“Star of Brain” (five volumes) and “Learning of Super-Speed Reading” have newly been brought out in the DPRK, stealing the public limelight. The books deal with theories of and shortcuts to SSR. They were authored by Kim Jong Sun, PhD, who worked as chief of the SSR education research centre at Pyongyang Middle School No.1.

Kim is well known to the Korean people as an “SSR doctor” as she has trained lots of masters of super-speed reading and wrote many books including “SSR Method”, “SSR”, “Mind Map—Treasure of Brain” and “Super-Speed Reading Develops Brain” in five volumes. She is an authoritative educator who pioneered SSR as a discipline for the first time in the country and made a tangible contribution to systematizing it in a scientific manner.

Recently, staff reporter Yang Ryon Hui interviewed her about her career related to the SSR education.

“After graduation from Kim Il Sung University, I worked as a teacher at Pyongyang Middle School No.1. At the time when I began research into super-speed reading as a subject, people hardly accepted it as they had a poor understanding of it,” recalled Kim when she began her story. “At this juncture, Chairman Kim Jong Il illuminated the path ahead of the SSR education in the country with his far-sighted wisdom.”

The government saw to it that the national super-speed reading contest was held every year to fire students with enthusiasm for SSR and took positive measures to perfect the Korean-style teaching method of super-speed reading.

Kim Jong Sun devoted her time and energy unsparingly to realizing her life’s ambition to raise the country’s SSR education to the world level as soon as possible.

To demonstrate the brainpower of the Korean nation to the world—it was her goal.

Sometimes she felt hard and tired as she delved into the unknown, mysterious world, but she developed perfect arts of SSR, memory and mental calculation one after another and designed a comprehensive super-speed reading education (training) model with relentless quest, creative thinking and painstaking efforts. Some of her SSR techniques took her two to three years of rigorous research to develop.

The comprehensive model was the outcome of her patriotic devotion and passion and a precious creation dedicated to her country.

Based on her research findings, she disseminated super-speed reading education throughout the country, trained a large number of teachers and masters in this field by offering short courses. Masters of super-speed reading she has trained are now playing their part in all fields of society as preeminent talents.

DPRK students showed remarkable talents in SSR in the world.

They achieved amazing successes in the 27th and 28th World Memory Championships in 2018 and 2019. In particular, six students from Kim Hyong Jik University of Education, Kim Chaek University of Technology and Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies attended the 28th World Memory Championships and bagged 28 medals, including 11 golds. All of them were awarded the International Grand Master of Memory with scores in four events registered in the Guinness Book of Records. They made a clean sweep of the top three in the senior group and topped the country rankings.

Ryu Song I, student at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, bagged 7 gold medals in the 28th World Memory Championships by breaking the world record in total points set by a foreign student.

Those who brought honour to the country are sons and daughters of ordinary families. They learned free of charge to their heart’s content, fully displaying their talents under the socialist education system.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un always pays close attention to education. Once he told the officials that careful attention should be directed to education, the whole Party, the entire nation and all the people should offer positive assistance to the education sector as the development of education is that of science and technology and the shortcut to promoting the building of a powerful nation, and universities and schools should be refurbished to improve the teaching conditions and the quality of education.

On many occasions like this, he stressed the importance of education and took measures to make substantial progress in the education sector. As a result, the flames of radical improvement in education in the new century flared up, the universal 12-year compulsory education has been enforced and modern educational institutions and facilities have mushroomed across the country.

Education is the mother who nurtures talents.

It is, indeed, the firm root and strong pillar of fully supporting the powerful socialist country.

It is the unanimous wish of all teachers in the country to train more talents who will demonstrate the honour of the country to the whole world.