Kim Chong, motivator at the blast furnace workshop of the Hwanghae Iron and Steel Complex, is a special-class honoured disabled solider who had been sentenced to death by the medical world due to paraplegia plus an obstinate disease ten years ago.

To everyone’s surprise, she left the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital with her lovely baby girl amid the blessings of many in March this year.

She is admired and loved by all the employees of the complex as she works with strong will to motivate them to boost iron and steel production.

She got married to a young ex-serviceman who had visited her, so attracted by her ennobling mentality. In June last year, or several months after their marriage, Pak Un Sil, chief of the paediatric department of the Songnim City Hospital, shouted for joy after carrying out a medical examination of Kim Chong.

“You are carrying a baby!”

Kim couldn’t believe it. She was excited at the thought that she would be able to realize the dream she had thought impossible, a dream she had cherished as she saw her husband taking warm care of her through thick and thin.

Pak Un Sil, who had been taking sincere care of Kim’s health and life with parental affection since her demob, prepared tonics with rare herbs for her and bought clothes for her baby to be born.

Then, like a bolt from the blue, Pak passed away all of a sudden.

Later, Kim and her husband Jong Kwang Myong were told that Pak had struggled to look after Kim although she had already developed an incurable disease a long time ago.

Kim vowed in tears to give birth to a child without fail and become a strong mother as Pak had wished.

Many people happened to know about Kim Chong through an article posted by a medical worker on the Kongang (health) homepage on the national data communication network and offered a helping hand to her.

Yu Sol Hwa, a medical researcher at a unit in Pyongyang, was one of them. She was sleepless all night after reading the news that Kim was enduring a severe pain without taking medicines in fear that they might affect the unborn baby, in defiance of a medical conclusion that an easy delivery would be impossible due to diabetes and severe amyotrophy caused by an obstinate disease.

Thinking Kim Chong needed her now, Yu frequently visited Kim’s house with medicines made from natural materials good for skin diseases and diabetes.

Such persons increased in number.

They included medical workers at the Songnim City Hospital, Ko Hye Sun, doctor at the clinic of the Namgu Housing Construction Company, Kim Kwang Guk, doctor at the Chongjin City Koryo Medicine Hospital, and Ko Ok Chon working at the Thaethan County medical supplies management station. They secured rare medicines and materials for restoring her to health to greatly encourage her.

She was brought to Kim Man Yu Hospital in Pyongyang several months before delivery. She finally gave birth to a healthy baby at the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital.

The loud first cry of the baby was a happy event not only to Kim’s family but to all those who spared nothing for the special-class honoured disabled soldier.