culture

At the foot of picturesque Mt Ryongak in Pyongyang, the capital city of the DPRK, there is the Pyongyang Municipal Sanatorium for War Veterans, a house for war veterans.

Recently, The Pyongyang Times staff reporter visited the sanatorium.

According to the director of the sanatorium, many veterans have recuperated there since its inauguration seven years ago (July 26 2017).

Everywhere--cosy and gorgeous bedrooms and exercise, treatment and massage rooms--war veterans conduct diverse cultural and leisure activities and receive the treatment for their health.

At resting places which are filled with fresh air and where all kinds of birds chirp, war veterans have a chat and stroll and do exercises full of vigour.

In a room, employees and war veterans were having a talk while looking at photos.

A war veteran in a naval uniform of the Korean People’s Army, aged 89 this year, sang cheerfully amid the encouragement of employees and to the tune of a drum. And then he said that the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un attended the national meetings of war veterans and had a photo taken with them, and expressed his gratitude for the love and benevolence shown by Kim Jong Un for war veterans. Other war veterans also attended the National Conference of War Veterans and received a photo album associated with his love. They said with emotion that the photos taken at the war veterans’ sanatorium this year have been added to the photo albums, noting that the number of photos of happiness increases day by day.

The officials and employees of the sanatorium take warm care of the war veterans as their own grandchildren would do.

There is a voluminous collection of writings reflecting the feelings of war veterans at the sanatorium.

A war veteran wrote in the collection:

“During the Fatherland Liberation War, Supreme Commander Kim Il Sung saw to it that the frontline sanatoriums unprecedented in the world history of war were set up. And today the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un provided us with the only house of love for war veterans in the world.” 

A war veteran, who had written poems of revenge for annihilating the enemy in the burning trench as a soldier poet and many popular songs after the war, created many works depicting his life at the sanatorium.

The war veterans are regaining their youthful vigour at the sanatorium under the loving care of the country which identifies them, who won a great victory in the war by devoting their prime of youth and lives to the country, as the most precious persons and treasures.