DPRK's History of Self-reliance (14)

Pyongyang, June 17 (KCNA) -- Recorded in the history of the DPRK, dignified with the spirit of self-reliance, is the Chollima age.

After the Fatherland Liberation War (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953), the country had to overcome manifold difficulties for the lack of money, materials and manpower and the people's deteriorated living conditions. Meanwhile, the hostile forces were getting hell-bent on the moves to provoke a new war.

Anyhow, the Korean people had worked great miracles and changes unprecedented in history by charging at the speed of Chollima (a legendary winged horse running 400kms a day) and thus displayed the mettle of Koreans to the world.

A plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea was held in Pyongyang in December Juche 45 (1956) to discuss the national economic plan for 1957, the first year of the five-year national economic plan.

After the meeting, President Kim Il Sung visited the then Kangson Steel Plant and told its workers that it would be good for the country if they produce 10 000 tons of rolled steel in addition. Briefing them on the country's difficult situation, he said that we should take ten or one hundred steps forward if others do one or ten steps.

In hearty response to his call, the workers of the plant carried out the increased task of 10 000 tons only in three months and a half and turned out 120 000 tons of rolled steel at a blooming mill with capacity of 60 000 tons.

The flames of the great Chollima upswing flared up in Kangson were spread to all other sectors.

The workers and peasants across the country brought about a great revolutionary upswing in socialist construction, holding up the slogan "Charge at the speed of Chollima!".

The then Kim Chaek Iron Works produced 270 000 tons of pig iron by equipment with a capacity of 190 000 tons and the then Hwanghae Iron Works built a large-size furnace in less than one year.

Workers of the machine industrial sector manufactured a tractor in over 30 days, a truck in 40 days and an electric locomotive in one year as well as 3 000 ton-press, large-size water pump, excavator and bulldozer. They also turned out 13 000 more machine tools than the state plan in a year by waging a let-one-machine-tool-make-another movement.

The construction sector created the Pyongyang Speed whereby each flat was fabricated in 14 minutes, and the agricultural irrigation was completed in the main to lay a solid material and technical foundations for the socialist agriculture.

The Korean people carried out the vast task for industrialization in a matter of 14 years, thus turning the country into a socialist industrialized state.

Witnessing such stirring reality of the DPRK, the world people said that it was a miracle of Chollima Korea.

The Chollima Statue, erected in the capital city of Pyongyang in 1961, serves as a monument showing the heroic mettle of the Korean people in the great Chollima age and as a symbol of the DPRK. -0-