President Kim Il Sung (April 15, 1912-July 8, 1994) always regarded the affairs related with the rising generation as the most important of the affairs of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the state.

Saying that there would be no pleasure in life without the rising generation, he always put children in front of the people.

The following happened when the provisional people’s committee was established as the central power organ the year after Korea was liberated in August 1945 from the Japanese imperialists’ military occupation dating from 1905.

He ensured that pencil production was discussed as an agenda item of the first session of the provisional people’s committee. He raised the pencil problem as an important political issue and took steps to promptly produce pencils in large quantity.

Although the liberated country had to urgently reconstruct the factories severely damaged by the Japanese imperialists and build a lot of new factories, he attached great importance to the pencil problem for the rising generation.

Endowed with infinite love for children, he took care of orphaned children at the Supreme Headquarters during the Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953) which was decisive of the destiny of the country. After the war he ensured that students were supplied with clothes for winter and summer and examined their samples every time.

Often noting that all the best things should be given to children, he took steps to build splendid children’s camps in the celebrated mountains and scenic spots of the country and children’s palaces in ideal places.

Here is a moving story telling of his noble outlook on the rising generation.

On the early morning of April 12, 1977 he visited the then Yonphung Senior Middle School during his field-guidance tour of a region, saying that he wanted to see if the local children were wearing good clothes like those in Pyongyang.

Watching the children in new clothes with great satisfaction, he cast his eyes at a schoolboy in uniform before he gave a hearty smile saying that the boy looked better than him.

Then he took photos of each of the children. Suddenly he paused for a moment while pressing the shutter of the camera. Turning his eye away from the camera and saying that he couldn’t see well, he took off his glasses and looked up at the blue sky for a while.

As officials and teachers asked him to stop taking photos, he said that the children who failed to pose for a photograph would feel sorry and suggested taking a photo with all the students.

There is no end of telling such touching stories about his affectionate love for children in his lifetime.

That’s why he wrote in his reminiscence With the Century : It gives me particular pleasure to be among the children, whom we call the flower buds of the country. This is the outlook on happiness which I have maintained all my life.

Kim Hyon