The Natural Science Prize was set in the DPRK this year to be awarded to persons who have performed sci-tech feats conducive to the development of the country’s economy and the improvement of the people’s living standards.

The prize is awarded to one or two of research findings in the natural science sector every year for carrying out state assignments for sci-tech development and being registered as state sci-tech achievements and recognized worldwide. What is important is that the findings should be introduced into practice.

Last February the project “The explanation of light-material resonant interaction and its application” carried out by the nonlinear optics research group headed by Im Song Jin, candidate academician, professor, PhD and section chief of the Physics Faculty of Kim Il Sung University, became the first to be awarded the prize.

The research group known as an uncommon talent group is a group of young researchers who are in their 20s and 30s.

Im Song Jin, who received a doctorate in his 20s, is a renowned physicist who pioneered the field of nonlinear optics for the first time in the country and has specialized in relevant theoretical studies.

For the wonderful successes he made in the course of leading the research group to challenge and compete with the world, he won the February 16 Science and Technology Prize twice in 2017 and 2021 and was selected as one of the top national scientists and technicians in 2020.

As the author of the first booklet with the name of a DPRK scientist published in 2017 by the most prestigious scientific and technological publishing house in the world, he presented dozens of world-level essays including the one, the first of its kind from the country, carried in an international scientific journal which is at the top of similar magazines in the world physical circles. Thus he was registered as a “scientist representing Koreans” in Who’s Who in the World several times.

Ho Kum Song, Ri Chol Song and Pae Ji Song are also able researchers who were awarded doctorates in their 20s, and Song Kil Song and Kim Kum Dong are postgraduates who got masters’ degrees in their university days and recently presented a thesis for a doctorate each.

They, too, have annually published many essays in international scientific journals of authority in the world physical circles so far since 2017.

In the spirit of keeping their feet firmly planted on this land and looking out over the world, the research group has steadily conducted research on light-material resonant interaction, one of the world’s cutting-edge basic science fields.

In the year when the research group received the February 16 Science and Technology Prize for the second time Im Song Jin endlessly asked himself a question: How much difference is there between theory and practice?

He thought that although they carried out many scientific research tasks, they were useless when they remained as only experimental successes on the desk without practical significance, and that it was important to formulate basic problems of principle theoretically but it was more important to substantially contribute to the development of the country’s economy by positively introducing scientific research findings into reality. He had to decide on whether to pursue theoretical research for world fame or practical research as required by the reality. Then he selected the latter.

All his colleagues ardently supported him.

Their first seed for research was to develop an infrared gas analysis device which was badly needed in rolled steel production at a metallurgical factory at that time.

But a clear-cut difference existed between theory and practice and the scientists, who had been filled with self-confidence, began to lose confidence at repeated failures.

Some people gossiped about them, saying that they should remain content with their academic authority and fame, because if the “theorists” plunged into the reality to spend energy and time in vain, they might ruin their reputation.

But with one accord the scientists made strenuous efforts to succeed in researching and making the first infrared gas analysis device and introduced it into a chemical factory.

The introduction of the device into the factory was not easy at all.

“At the factory we came to know we had really many things to do. But what worried us was that its workers did not believe us scientists,” recalled Im Song Jin.

He said that they hesitated without confidence, saying that they had tried to make the expensive analysis device by themselves but in vain only to waste money and time.

As they were inwardly proud of being a talent group competing with the world academic circles, Im Song Jin and other scientists felt their pride wounded when their wisdom, talents and sincerity were ignored, he recalled.

But what hurt their pride more was that the factory was relying on an imported analysis device equivalent to the eye of the production process, he added.

So they decided to compare the imported device with their development on the spot.

The test result amazed all the workers.

The real-time analysis values of their device tallied with those of the imported one. During the test several problems arose from the imported device, but the domestically made device has run normally until now as well as during the test.

Only then did the workers praise the scientists, referring to them as real talents possessed of both theoretical knowledge and practical abilities.

Now all major chemical factories require the analysis device made by the scientists.

The country has given the high honour to such patriotic scientists who support it with laudable sci-tech achievements.