There is a woman among the top scientists and technicians of the DPRK in 2022 announced this year.

She is Hyon Ok Ju, chief of the lagging materials branch factory of the Pyongyang Thermal Power Station.

She was not an expert or technician of materials or mechanical engineering sector but she chose the research into insulating brick by herself to solve the electric power problem of the country.

Originally, she had worked as chief of an analysis lab in a different sector.

Although it was not her major, she came to take up the insulating brick mainly under the influence of her father.

Her father, who had worked as a mechanical engineer at the Pyongyang Thermal Power Station for a long time, conducted research on the brick to boost the combustion efficiency of boilers.

He used to say to her that the introduction of the brick made of lagging materials into the power industry sector would bring great profits and prevent environmental pollution.

Lots of research findings about insulating brick had already been made public, but its mass-production relying on domestic materials had still remained unexplored.

She therefore undertook the research task her father failed to fulfil.

In the course of analyzing his research data, she acquired confidence that the insulating brick could be made with the white fly ash from the thermal power station and locally available clay and without any additives.

She made a painstaking search and efforts and finally established the production process of insulating brick based on white fly ash and made its trial product.

“Even very valuable sci-tech achievements are useless if they are not introduced into reality. I wanted to prove the worth of this research finding in reality,” she said.

She went to the Pyongyang Thermal Power Station and worked day and night to introduce the insulating brick.

After the old insulating wall of a boiler was replaced with the new one built with the insulating bricks, its combustion efficiency began to increase.

The foundations for mass-producing the insulating brick were laid one by one, and many people thought that she would leave after introducing its production technology.

But she remained at the power station as an employee.

Not long after she was assigned at the station, an insulating brick workteam was formed and later it was expanded into a branch factory.

She went on to establish a method of air-tight insulation of the boiler’s fire chamber based on the insulating brick, which would bring handsome economic profits, thus making a big contribution to the increased production of electricity.

“My father would have been very pleased if he had seen our power station which is running very well,” said Hyon.

Hyon also gave a substantial help to other thermal power stations in setting up the production process of the insulating brick.

She is now exerting herself to further improve the specifications of the insulating brick, challenging new norms.