The sea can be said to be everything to Kim Sung Yol, chairman of the Sinchang Fishery Cooperative in Pukchong County, South Hamgyong Province.

Kim Sung Yol is wont to say: It is only when the sea is tended that it turns into a “gold sea”, and the port can also become as dear to us as our homes when it has creations built with our devoted efforts. Let’s become patriots who increase the resources of the sea rather than heroes catching a lot of fish.

It was 20 years ago that he was appointed chairman of the cooperative.

At that time, the cooperative was lagging behind others in fish catching as well as sea culture.

Everywhere in the cooperative there were more things to do than they had done.

Moreover, his heart was riven by the voices of the members of the cooperative saying that the fishing conditions had changed and all the fish seemed to have disappeared.

The state indicated that offshore farming is better than gold mining, he thought, and decided to tend the sea by radically improving offshore farming. From then on, he worked assiduously.

In the daytime he was busy creating a new offshore farming ground with members of the cooperative and still he visited the relevant scientific and technological research units in his spare time in an effort to learn advanced methods of sea culture such as rafting, transplanting seedlings and fertilizing to gather a bountiful harvest of kelp.

Sometimes sudden tidal and violent waves destroyed the farming ground they had built with efforts, but he neither hesitated nor wavered.

With a fresh determination and will, he, together with his cooperative members, made strenuous efforts for their prosperous future.

They thus completed a kelp farm of 0.5 hectare to create an asset and then built more than 20 hectares of such farms together. And they increased the kelp production by introducing the methods of floor-based cultivation and horizontal dense cultivation which had been known to be possible only in gulf waters.

At the same time, they bred mussels and scallops in the farms to increase marine resources.

Every year the cooperative got richer as the wealth of its own creation increased day by day, but Kim was never content.

After planning the prospects for fish farming in the sea and cultivation of shallow-sea products, he built several wire-net boats and established a ship repair yard in contact with relevant units in order to bring the plan into reality.

Besides, he built an indoor sea water-based fish farm and a culture ground for cultivating and stocking sea cucumbers, ear shells, flatfish and others staying inshore.

Today the fishery cooperative is well-known as a proud unit not only in the east coastal area of Korea but also in the fishing sector across the country.

“Just as a wild animal cannot be seen in a mountain without a tree, so if there is no plant in the sea, all the fish will disappear.

I will devote my all to turning the sea of the country into a ‘gold sea’ to be handed down to posterity.”

This is the invariable motto of Kim Sung Yol, deputy to the Supreme People’s Assembly and meritorious man of socialist patriotism.