24 when the latter paid a courtesy call on him.

Present there were officials of the International Department of the WPK Central Committee and staff members of the Laotian embassy.

New villages have been built at Sinjidong and Sinsong farms in Hoechang County, South Phyongan Province.

Present at the ceremony for moving into new houses were Kim Man Jo, secretary of the South Phyongan Provincial Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, and officials, builders and agricultural workers in Hoechang County.

Jang Myong Il, vice-chairman of the South Phyongan Provincial People's Committee, made an address there. Then licences for the use of houses were conveyed amid the warm applause of the participants.

A home-visiting group of students in their final year at Korea University of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan led by Ryu Chang Sun, head of its educational affairs department, arrived in Pyongyang by air on September 24. 

Pyongyang Teachers Training College, which trains kindergarten and primary school teachers, has a mother’s classroom which cannot be found in other universities for training middle school or university teachers.

“It is very important to combine school education closely with family education with motherly character together with high qualifications as educators, in order to bring up rising generations properly,” said Ri Yun Hui, department chief of education faculty No. 1 of Pyongyang Teachers Training College.

In the mother’s classroom that simulates family environment by equipping itself with toys, kitchen and others, students learn the combination method of school and family education.

Kim Un Ok is a war veteran who is living in neighbourhood unit No. 35, Haeun-dong No. 1, Phyongchon District. 

The old woman maintains an intimate relationship with many people like a family.

They habitually visit her home on such holidays as V-Day to encourage her and always look after her life carefully. They include officials of the municipality, district and dong office, members of the neighbourhood unit, doctors of the clinic, employees of the Pompit materials supply company and Yangdok Hot Spring Resort and others.   

The DPRK has set it as an important issue related to the country’s prosperity to bring up many children and provides huge social benefits to prolific mothers.

Increasing social benefits 

It is nearly 150 years since Japan provoked the Unyogo incident.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Japan advocated the “theory of the conquest of Korea” to conquer Korea by force of arms and, as its first stage, sent warships like the Unyogo to Korea for espionage and military display from the spring of 1875.

In the autumn of 1875, the Unyogo intruded into the Korean territorial waters again on the pretext of surveying a shipping route to the Qing dynasty and approached a point of military importance in defiance of the demand of the Korean feudal government for withdrawing immediately.

Seyed Ali Khamenei, leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, called on Islamic countries to cut off economic relations with Israel on September 21.

Criticizing Israel for committing brutal crimes in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Lebanon, he asserted that they could overthrow the Zionist regime and remove the US interference in the area, if the Islamic countries enlist internal forces.

The Islamic countries can at least sever economic relations with Israel and they should surely do so, he stressed.