It can be said that the original feature of a society is determined by the guiding ideology and ideals, people’s view of life and morality of a country concerned. Its details are expressed by the personalities of the individual members of the society. Then what is the original feature of the people-centered socialist society of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea?
Harmonious Whole
Half a century ago in Hamhung, an industrial city on the east coast of the country, a boy got third-degree burns over 48％ of his body by accident. His life was trembling in the balance by the minute. Both his parents and the doctor in charge of him gave up medical treatment.
Then an unexpected event took place. Over 160 university students and other people rushed to the hospital and vied with others in donating their blood and skin. Having recovered his health, the boy now lives happily.
This story, handed down as a legendary tale of human love, has now become an ordinary thing. Several years ago a worker, who had got three-degree burns over 67% of his body, was recovered in the South Hamgyong Provincial People’s Hospital in the eastern part of the DPRK, as over 600 people including doctors, nurses and other employees of the hospital and those who worked and lived with the patient in the same plant and in the same village donated pieces of their skin.
Doctors and nurses in the North Phyongan Provincial People’s Hospital in the north western part of the country grafted their bulbar conjunctiva on to the eye of a smelter, who had been in danger of being blind in it. A woman doctor at the Korea General Red Cross Hospital in Pyongyang gave medical treatment to a girl worker, who had got severe burns in her face, for 8 years to make her face more beautiful.
This is not all. When his daughter and another girl were nearly drowned, an official chose to save the other girl first rather than his own daughter. A girl became the daughter of a war veteran couple who were living on their own without any offspring. Last year a young girl brought 7 orphans to her home, and took care of them as she would do her younger sisters; people call her “girl mother.”
These deeds are regarded as a matter of course, obligation due to a human being. It has become a social trend to cherish an ennobling spirit of human love, and devote oneself for another man.
This social trend is based on the people-centered socialist society guided by the Juche idea, which raises people as the most precious beings in the world.
Only in a society, in which all its members have formed a harmonious whole and help and lead one another forward to live a happy life sharing the same idea and destiny, such warm human love and noble virtues can be displayed.
For the Country, Fellow People, Society and Collective
In February 2016 the Supreme Headquarters of the Korean People’s Army issued a crucial statement that the army would mercilessly punish the US and south Korean puppets that are hell-bent on reckless war moves, aiming even at the supreme leadership of the country.
Within two days after the crucial statement was made public, officials, working youth and university students numbering more than 1.5 million volunteered to join or rejoin the KPA.
Among them were students of senior middle schools with their graduation just ahead.
Actually, the whole country is pervaded with the spirit of sacrificing one’s life without hesitation for the country, fellow people, society and the collective and of devoting one’s all at posts, arduous and labour-intensive.
About 40 years ago middle-school graduates in Unha-ri, Yangdok County, in a remote mountainous area volunteered to work at a farm, cherishing a dream of turning their home village into a land good to live in. They formed a youth sub-workteam and took charge of infertile fields. They worked hard and reaped 7 tons of corn in the stony fields, where per-hectare yield was less than 1 ton previously.
Their deeds were given wide publicity across the country. Over 3 000 youth sub-workteams and workteams were organized in farms, tideland reclamation sites, mountainous pasture and other areas demanding arduous and difficult labour.
In 2006 over 20 000 young people volunteered to work at coal and ore mines, construction sites of power plants and other sectors, forming youth workteams, and performed feats of labour.
Still now numerous young people volunteer to unsparingly devote their strength and passion at major construction sites for the country’s prosperity, including the Paektusan Hero Youth Power Station far from their dear home villages.
Such devotion of the Korean people never originates from any calculation of personal interests or compensation. They are in the belief that the well-being of not only themselves but their posterity depends on the development and prosperity of their country. As they have a firm belief that the generations to come must lead a happy life though they cannot enjoy it in their lifetime, and cherish ardent love for their motherland, they are devoting themselves to the country, people, society and the collective.
People at some corners of the world sling mud at the image of the society of the DPRK. But, to many who aspire for virtue and value love and obligation, harmony and unity, this society is really an ideal one.
