culture

“Our Classroom” Literature Prize is the prize that is awarded each year to schoolchildren who have created excellent literary works on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Chairman Kim Jong Il (February 16).

The prize is named after the title of the immortal classic work “Our Classroom” he wrote in 1954 when he was 12 years old.

At that time, he attended Pyongyang Primary School No. 4.

One day, the teacher assigned schoolchildren a task to write a composition under the title “Our classroom” during a lesson.

The lesson was nearly over and she began to collect their compositions.

Young Kim Jong Il wrote a nursery rhyme.

After reading his poem, she told the students then and there that she would introduce an excellent work and slowly recited it.

The poem sang of great happiness of the children who learned to their heart’s content and grew up healthily under the care of President Kim Il Sung even under the difficult circumstances of reconstruction after the Fatherland Liberation War (June 25 1950-July 27 1953) and their determination to prepare themselves to be true sons and daughters of the DPRK.

It also created a vivid artistic representation by organically combining the description of the environment of the classroom with the juvenile mind while emotionally integrating the ideological aspiration of the DPRK children into it.

When she finished her poem recital, all the classmates who listened to her in silence gave a big hand at once.

At that time, the poem won first place in the prize literature contest of members of the Korean Children’s Union, to be published in the Children’s Literature magazine and the collection of prizewinning works.

In 1987, “Our Classroom” Literature Prize was instituted.

The institution of the prize was an important occasion for developing the creative talents of schoolchildren to the full and improving them ideologically and spiritually. And it has been a great honour for them to win the award.