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At the Pukchang County Forestry Management Station in South Phyongan Province, there are a forest ranger couple who are devoting their all to afforestation.

They have grown forests of economic value in the area lying between Hoean Railway Station of Pukchang County and Namdok Railway Station of Tokchon City for over a decade. People call them a patriot couple.

"When I first came here, I could see mountains all around, but scarcely see trees," recalled Jong Hyang Hui, a forest ranger of the Phunggok forest control branch under the Pukchang County Forestry Management Station.

She felt mixed feelings when she moved to that unfamiliar place with her baby, who was not yet one year old, on her back to live with her husband Ri Yong Sik who was appointed as a ranger of the branch.

She was not sure when her husband could cover all those mountains with trees and therefore suggested to him that they stay there only for some time before moving elsewhere with favourable conditions.

At that time, her husband said that anyone should afforest the mountains as they are part of the country, adding that he was determined to stay there all his life.

The following day, they planted a sapling and named it Musong (exuberance) after their son.

The number of the saplings they planted has increased to hundreds with the passage of time and the residents called the forest Musong forest.

Jong later became head of a mountain workteam. Sometimes she patrolled the mountains like a forest patrolman and stayed up all night with her husband for forest fire monitoring as she had already regarded his work as her own.

Her little son became accustomed to getting to sleep and waking up in the houses of the villagers. Jong’s mother, who came to the village to see her grandson, saw that and told Jong and her husband that she would take care of him, encouraging them to devote their all to afforesting the mountains.

In 2018 Jong became a ranger and went on her first patrol with her husband, when a forest ranger of the preceding generation in the village gave her instructive words:

A forest is a fenceless storehouse of the country and a forest ranger is a guard protecting wealth in it. Even a bare mountain can become a treasure mountain under the care of a true master, otherwise a treasure mountain would be reduced to a dump.

Bearing in mind the request reflected in his words, the couple climbed the mountains, rain or shine, and their sincere efforts increased the number of tree nurseries between forests in different parts of the mountains.

They grew saplings, accurately weighing the seeds to be sown per phyong, and tended the trees with devotion, weeding forests until just before the first frost. Thanks to their sincerity, the bald mountains gradually got green and the Korea larch trees planted in perfect lines began to grow taller and taller.

They would plant saplings together with their son on his birthday, and it is said that the number of the trees planted thus is now more than a thousand in total.

Over the past 10-odd years, they planted more than one million trees in 350 hectares and filled more than 1 300 hectares of forests with trees for mine props.

Seeing them devoting themselves with the mind of sowing and growing seeds in their hearts, not in the ground, the people of Pukchang County say that they have come to know what it is like to live a life for the country and younger generations.