It is said that the future of a country depends on its children. This means that they mirror the future of their country.

It is the reality of the DPRK which regards that nothing is more important than the work to bring up children, the future of the country, to be strong and sound and sets it as the top priority policy to provide more improved conditions for raising them even by investing huge sums of money.

The state takes all measures to ensure that the newborns and the rising generations grow up in good environment from their childhood.

In recent years, the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace in the capital city of Pyongyang and other palaces in different parts of the country and camps at such scenic spots as Songdowon on the coast of the East Sea of Korea have been renovated.

A children’s department store and a children’s hospital where in-patients can study while receiving medical treatment have been built.

All these are unthinkable apart from the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un who is endowed with boundless affection for children.

On the lunar New Year’s Day in 2012, he visited Mangyongdae Revolutionary School. His benevolent image still remains etched in the memory of its students. Noting that they must miss Chairman Kim Jong Il as they have to greet the first lunar New Year’s Day after his demise, he added that he should spend the holiday together with them on behalf of their parents. He had a photo taken with them and took parental care of their living, looking round several places of the school for hours until the sun set.

During his inspection of far-flung Jangjae Island on the West Sea of Korea, he posed for a photo with a six-month baby in his arms with a broad smile on his face. When he visited a worker’s family that moved into a new flat in Changjon Street of Pyongyang, he held on his knees the second son of the family studying at a primary school and taught the method of drawing. He was indeed the father rather than the leader of the country.

He ensured that the meeting of members of the Korean Children’s Union was held as an important event of the state and attended there. In his congratulatory speech at the meeting he said that they were treasures more valuable than billions of tons of gold, and represent the hope and the future.

His happiest time is when he did something for children and their merry laughter and songs resound through the country.

Looking round the bathing beach of a renovated children’s camp, he expressed great satisfaction at the fact that its surrounding scenery is quite splendid as it is located in an excellent place and that summer campers would enjoy the sand beach.

When the northern tip of the country along the Tuman River was stricken by a natural disaster caused by heavy rain, he ensured that the children in the damaged area were sent to the Songdowon International Children’s Camp.

He bestows a special affection on orphans.

He made sure that baby homes and orphanages across the country were built splendidly. Several years ago, he visited an orphanage after finishing his New Year Address and saw the New Year performance given by orphans. Making calculations on his pocketbook to estimate the annual amount of fish for sufficiently supplying it to the orphans across the country every day, he saw to it that a fishery station was built to this end. During his guidance trip, he listened to the songs of orphans for a long time in the playground of an orphanage. There are many stories showing his ennobling traits as the father of orphans across the country.

At the 3rd Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea held in June this year, he said that the period of nursery and kindergarten is the most important age in the children's growth and development, and he called for establishing it as a policy of the WPK to supply all the children across the country with dairy products and other nutritious foods at the state's expense and specified tasks and ways for realizing it.

The ten-year-long history of his leadership is the history of paternal love of Kim Jong Un who has taken care of and brought up all the children throughout the country.

Therefore, the Korean children call him “our father” without reserve.

Han Kyong Yon