One Sunday early in June Juche 58 (1969), President Kim Il Sung , who returned from his field guidance trip, kept his eyes on a document concerning the construction of schools.

In those years, classrooms were not enough to accommodate the ever-increasing number of students. But it was an uphill task for the country in a difficult situation to build thousands of classrooms in a short span of time.

After repeated discussions, officials decided to introduce a double-shift system in the direction of using the existing classrooms and submitted their proposal to the Cabinet.

Regarding the construction of schools as an important, pressing affair, Kim Il Sung made sure that a session of the Political Committee of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea was convened the next day.

Speeches were made on several suggestions submitted by experts to the session.

After listening to them attentively, Kim Il Sung explained detailed information and figures about the urgency of promoting the project: It is not advisable to solve the problem in such a makeshift way of building hundreds of classrooms. The principled and fundamental way to settling the issue of deficient classrooms is to build new classrooms through an all-people campaign. I oppose the double-shift system or other stopgap measure. We should decide to build 10 000 classrooms even if we had to use up all the property of the country.

He then clarified the way to this end.

Concluding the session, he said: We are parents of students, aren’t we? In the long run, today we had a meeting of parents.

He then repeatedly called on the participants to push forward the project with their wholehearted devotion to the rising generations.

On his way back from his field guidance trip one summer day that year, he saw schoolchildren going back home.

Alighted from his car, he asked them to which school they went, how old they were and where they lived. Opening a child’s schoolbag, he saw a pencil case, textbooks and notebooks and appreciated for keeping textbooks clean and being good at handwriting. He also asked if they met for a study group after returning home and what was good for them to form a study group.

They replied that it was good to learn from each other and share a textbook.

Repeatedly asking them to study well, Kim Il Sung parted from them. Noting that they were quite honest, he recollected the words of a child who said it was good to share a textbook and, with his face turning gloomy, said this meant textbooks were in short supply.

Shortly afterwards, a session of the Political Committee of the Party Central Committee was convened to discuss the problem of textbooks for students.

Underscoring the need to produce textbooks with high-quality paper in larger numbers even if other publications were delayed, he took all necessary measures to this end. But he was so worried about it that he ensured that preparatory committees for a new school year were organized consisting of officials with a high sense of responsibility in the capital and provinces, cities and counties.

That day, he concluded that the session was as good as a meeting of parents.