culture

In a remote mountain village in Songchon County, South Phyongan Province, there lives an 80-year-old man who has planted and tended a large number of trees for over 60 years.

He is Ri Kwon Chi who has devoted his all to turning all mountains in the county into forests of chestnut, a speciality of the region, since his prime of life. Even after becoming a pensioner, he took upon himself the work to acclimatize and spread across the country gift plants sent to Chairman Kim Jong Il from many countries in the world and has dedicated the rest of his life to it.

Since olden times, Songchon chestnut, whose flesh and inner shell are easily separated,  has been called sweet chestnut or medicinal chestnut for its distinct sweetness.

When Ri volunteered to work at a newly-established station in the county for the creation of chestnut forests, the areas where chestnut trees grew were limited and they were not properly tended, with the result that the locals did not benefit from them.

On arrival at the station, he surveyed the whole region of the county to undertake measurement for the creation of a chestnut forest. In the course of this he decided to turn a desolate valley into a chestnut forest.

A few years later he moved there with his family.

Thanks to his sincere efforts to realize his ideal, the valley, which had been thick with only shrubs, turned into a thick chestnut forest decades later.

According to an official of the county, the total area of chestnut forests he created in mountains of the county for the past decades is over 500 hectares and the chestnut trees he planted in the period numbered hundreds of thousands.

Now, many gift plants (fruit trees) of high medicinal and ornamental value, including Elaeagnus multiflora, grow in a tree nursery 300㎡in area, which the old man tends with all his heart, the official said, adding that they are what he has acclimatized with painstaking efforts for nearly 20 years since retirement so that they can grow everywhere in the country.

The village where he lives is called a Elaeagnus multiflora village as the trees grow thickly at every house there, and such trees he has so far raised and sent to many units number over 100 000.

"During the war (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953), when we were little, we five brothers lost our father. However, all of us grew up learning without any worries thanks to the benefits of the state. And at the age of 18, I became a Chollima rider respected by all the people and later became a member of the Workers’ Party of Korea and a pomological engineer. So it is natural that I repay the favour," he said when asked what made him dedicate himself to the forests.