The sound of mouthorgan touching the hearts of the people

Chairman Kim Jong Il said:

"President Kim Il Sung was a peerless great man, whom our people acknowledged for the first time in their thousands-year-long history; he was not only the father of our nation but also was recognized worldwide as the Sun of mankind."

On the occasion of Sun's Day, the Korean people are warmly looking back the immortal achievements of President Kim Il Sung who aroused the people to the revolutionary struggle with ardent love for them and built the socialist paradise on this land over the long period of leading the Korean revolution.

President Kim Il Sung solved all the problems arising in the revolutionary struggle with true love and affection for them, believing the people as in heaven. One fact in the anti-Japanese armed struggle tells us his great personality.

In the early days of the 1st North Manchurian expedition, the people in Ningan hated even to prepare meals for the soldiers with misunderstanding and distrust and they would call in their women into the houses and shut their doors, shouting, "The ‘Koryo red army' is coming" if the expeditionary army appeared in the distance.

The revolutionary army had to prepare their meals and sleep under the open sky in the open for a good while. Life had never been like this in Jiandao. Whenever the revolutionary army returned home in triumph, the people in east Manchuria would run to welcome them in groups, beating drums and gongs, clapping their hands and presenting bouquets to them. Some people would offer them hot water or boiled green maize and even erected a pine arch to congratulate the soldiers.

But in Ningan, when the soldiers tried to gather the people together to initiate political work, the people did not respond to their request so that the soldiers could not even give them a lecture on current events.

The greatest problem was that one of the major aims of their expedition, the aim of sowing the seeds of revolution among the people of north Manchuria, was not being achieved. If the people would never open their hearts to them, they would never find a way to revolutionize north Manchuria.

A political work team including masters of propaganda and agitation was sent to a village in Badaohezi but they didn't evoke sympathy of people there.

Some of soldiers said that Ninganites were cold-blooded people by nature, but President Kim Il Sung rejected this. He thought that the mistake of the political work team was that they tried blindly to teach the people.

There might be many ways for us to penetrate the depths of people's hearts, but their hearts would accept only sincerity; only sincerity could fuse our blood and their blood as in one artery; unless we mixed with the people as their own sons, grandsons and brothers, we would be forsaken forever by the people of Ningan – this is the idea of President Kim Il Sung.

The political work team made a mistake, because they failed to give their hearts sincerely to the people. They clung to their method only with the intention of revolutionizing the people of north Manchuria, but they never thought of loving them and becoming intimate with them.

President Kim Il Sung thought it was a mistake to have started their contact with the people with a speech and made up his mind to change the form of their political work.

He instructed an officer to take the mouthorgan concert group to the village where the political work team had failed once and to try to move their hearts.

The group started by clearing the snow from the front yard of a house in the centre of the village. Two soldiers played a mouthorgan duet as the first item on the programme and the rest of the group danced to the tune of mouthorgans.

Two or three boys who were spinning tops in a nearby lane ran towards the fence of the yard to watch the performance. Other children also came running towards the show from other lanes, hitching up the waistbands of their trousers as they came.

The mouthorgan duet began with The Song of General Mobilization, then changed into The Children's Song and How Far Have We Come? The children, charmed by the beautiful melody of mouthorgan, followed the song and clapped their hands.

Some children ran about the village shouting that the "Koryo red army" soldiers from Jiandao were dancing. When the grown-ups heard the news, they watched the revolutionary army's entertainments from a distance with folded arms. Then some of them approached the performance and gazed at the "musicians" of the "Koryo red army".

When 40 to 50 people had gathered to see the performance, the mouthorgan concert group played Arirang. This attracted the whole village, and the audience rapidly increased to one hundred, two hundred and at last three hundred.

At this moment a soldier appeared and sang the Melancholy Song of Phyongan Province. The hundreds of villagers were captivated by his sorrowful melody and encircled the yard in a tight ring, straining their ears to catch the sounds issuing from the mouth of this soldier of the "Koryo red army ".

After winning over the villagers in this way, the mouthorgan concert group launched into anti-Japanese propaganda and appealed to the people to support the revolutionary army.

Drawing on this experience, they began to mix more closely with the people and revolutionized tens of villages in Ningan one after another by various methods. Where the "Koryo red army" had once passed by, the ranks of the Communist Party increased in numbers, and the Young Communist League, The Women's Association, the Children's Corps and other revolutionary organizations expanded rapidly.

The people who opened their hearts wide to the communists experienced the greatest pride of their life in supporting and assisting the revolutionary army.

Today the sound of mouthorgan that touched the hearts of the people at that time tells us the greatness of President Kim Il Sung who believed in the people as in heaven and led the revolutionary struggle with the affection and love for people.

Our people will remember and hand down the immortal achievements of President Kim Il Sung who built and glorified the people's new world with unprecedented benevolence.