Pak Chol Jin is a lecturer in Chinese at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies. He is responsible for education in SSR as well.

Many of his students are known to have exceptional super speed reading ability. Two of them won the International Grand Master of Memory at the 28th World Memory Championships held in China in 2019.

Six DPRK university students competed in the championships and all of them obtained the International Grand Master of Memory. Among them Pak’s students, Ryu Song I and Jon Yu Jong, earned high scores.

Though it was her international debut, Ryu Song I, in particular, got over 900 marks more than the then world records in total and renewed the Guinness records in three events, winning the title of the world greatest master of memory which is conferred on only one contestant in the championships.

The fact that she got the training in SSR from Pak for only a few months drew the attention of all to him.

“Application of the same content and method varies according to lecturers. Pak Chol Jin has really a knack for SSR education,” said Cha Yong Ho, a section chief of Kim Hyong Jik University of Education who is well versed in SSR education.

Pak happened to notice the photographic memory of his friend during his university years and trained hard to improve his memory. He began to have a logical understanding of super speed reading in 2013.

After he was given charge of SSR education by the university, he conducted research into SSR education method in his own way over again.

“Super speed reading methods, specifically the general principle and ways of memory, mental calculation and super speed reading, are the same worldwide. The problem is how they are applied creatively according to objects and detailed contents. It is also important in SSR education to devise optimized methods,” said Pak.

His mind was always on what he had to do to teach students a more efficient and solid mnemonic system in a short time.

He reduced as much as possible the number of images about the information to memorize. To this end, he augmented codes and designed a new combined system for them.

And he expanded the range of SSR training of the students to make the whole course of their study and life that of training, free from the old training method wedded to competition problems.

Pak said it required him to research SSR methods on many fields and foresee others under specific circumstances, which took a great deal of time and energies.

“He designed all super speed reading methods in detail and to be absorbing. The training was difficult yet interesting and exciting,” said Ryu Song I.

Pak paid attention to ridding the students of stage fright.

Psychological characteristics have a marked impact on the students in super speed reading competitions.

He informed them of the world records in each event and set goals 20 percent higher than them before training, while making sure that each student focused on their special skills and broke the records in a short time in the training.

And he got his students to write a watchword reading “Let us prove before the world that our memory knows no bounds!” on the first page of their exercise books, fixed a bar chart illustrating the world records and goals to be attained by each of them on the door and drew red flags whenever they reached them.

“We were all confident that winning national competition was just winning international event. Though it was the first time for both Song I and me to compete in the international event, we were full of confidence,” said Jon Yu Jong.

He continues his pursuit of excellence in super speed reading and its education.