Yun Kyong Guk and his son Yun Kwang Chol are forest rangers at the Forest Management Station in Phyongsan County, North Hwanghae Province.

The father, who had tended thousands of hectares of forests for tens of years, was awarded with the title of Merited Forest Ranger.

His merit is not confined to the service he rendered to tending the forest; he brought up his son to be a forest ranger like him.

Here is a story about it.

It was 15 years ago when the son returned home after being demobilized from the army.

Looking at the mountains with thick forests, he was lost in a deep thought.

His father, an ordinary forest ranger, was enjoying admiration and love of others not because he was famous nor his post was high-ranking.

The mountains were transformed into “gold” and “treasure” mountains where various wild fruits were picked according to seasons. He knew well that they did not become thus of their own accord.

In his childhood he misunderstood his father who was working with more devotion for the mountains than for his own family. On his return from the school, he would cast an envious glance at his classmates who were greeted by their parents, himself usually waiting for his father.

His father would return home late at night and leave early in the morning for the mountains. This repeated even when he was leaving for the post of national defence after graduating from a middle school. In the course of this, the father planted good species of trees, including pine-nut, Changsong larch and large chestnut tree, and tended them for about 30 years, thus creating over 2 800 hectares of thick forests at the foot of Mt Myorak.

So whenever the people asked him what he would become, he replied that he would follow his father’s footsteps.

What he did first after becoming a worker at the forest management station was raising saplings. As he still lacked knowledge, it wasn’t easy for him to do it. Whenever his determination wavered, he was reminded of his father’s words that one must plant one’s heart before planting a tree. The work of tending the forest was like learning an entire academic discipline, and the developing reality made him realize the necessity of learning more.

Later, he studied at a university and became a forest ranger.

Since then, the area of forests created by the father and his son for over ten years increased to over thousands of hectares, and the forests were transformed into the ones of economic value.

The state raised them, who had worked unassumingly for the prosperity of the country with pure conscience, as Meritorious Persons of Socialist Patriotism.