culture

Many people in the DPRK take part in the annual national mass literary work prize contest to show off their creative talents and passion through a variety of lifestyles and feelings they experienced in reality. 

Introduced here are some experience of mass literary correspondents.

Writing diary 

Ri Ryo Myong, a farmer of the Kuhung Farm in the city of Hamhung who is concurrently a mass literary correspondent, has a voluminous diary book.

Even late at night after a day’s hard work, he surely records the day’s most impressive event in his diary before going to bed. 

Whenever his literary works, including lyric poem “An inch of land”, won the national prize contest and were carried on magazines, people would say that he was a gifted writer like his father. 

Then he would say: “Writing something in diary is precisely a process of producing a work and of bracing oneself up to achieve a higher goal. Strenuous efforts are the secret of success.” 

Ordinary life a source of material

Han Kyong Su, a worker of the Central Tree Nursery under the Ministry of Land and Environment Protection, resolved to do his work well when he was appointed a mass literary correspondent. He would compose poems with the thoughts that came into his mind on the occasion of national events and anniversaries and visit professional writers even at night to get help. 

But even his workmates would shake their heads as his poems were so poor.

Then, he would feel very frustrated. 

One day afterward, when he was weeding a nursery garden, he heard one of his workmates smilingly say to an 18-year-old girl: 

“How nice of you to devote yourself to the tending of tree saplings. You look like the mother of the young trees.” 

So, Han Kyong Su looked at the girl who, with tears in her eyes, was anxiously stroking the drying leaves of a young tree in the sultry weather. This motivated him to write a poem. 

The lyric “I am a nursery girl” he wrote thus won a national mass literary work prize contest to receive high appreciation.

This became his first precious step for the creation of works.

Later, he brought out several works truthfully reflecting the mind of nursery workers to win national prize contests.

He says that the materials for good works can be found in our ordinary life, just beside us.