culture

One day in last May, residents of neighbourhood unit No. 135 in an apartment house in Phyongchon-dong No. 1, Phyongchon District, Pyongyang, livened up from early morning, busy with preparations for a wedding.

Some of them wondered whether the young householder had a daughter ripe for marriage and others, who came to know that the family of apartment 4 on the 15th floor had adopted a girl and prepared for her wedding, admired them, saying nice people were living in their apartment house. 

The following is the story about the wedding ceremony at their house, which became the focus of public interest of the whole apartment house.

‘Let's live together’

It was nearly ten years ago that Ri Kwang Bok, a worker at the Pyongyang Thermal Power Station, and Rim Chol Sun, a worker of the Phyongchon Lift Management Station, brought Yun Il Sim, a girl who lost her parents, to their house.

One day, when he entered the locker room after work, Ri saw a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl, sitting in a corner of the room lonely.

She was Il Sim who lost her mother during her primary school years and then her father, a worker at the heat production workshop, not long ago.

Kwang Bok sat down to supper with his family members, but could not hold the spoon as the piteous look of Il Sim was always on his mind. Finally, he put down the spoon, lit a cigarette and went out to the balcony.

Noticing the worried look of her husband, his wife followed him. Ri asked her, “There is a girl without parents and can’t we bring her to our house?” 

Her husband’s words were too unexpected for her to make a decision at the moment. Because they had a son who was not yet one year old and were living with her husband’s mother.   

"I was deeply touched by the remarks of my husband that the country builds palatial homes for parentless children and cares a lot for them, and it is a civic duty to take care of even a child," recalled Rim Chol Sun.

 A few days later, Kwang Bok brought her home with the support of his mother and wife.

“Il Sim, let us live together from now on,” they said.

The looks of the devoted couple, who looked after her with sincerity like her parents, were engraved in her memory as those of her real father and mother.

Song they sang at wedding ceremony

After finishing middle school, Il Sim began to work at the Pyongyang Kim Jong Suk Textile Mill and soon became a labour innovator at the workshop.

One day, she said shyly to Chol Sun that she met a boyfriend.

Chol Sun had a big smile on her face in a moment and asked her daughter who he was, where he lived and what he was.

 Il Sim answered hesitantly that he was a discharged soldier, but had no parents.

That day Kwang Bok and Chol Sun discussed her marriage till late at night.

And Chol Sun’s workteam members came to know it and offered help to the couple one after another.

 They helped them prepare a fine engagement party as if it were a matter of their own families. And on the wedding day, officials of the Phyongchon Lift Management Station also came to help them prepare a wedding party, providing them with bedclothes and household goods.

 Their neighbours including the head of neighbourhood unit rendered assistance in all sincerity to the preparations for the wedding ceremony.

 The bride and the bridegroom sat quietly at the wedding party prepared with sincerity of many people, tears welling up in their eyes.

That day they sang with a sob We Are the Happiest in the World, the song loved by all the Korean people.

Their song was not only an expression of their gratitude to the kind-hearted people who took care of them who lost their parents in their early years and prepared a wedding ceremony for them with utmost sincerity, but also a hymn to the socialist country, where all people form a large family, helping and leading one another forward as brothers and sisters and its members.