Patriotic movement - A tradition of Korean people - Nordkorea-Information

February 17, 2023

It is the proud tradition of the Korean people that they have supported their country by waging a variety of socialist patriotic movements with passionate love for their country.

The preceding generations of the Korean revolution created valuable wealth for national prosperity and happiness of the new generations and handed them down to them.

Kim Je Won, a farmer of Jaeryong County, donated 30 straw bags of rice to the country from among the grains he harvested in the first year farming after the agrarian reform in December 1946, the year after Korea’s liberation from Japanese military rule. It sparked a nationwide “patriotic rice” donation movement. And the workers of the then Jongju locomotive yard repaired engines by themselves and at the same time formed a coal mining shock brigade to cut coal and ensure railway service after liberation. It gave rise to the Kim Hoe Il movement which began to copy after their example.

The Korean people started these movements neither because they wanted any reward nor because they were forced by anyone.

They created them by joining their simple mind to support, though little, the building of a new Korea after realizing what the worthwhile life and patriotism was for the first time in the embrace of General Kim Il Sung after liberation.

Thanks to their concerted efforts, lots of industrial establishments, which the Japanese imperialists had destroyed as they were defeated, were restored in a short period of time, the plan for the total state-run industrial output value was overfulfilled by 2.5 percent in 1947 and 170 000 tons of more grains were produced that year than in 1946.

The Korean people defended their country by promoting lots of patriotic movements during the Fatherland Liberation War.

After hearing the radio address “Go All Out for Victory in the War” Premier Kim Il Sung made on June 26 1950, the day after the start of the Fatherland Liberation War, many people volunteered to fight on the front.

According to statistics, as many as over 740 000 young and other working people volunteered for service on the front in the northern half of Korea in a fortnight in response to his call.

During the war young boys and girls also formed children’s guards and guerrilla units to defend their native villages.

When the my height movement was under way among the Korean People’s Army soldiers on the front, all-people patriotic movements like the movement for donating money for arms and the plough women movement developed in the rear during the war.

Patriotic movements also gained strength in the period of the Chollima leap forward.

Builders of the Haeju-Hasong railway line promoted the 300 percent exceeding movement, no empty-handed trip movement and other movements to finish the huge project, which had been believed to take three to four years in common sense, in 75 days. The builders of Pyongyang promoted the one-man-finding-one-item-of-reserve movement to construct houses for over 20 000 families with materials, fund and manpower for 7 000 families.

Under the slogan “Young people to seas, coal mines and forests!” over 1.5 million young men and women volunteered to work at coal and other mines, forestry and fishery stations and construction sites of power stations, giving impetus to socialist construction between 1961 and 1969.

During the Arduous March and forced march, the hard times for the country when it was confronted with a series of difficulties and hardships, many young people applied for jobs at the difficult and labour-consuming sectors for socialist construction.

Everyone, men and women, old and young, joined patriotic movements to provide machines and military and other equipment named “Chongnyon(youth)”, “Sonyon(children)” and “Nyomaeng(women’s union)”. Young people held meetings to volunteer for military service whenever the enemy escalated tension for military attack. The burning enthusiasm for volunteering for difficult and challenging jobs which began after the Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the 10th congress of the youth league bubbles up until today.

It is the will of the Korean people to hit the targets set forth at the Sixth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth WPK Central Committee and usher in a new era of a powerful and prosperous country on the strength of this heightened spirit of patriotism.

THE PYONGYANG TIMES