Another miracle is being made on the West Sea of Korea.
Officials and workers of the Tideland Reclamation Complex of North Phyongan Province, after completing the first-stage reclamation of the Honggondo tideland by setting new standards and records, buckled down to the building of the first bank in the thirds section of the second stage.
The second-stage reclamation of the Honggondo tideland is a gigantic nature-harnessing project for obtaining as many as 5500 hectares of land by building a 20km-long embankment which links Taesamgot Islet to Sinmi Isled through some other islets.
Officials and workers set a bold target to finish the project without fail in the period of the five-year strategy, not in the previously estimated period of over eight years with the existing capability of the complex. The first-stage target was to finish construction of the first bank in the third section of the tideland in six months, not in one year as envisaged in the conventional formula.
They had to build the embankment while undertaking several other projects. To make matters worse, they lacked fuel, vehicles and accessories owing to the US and hostile forces’ teancious economic sanctions and blockade, and the winter wind of the West Sea challenged them.
The project demanded extraordinary courage and even self-sacrifice but they turned out in it as one. After making the preparation for the 2nd stage project, they got down to it with a blasting of 70 000 cubic meters of earth on December 2 last year. Blasting rocks and earth every two days, they built 50-60m of embankment a day, 70 meters to the maximum, breaking thick blocks of ice.
Workers organized competitions by workshops and machines. To save the time of going to their lodging, quarrymen put up tents near their workplaces and pushed ahead with tunnelling and heading workers performed a quick succession drilling and blasting.
Officials did their best to obtain spare parts so that vehicles could run at full capacity.
Their efforts bore fruition; The embankment was built at a high speed.
But they encountered an unprecedented obstacle in the construction of the final section of the embankment. A 100m-long section in the second district of Sinmi Isled tumbled down by the extrusion of mud layer. This phenomenon had happened over 30 times since the beginning, but this was the worst of its kind. Every time they built the section, it tumbled down.
Field officials with years of experience in tideland reclamation said that they had never faced such toilsome labour.
At this moment, an official recollected, “This happened during the tideland reclamation on Pidan Islet. We lacked many things but we completed the designing and engineering drawing by placing the struts of surveying instruments on our backs while we were on all fours in the mud. We ran and ran carrying earth and rocks on our shoulders and in our bosom while singing. We protected the final section of the embankment from the tidal wave at the risk of our lives.”
Looking back upon the days when their predecessors expanded the area of the land of the country, workers made up their minds. “We reclaimed the Taegyedo tideland, shouting the slogan “Korea does what it is determined to do”. Last year when we finished the first stage project our motherland spoke highly of us, and this year it put us forward as pioneers of the Mallima era. Let’s live up to the motherland’s expectation of labour feats”.
Fully aware of their strength, they overcame the extrusion as many as 60 times, thus completing the construction of the first bank in the third section of the tideland in mid-May last, four months ahead of schedule.
Soon the world will see a new map of Korea.
