In July, Kang Pun I, a researcher at the Faculty of History at Kim Il Sung University, was awarded a doctorate degree at a national ceremony for conferring academic degrees and titles. This meant she holds two doctorate degrees in her early forties.

Born into an intellectual’s family in Wonsan, Kangwon Province, Kang entered the Faculty of Chemistry at Kim Il Sung University, the highest institute of science and education in the DPRK, as she hoped after graduating from primary and senior middle schools under the benefits of the then universal 11-year compulsory education.

After going through university and post-graduate courses with flying colours, she was assigned a task of researching the history of human evolution.

“Actually, I majored in natural science. So I was unfamiliar with research into archaeology,” Kang recalled.

Furthermore, it wasn’t easy for her to be engaged in fieldwork for a long time because she was a wife and a mother.

But she walked into a project on dating and began to cut a conspicuous figure in seven years in the field. She helped date and prove the absolute age of historical remains of the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages, including those excavated in Tongam-dong, Sunchon, South Phyongan Province, and Juhyon-dong, Kangdong County, Pyongyang. After years of research, she wrote a paper “Study on dating the Quaternary geological objects and archaeological sites by the improved TL analyser and TL curve analysis,” which attracted the attention of academic circles and earned her a doctorate degree in geology at the age of 34.

She went on to buckle down to a research project for conserving historical sites and remains which was as important as excavation in archaeology.

In an effort to find a solution to conserving artefacts consisting of timber, iron, porcelain and different other materials, Kang set out to apply advanced methods while delving into preceding theories in the field of conservation science.

In the course of this, she succeeded in restoring wooden remains from over 2 000 years ago, which are preserved at the Rangnang Museum, and participated in the repair of Pobun Hermitage and Ryongwang Pavilion, both relics of national treasure, to put the conservation of wooden buildings, which are part of the Korean traditional architecture, on a scientific basis. Thus, she received a doctorate degree in history.

She presented an essay “The age of the Paleolithic sedimentary layer of Hyangmok-ri cave site in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” to the “Archaeological science: reports,” a journal issued in the Netherlands, in December 2020, and published her research results on other international journals.

She pioneered such a new subject as conservation of wooden heritage, and wrote several textbooks and reference books and over 40 essays, contributing to the development of the country’s history.

Ham Kwang Hyok