Flames of Patriotic Movement Kindled on the Untrodden Path of Nation Building

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un said:

"In order for the Party to advance the revolution and construction victoriously, it should give full scope to the strength of the masses and, to do so, it should launch mass movements."

The patriotic movement of the Jongju railway workers kindled by President Kim Il Sung immediately after Korea's liberation made the whole country bubble over with enthusiasm and contributed greatly to successfully carrying out the first national economic plan after liberation in the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance.

The country's economic climate was very unfavorable when the first national economic plan was being carried out.

In particular, the railways were in complete disorder, hindering the nation-building efforts.

In order to rehabilitate the industry and push ahead with the nation-building, the railway sector, the artery of the country, had to rise up first.

In his "An Open Letter to Railway Employees" on July 7th, 1946, the President set forth tasks of rectifying as soon as possible the problems of the railway and normalizing its operation.

However, rail transport wouldn't improve due to the irresponsible working manner of the officials of the sector.

President Kim Il Sung decided to put forward the workers of the then Jongju Engine Corps for the leading role in the difficult yet important struggle to revive the country's artery and asked an official of the engine corps in detail about its actual situation one day in October 1946.

At the time, there were dozens of locomotives in the engine corps, but only five or six of them were able to run as the Japanese imperialists had destroyed everything while fleeing.

Even those ones were not running properly from the shortage of high caloric coal.

He told the officials: We are short of locomotives, passenger and freight cars and have no coal. But we cannot wait for someone to bring them to us. We must solve everything by our own efforts. Railway workers should not hope that the state would solve everything, but bravely overcome all adverse conditions and normalize the rail transport as soon as possible by displaying patriotic enthusiasm and creativity.

On receiving his instructions, the workers of the Jongju Engine Corps repaired several damaged locomotives, formerly regarded as no more than scrap iron, by their own efforts by displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and fortitude, and researched into and introduced the method of briquetting soft coal from the Anju Coal Mine, previously known to be too low in quality to fuel locomotives, thereby offering bright prospects for easing fuel shortage and ensuring normal railway operation with domestic fuel.

On receiving the report of the deeds of the Jongju railway workers, he personally sent them a letter of thanks. And, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Party Central Committee, he assessed their patriotic movement as a creative one embodying the nation-building idea, saw to it that a decision was adopted on generalizing the movement all across the country and took beneficial measures to introduce it widely by newspapers.

Their patriotic movement powerfully inspired the Korean people, who turned out in the struggle to implement the first national economic plan after liberation.

The revolutionary spirit of self-reliance the President implanted in the minds of the Korean people on the untrodden path of nation building sparked the patriotic movement to spread like a wildfire all across the country.