There is the Chollima Statue on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK.

Spectacular is the statue depicting a male worker lifting the red letter sent by the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and a female farmer carrying a rice-sheaf in her arms on Chollima (a legendary winged horse which can run 400 kilometres at a go) soaring up to the sky at a gallop.

Whenever they see the statue, the Korean people think of the Chollima era, a new era in which they performed miracles and changes on the debris of the war.

What they think of first is President Kim Il Sung’s visit to the then Kangson Steel Works.

At that time, the Korean people were faced with the task of fulfilling the five-year national economic plan from 1957 according to the decisions of the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea held in December 1956.

The five-year plan was a huge and uphill task focusing on the completion of socialist transformation of relations of production in cities and the countryside, the laying of firm foundations for socialist industrialization and the further consolidation of the foundations for the independent national economy as the Korean people had just completed postwar rehabilitation.

The President visited the steel works immediately after the Plenary Meeting of the WPK Central Committee, with a view to increasing the production of steel to make a breakthrough in implementing the five-year plan.

He met with workers there and told them that if they produced 10 000 tons of more steel materials the following year, the country would be relieved and called on them to step up a collective innovation campaign and thereby make the heat of the campaign the flames inspiring all other working people to a great leap forward in socialist construction.

Greatly encouraged by his trust, the workers of Kangson turned out as one.

While fighting passivism and mysticism about technique, they carried out the increased production task in a matter of three and a half months and worked a miracle of turning out 120 000 tons of steel billets from a blooming mill with an annual capacity of 60 000 tons.

Kangson became a historic place which held up the torch of the movement for the great Chollima advance before others and the torch of the Chollima movement spread like wildfire throughout the country.

All the Korean people rushed forward under the slogan “Let us advance at the speed of Chollima!”

Workers of the then Kim Chaek Iron Works produced 270 000 tons of pig iron using the facility with a capacity of 190 000 tons and those of the then Hwanghae Iron Works built a large blast furnace in less than a year.

Amid a campaign to break old rated capacities and norms everywhere, Chollima tractors, Sungni (victory) lorries, Pulgungi (red flag) electric locomotives, bulldozers, large-capacity water pumps and excavators were successively manufactured to enliven the whole country.

The agricultural sector also overfulfilled its grain production plan, urban and rural areas underwent big changes and people’s livelihood improved day after day.

The stirring era witnessed the completion of the 14-metre-high Chollima Statue in a matter of 40-odd days in 1961.

Under the wise leadership of the President, the legendary winged horse flew up in the DPRK and the Korean people successfully completed the historic task of laying the foundations of socialism in such a short time after the war and turned the country into a socialist industrial-agricultural state with socialist production relations and firm foundations of independent national economy.

Thus, the DPRK demonstrated to the whole world its dignity as Chollima Korea and Chollima became the symbol of the country.