Among the tram drivers working with a bright face in blue uniforms are Jang Yong Hui, Ri Kum Ryon and Kim Jong Ae, women drivers of the Songsan Tram Service Company. They are called “flowers” by the company workers and “our drivers” by passengers using the tram on Mangyongdae-Pyongyang Railway Station line.
Choice to be a driver
Jang Yong Hui has been working in the company for twenty-odd years. She is a little shorter than ordinary women and looks weak at a cursory glance. But she is a proud tram driver and a workteam leader. She has been working in the company since she finished secondary school in 1992. Working as a conductress first she experienced the shortage of tram drivers personally and made up her mind to become a driver and enrolled in the driver training school. After school she proposed to form a team of women drivers. Then she became the leader of the first women’s team. The distance of her accident-free run up to date is as long as to go round the earth several times.
The mother of a child has spared no effort to provide passenger service in Pyongyang for a dozen years. People wonder what makes the woman of a small stature so strong and energetic. She says, “There should be somebody to do this work if not me. I don’t feel tired because I know I carry the people to their important workplaces like research centres and construction sites. I know I contribute to the hastening of the final victory in the effort to build a civilized socialist country.”
Today her team of women drivers enjoys great admiration—even from the male drivers.
Song Favoured by Korean People
Among the songs sung by the Korean people in the early days of nation building shortly after Korea’s liberation on August 15,
May 11, 2025
Among the songs sung by the Korean people in the early days of nation building shortly after Korea’s liberation on August 15,
