A Vinalon Hero is Something to Be (NK Monthly Mags)

Mansudae Street Apartment Complex

(With grateful acknowledgment to NK Economy Watch for alerting me to the appearance of these)

My apologies if story-specific hyperlinks do not function.

The Foreign Languages Publishing House has released the July, 2010, issues of Korea, Korea Today and Kumsugangsan. These can make for interesting beach reading whether you’re on Shelter Island or in La Jolla or Newport/Middletown, or if you may have found yourself on a getaway from Pyongyang and are cooped up at the Majon Hotel in South Hamgyong.

Korea Today may be setting the table for the 3rd Party Conference in September and the 65th KWP Birthday in October with a Party bit from the KIS tome With the Century and Han Chol Jun offers an essay about the Party’s “Governing Principle.” An Nam Hui writes about DPRK-Chinese relations, and Kim Jong Il’s sojourn to China in May. Han Chol Ju writes a sketch on the Pyongyang University of Mechanical Engineering. Mun Hui Song has a piece on a telemedicine program at Kim Man Yu Hospital in Pyongyang which may be paired with a story by Sim Ryong Hui about cardiac and pediatric surgery at Pyongyang Medical College’s teaching hospital (which is subordinate to Kim Il Sung University). Kim Chol Jin wrote a romantic essay about a visit to the International Friendship Exhibition, while Yun Chol Nam (of the Nature Conservation Union of Korea) writes about the Myohyangsan International Biosphere Reserve. Sim Hyong Jin writes about Pyongyangite Jo In Gak, one of the country’s citizens to reach the age of 100 (a preoccupation KJI seems to share with Willard Scott):

Early in his 50s, he developed a cancer of the larynx, and underwent an operation at a provincial people’s hospital, which turned out a great success. A large amount of high-priced medicines were administered to him gratis. After he left hospital, the clinic of his dwelling place took care of his health. Looking back on the time he spent in sickbed, Jo says he will always remember the doctors and nurses who did their best to cure him of his disease and his neighbours who were good to him when he was in his sickbed, as well as the benefits of the free medical care system. After he retired on a pension, the clinic attended to his health and took appropriate measures in case of need, regularly providing him with tonics.

His daughter Jo Pok Sun says he has regular habits and that he is not particular about his food. He likes soybean dishes, vegetables and edible wild greens. His wife Han Un Ju, 92, says, “The leader Kim Jong Il saw that a birthday feast was given to my husband on his 100th birthday. It is something we workers and farmers couldn’t dream of when we were a ruined people in the previous century.

The Vinalon Heroes

Korea continues its chronicle on the 65th birthday of the Korean Workers’ Party with an essay on Juche by Jang Song Min:

The WPK, on the basis of the Juche idea, carries on the Party building and activities and organizes the revolution and construction. The strengthening of the Party and the victorious advance of the revolutionary cause of Juche are inconceivable apart from the work to develop in depth the Juche idea.Out of the urgent demands of the developing era in the early 1980s, the leader
Kim Jong Il comprehensively crystallized the Juche idea, the guiding idea of the WPK, created and developed by President Kim Il Sung.

Kim Kum Sun Secondary School and its matriculates

Choe Kwang Ho writes a sketch on the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where KIS’ wake and calling hours have continued without interruption for 15 years. Kwon Hyok Chol takes readers on a tour of the E Library of Kim Il Sung University, which Kim Jong Il recently visited in one of his repeat tours of the campus in 2009-2010. An unsigned rebuttal to the Cheonan investigation (possibly originating in the NDC Policy Department) appears, essentially a synthesis of the country’s various denials. Korea seems to be on a heroes theme this month.