Usually, people think a lot when they are aged and have to retire on a pension.

They ask themselves what to do in the future.

Some of them give good answers to the question with their own options and efforts.

Ri Nung Sok living in Sungni-dong No. 3, Rangnang District of Pyongyang City is called an old man cultivating Aronia melanocarpa.

He had worked in the field of railways all his life and it is over 10 years since he retired on a pension.

As he got older, he felt inconvenience because of his heart disease. One day he happened to hear that the fruit of Aronia melanocarpa purifies the blood and is efficacious for cardiac and cerebral diseases. So he planted young Aronia melanocarpas in the yard of his house and began to cultivate them. He did not know for sure whether it is because he did the job of cultivating the plants or because he ate their fruits. Anyway, his illness took a turn for the better. Gradually he got great benefits from Aronia melanocarpa and came to think of the health of others. He planted more Aronia melanocarpas, cultivated them with sincerity and harvested a lot of fruits every year. And he sent them to war veterans and honoured disabled soldiers.

In those days he produced over 70,000 saplings together with his wife and sent them to many units. Those young Aronia melanocarpas were planted in different places to make the scenery beautiful and their fruits are used as materials for tonics.

Even the young people admire his desire to propagate Aronia melanocarpas and make more people benefit from them.

A nearly 90-year-old war veteran is living in Tongdaewon-dong No. 1, Tongdaewon District of Pyongyang City. She was awarded a doctorate at the age of 84.

She is called Pak Pong Sil. She researched and completed a high-strength structural adhesive which can not only stick concrete to concrete and the finishing materials for architectural decoration including plate stones and tiles to the concrete surface without reinforcement assembly but also can be used as concrete waterproofing materials.

The technical specifications of her invention are superior as its bonding strength gets higher with each passing day, the joints remain secure even if concrete is broken and it can stick even the plate stone weighing hundreds of kilograms to the concrete surface at one time. Moreover, the raw materials and additives necessary for its production are all locally available and so it greatly proves effective in practice.

The invention is associated with the tireless enthusiasm of the war veteran scientist who overcame the repeated failures in order to build structures of eternal value in the motherland. At first, she happened to hear workers talking at the construction site and selected the seed of her research. Since then, she has made painstaking efforts for tens of years to complete it.

She is still making researches so as to contribute to the motherland with her knowledge.

Merited Technician Ri Hyong Thae is living in Yokjon-dong, Central District of Pyongyang City. He is 82 years old now. After his retirement, he studied and completed a water saving device, which has been introduced into Mirae-dong in Phyongchon District of Pyongyang City and Samjiyon City of Ryanggang Province to contribute to saving a lot of electricity and water. He also invented and manufactured a mechanical sweeper and sent it to the highway facilities management stations in Central District and Phyongchon District and developed a natural convection moxibustion treatment device. Whenever people advise him to have a rest because he is aged and his health condition is not so good, he says to them:

"Of course, it is quite natural for the aged people like me to spend our remaining years in comfort. But when we do something for the society and the collective, we can live a more worthwhile life in our remaining years, I think."

Many other aged people are devoting the remainder of their lives to finding a useful work to do for the prosperity of the country. It is over 10 or 20 years after their retirement and they are in the twilight of their lives. But there is no old age in their patriotism.