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Seventy years have passed since Comrade Kim Jong Il organized the first study tour group in his teens with students of Pyongyang Middle School No. 1 and pioneered the study tour of the revolutionary battle sites in the area of Mt Paektu.

Since then, numerous people have made study tours of Mt Paektu.

After the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un visited the revolutionary battle sites in the Mt Paektu area in 2019, the ranks of study tourists have increased further.

The study tours are made all the year round but many opt for winter tours.

It is because they know that the true appearance of Mt Paektu can be seen in severe winter and only when they experience the blizzards of Paektu can they understand what the fortitude, combative nature and revolutionary spirit of the anti-Japanese revolutionary forerunners were.

In the DPRK, January is the coldest month of the year.

Early in January this year, the weather in the Mt Paektu area was unprecedentedly unfavourable, but many people were on study tours of Mt Paektu. 

A study tourist from the University of National Economy said that he visited the revolutionary battle sites for the third time but it was the first to climb Mt Paektu in winter, adding that as he walked through knee-deep virgin snow and exposed himself to whirling icy wind, he acquired precious things which he could not get even in a decade or two of ordinary days.

Officials of the education sector in South Phyongan Province said that only when educators themselves study deeply the revolutionary spirit of Paektu can they train the rising generation to be pillars of the country, adding they read the reminiscences of the anti-Japanese guerrillas again during the tour and received strong impressions.

An official of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League wrote in his study tour diary: “My hands and feet were frozen and my ears tingled with the biting cold, but we sang revolutionary songs which revolutionary guerrillas sang around the campfire set on the ice and snow on the freezing night of the northern area.

“It was not just the memory of the anti-Japanese revolutionary forerunners but an actual experience of how they achieved the liberation of the country and what difficulties and trials they had to overcome to bring today’s happiness.

“Today’s experience will encourage and drive me for the rest of my life”.

According to a lecturer of the management office for revolutionary battle sites in the Paektu area, since the Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea held in February this year, a constantly growing number of study tourists have visited the revolutionary battle sites. All of them expressed their determination to carry out the decisions of the Party Congress without fail in the revolutionary spirit and fighting trait of Paektu, saying that the difficulties they are faced with today are nothing compared to those in the period of the anti-Japanese armed struggle.