Story about Pelagic Fishing

The country is filled with yearning for President Kim Il Sung, the founder of Juche Korea.

All the Korean people look up to the benevolent image of the President with ardent yearning.

Chairman Kim Jong Il said:

"Our leader Comrade Kim Il Sung was a peerless patriot and benevolent father who devoted his all only for the country and the people throughout his life."

President Kim Il Sung was always among the people and valued and loved them most all his life with the noblest outlook on the people.

There is a heartfelt fact showing how deeply he was concerned about the pelagic fishing.

One day in early June 1968, when the whole country was alive and buzzing on the occasion of the 20th founding anniversary of the DPRK, a consultative meeting of officials in the fishing sector of the east coastal area was held in the meeting room of the Sinpho County Party Committee of South Hamgyong Province, in the presence of President Kim Il Sung.

Saying that he had visited Sinpho several times in the past because he felt so worried that people were still not being provided with enough fish, he explained that we could make a good catch of fish once we sailed out to the ocean on big fishing boats as a variety of tasty fish like herring, flatfish and saury abound in the ocean.

Noting that we should sail out to the ocean to catch 800 000 tons of fish in order to supply 100 grams of fish to every individual every day, he called a captain who had gone out to fish in the ocean close to him and asked him about the inconvenient aspects.

After listening carefully to the story of the captain that sailing on small boats was inconvenient, he said that we should produce 1 000-ton fishing boats which could sail out to the ocean. Emphasizing the importance of building a lot of large fishing boats, he noted that precious time was being wasted for the boats to sail out to the ocean and back as we were lack of large boats, adding that we should boldly build big ships like Paektusan, processing mother ships and refrigerated carriers and buy what was lacking.

Then he learned about the situation one by one, including the size of the fishing boats to do purse seine and the probability of purse seine for the large boats and asked how they could sail out to the ocean and catch a lot of fish in a short period of time.

The captain, attracted by his friendly manner, told him frankly that it was better to take dozens of boats out to sea for months to catch fish in great haste rather than to take only a few boats, because it would take so long.

Agreeing with the captain's opinion, he said that it would be much better for a lot of fishermen to sail out to the ocean on dozens of boats at once to catch fish in great haste for a few months than for only a few fishermen on a few boats to catch fish in dribs and drabs for all the year long and that they could repair the boats while catching fish like pollack in the near sea during the remaining period of the year, stressing in full relief that they had to make a lot of big boats to sail out to the ocean.

Feeling heartfelt pain for not being able to supply our people with enough fish, he spent such a long time with an ordinary captain to learn about the pelagic fishing.

Indeed, his whole life has been consistent with the idea of "the people are the God" who devoted all his heart and soul to supplying our people with more tasty and nutritious fish.