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The National Paduk (go) Contest in the Field of Education-2026 took place last May. 

In the contest which brought together more than 300 kindergarteners and primary school pupils selected from every province, Paek Ta Hyon, a second-year pupil of Pongnam Primary School in Phyongchon District, Pyongyang, won the girls’ individual event, mixed doubles and team event of the primary school division.

When asked which one was the most difficult among the final matches, she answered it was that of the individual event.

Paek played the final match with a fifth-grade pupil of a primary school in Nampho Municipality.

The opponent, who has practised paduk longer than Paek, played an offensive game from the beginning.

Players would generally put much strength in defence in such a case, but Paek responded with counterattack.

As they played a hard-fought match for a good while, the opponent gradually lost the initiative and the match thus ended in Paek’s victory.

“It was a forceful match. Paek would win each game by persistently challenging her opponent from the beginning. She is a promising player of marked individuality,” said Ri Yong Jin, an instructor of the Pyongyang Municipal Paduk Centre, after the final.

It is said that Paek began to learn paduk in her nursery days.

Her nursery teacher was very interested in paduk, as it is good for the children's intellectual development, and began teaching it to Paek endowed with an open character.

Many children in the nursery liked to sit face to face over paduk board and lay stones on the board with vertical and horizontal lines to form various shapes, but Paek was very interested in capturing the opponent’s stones.

Paek thus came to have attachment to the game and learned it hard in her kindergarten days, too. She heard from her teacher with great interest various anecdotes and proverbs related to paduk and acquired extraordinary moves for making her “territories”.

In the course of it, she realized that paduk is a game requiring high intelligence and that the victory of the game may be decided by one stone.

As Paek improved her skills day by day, the kindergarten invited a paduk instructor and the primary school a member of the Korean paduk association to teach her how to read and use moves, judge the situation and see the whole thing in a big way.

After practising a lot of moves while honing basic skills, she won a gold medal at the National Paduk Contest in the Field of Education-2025 and two golds at the National Open Paduk Contest last year.

Whenever she won the match, all the players of her team as well as her parents shared joy with her and everyone at her school and in Pyongyang Municipality congratulated her on demonstrating the honour of the school and the capital city.

Then Paek would say, “I will learn paduk and study harder so as to add lustre to our school, our Pyongyang and our country.”