工人的天國

工人的天國
A Country for the Working People

“A hotel for workers, a palace for workers, a banquet for workers… To repeat these unfamiliar words makes me feel impressed by the policy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that takes care of the workers.”
This is what a foreigner said after looking round the hostel of the Pyongyang Kim Jong Suk Silk Mill.
In January 2017 Kim Jong Un, Supreme Leader of the DPRK, visited the Pyongyang Kim Jong Suk Silk Mill and looked round the newly-built hostel for workers. The inauguration ceremony was followed. Seeing the hostel on TV screen, people the world over were so surprised that they thought their eyes were deceiving them.
The seven-storey building is equipped with all the facilities needed for providing the highest level of life for the workers–bedrooms, dining room, room for birthday party, sports and recreation rooms, and so on. What attracts special attention is a cooking practice room on every floor, where the workers can cook various foods and also learn cooking skills; they were built in consideration of the reality of the hostel, most of whose boarders are girls.
Featuring illumination by means of sunlight, cooling and heating by means of geothermal energy and a hydroponic hothouse and mushroom cultivation area on the roof, this energy-saving, green-architecture structure can be called a typical architectural structure.

The silk mill had been built before the country’s liberation (August 15, 1945) from the Japanese occupation. When building it to plunder mulberry silkworm cocoons produced in the rural areas of northwest Korea, the Japanese set up just beside the production site of the mill, equipped with conventional facilities, a so-called hostel and five-metre-high walls around the mill with three-fold wire entanglements above them. In this mill with no labour safety facilities, teenage Korean girls were forced to work for 16-18 hours a day.
Only after Kim Il Sung, eternal President of the DPRK, brought the liberation of the country by defeating the Japanese imperialists, could the workers lead a genuine labouring life.
Thanks to the deep concern and warm care of Kim Il Sung, eternal President, and Kim Jong Il, eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission, the mill turned into an enterprise good for working; it was refurbished with modern equipment for production, and a nursery, kindergarten, polyclinic, hostel, canteen, sanatorium and other welfare service facilities were set up.
Now thanks to the great love of Kim Jong Un, a modern hostel was built for workers. Similar welfare facilities for workers have been built throughout the country, like the hostel of the Pyongyang Kim Jong Suk Textile Mill and Munmyong Health Complex of the Pyongyang Electric Cable Factory 326, all at the expense of the state.
These structures for workers are never an outcome of economic calculation. To be noteworthy is the fact that the policies of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea are based on the stand that it must value the workers and that it must give all the best things to them even though they may cost a huge sum of money.
Indeed, the DPRK can be called the one and only world for the working people on this planet which, puts them forward as masters of the country and provides every convenience for them.

Source: Consulate General of Democratic People's Republic of Korea in Hong Kong