opinion

April is the spring season when all kinds of flowers are in full bloom in the DPRK.

The balmy season comes every year, but the Korean people feel unusual feeling in the spring of April.

Spring is not merely a natural season that gives the vitality and vigour of resuscitation to this land.

As spring of April comes every year, the Korean people recollect with deep emotion the spring of Mangyongdae.

There was no spring in the minds of the Koreans during Japanese imperialists’ military occupation. Though spring came round every year, they shed tears of blood as a ruined nation, being deprived of their spoken and written language and even surnames.

A new spring of national resurrection began after President Kim Il Sung was born at his old home in Mangyongdae on April 15 1912.

The historic relics which are preserved at his straw-thatched house in Mangyongdae still tell the noble careers of revolutionary family members of Mangyongdae who devoted their all to the sacred cause for the country and nation and the noble patriotic intention of the President.

In the family, which had inherited patriotism as the foundation of life and as an invariable family tradition, the President grew up to be a revolutionary under the patriotic education of his parents.

The immortal classic “Nostalgia” resounding far and wide in the spring of significant April shows the noble patriotic world of the President and the whole history of the bloody anti-Japanese war.

A lovely spring at Mangyongdae with the Taedonggang flowing by,

O I do not forget this sweet home even in my dreams. 

I shall return when the country is set free.

During the anti-Japanese war, he led the ranks of guerrillas to advance inch by inch in the cold snowstorm as he always remembered the suffering and destiny of his homeland. It was the spring of Mangyongdae, a new spring of Korea filled with the people’s happiness, that he pictured in his mind by the campfire at the secret camp and in the battlefields where bullets showered like hail.

At the age of 14, he left Mangyongdae with a firm pledge not to return home before Korea had become independent and liberated the country by waging a long bloody anti-Japanese war. He was indeed the saviour of the nation.

The spring of Mangyongdae tells the noble life of the President as the son of the people and the leader of the people.

Though he longed to go to Mangyongdae so much, he did not visit his old home where his grandparents, other family members and villagers of Mangyongdae were waiting for him after liberating the country.

It was because he prioritized the great cause of rallying broad masses of the people under the banner of patriotism and laying the solid foundations for the building of the Party, the state and the army. He headed for his old home only after achieving the historic cause of founding the Party which brought about the spring of genuine happiness for the people.

Even in the days of the fierce Fatherland Liberation War, the President went to the forefront by braving danger in order to instil in the commanding officers and soldiers of the Korean People’s Army the ever-victorious strategy and confidence in sure victory. On a hill on his way to the front, he said that the anti-Japanese guerrillas used to sing “Nostalgia” visualizing the day of national liberation, and quietly sang the song. With such faith and will, he achieved victory in the great Fatherland Liberation War by defeating the ferocious imperialist power and later provided the great self-defensive capabilities constituting the cornerstone of the inexhaustible might of the DPRK.

His wise leadership wrote the proud history of socialist industrialization, which was accomplished in a matter of 14 years, though it took hundreds of years for others to carry out industrialization, and ushered in a period of prosperity in the era of the Workers’ Party when a great leap forward and innovation are made on all fronts of socialist construction.

He was on a constant inspection tour all his life, even on his birthdays, to bring happiness to the people. He provided all the students throughout the country with new school uniforms and found the greatest pleasure in the people’s joy and laughter ringing out from their houses.

The spring on this land was so warm as the Korean people were led by the fatherly leader.

The spring season in nature is short, but the spring of the people is everlasting.

A new era of great creation and changes is being ushered in in the DPRK under the outstanding leadership of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un. Songhwa, Hwasong and Rimhung streets sprang up one after another. The news about the inauguration of a new street in every spring of April makes the people delighted and the cheerful laughter of children in new school uniforms reverberates across the country on the occasion of school-opening day. The gigantic structures built in different parts of the country in the new era of overall national rejuvenation outline the future of the country which will prosper forever. The spring of peace is firmly guaranteed by the defence capabilities which have been consolidated to prevent forever this land from being trampled down by aggressors and suffering the holocaust of war.

The President, founding father of socialist Korea, will always be alive in the hearts of the Korean people along with the spring of Mangyongdae, which brought about the eternal prosperity of the DPRK.