In late 2015 there appeared the Mirae Scientists Street on the bank of the picturesque Taedong River in central Pyongyang. Not long ago we visited a doctor couple’s new flat of an apartment house on the street. The man is Kim Sung Guk, and the wife Kim Myong Hui. It was the wife who greeted us. In fact she was not strange to us. We had known her by sight for she had won first place several times at the national invention and new technology exhibition and the national science and technology festival.
She led us towards their study, and we, on the way, saw the couple’s private room with a comfortable bed, a kitchen and a dining room fully furnished with modern relevant utensils and a conveniently designed bathroom. The flat was furnished to suit teachers and researchers’ psychology and their way of life at the State’s expense, she said guiding us into the study. A bookcase filled with sci-tech books and a desk there in the room reminded us of the world of science.
While looking carefully at the books associated with the couple’s enthusiasm one by one, we happened to see a faded photograph. Saying it was a picture all the family of the husband had taken on the day when he became a university student, the wife told us as follows:
Before Korea’s liberation from the Japanese imperialists’ colonial rule on August 15, 1945 his parents had slaved as hired hands for a landlord through generations without any opportunity to go to school. Only after that liberation he and his brothers could go to school free of charge under a socialist education system. And after being discharged from the military service he was admitted into the then Pyongyang University of Medicine. Thus his eight brothers and he all became university students.
Her husband held the picture dearest and studied hard at the university, the wife said.
When we asked her what made them married, she avoided answering saying that her husband knew better about it. Then he entered the room, so we decided to speak with him. Sturdy and high in stature, he looked like an athlete rather than a teacher. And he was broad-minded. We told him that his wife refused to answer the question of how they had been married, and he, with a smile, told us the following story.
It was 30 years ago when there was held a national university students’ foreign language conversation contest. The final of the contest took place between the man from the aforesaid university of medicine and the woman from
Kim Il Sung
University. The woman won the exciting match contrary to the spectators’ anticipation. Then the man was the first to present a bouquet to the woman. “Today I was very impressed by your ability of foreign language conversation. I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart,” he admired her. Later, after graduation from their universities, the man became a teacher and the woman a researcher. From then on they often met to have a sincere debate, motivated by their high ambition and spirit of inquiry, although they were engaged in different studies and researches. In the course of this they fell in love with each other and were married.
After marriage they further accelerated their education and research work while respecting and trusting each other out of warm affection. Of course they often shed tears in agony because of failures in their work, but they could steadily continue with their work, thinking it was the way to bring up future pillars of the country and repay the benevolent system that had brought them up.
Their tireless efforts led to success, and they both became doctors and associate professors with authority in the academic circles. The man, now a department head of the Pyongyang Medical College of
Kim Il Sung
University, pioneered the field of pregnancy immunology by inventing the method of treating habitual abortion in early pregnancy through alloimmunization, and wrote Gynecology, Clinical Gynecopathy and scores of other textbooks and reference books, over 20 multimadia-based teaching plans and hundreds of essays. The wife, now a researcher of
Kim Il Sung
University, developed scores of kinds of cutting-edge technology-based goods including a polypropylene synthesis catalyst, a thermal oxidation depressor for treble functional greenhouse vinyl sheets, solid alcohol fuel and a systemic organosilicon water repellent. Their achievements are greatly conducive to the prosperity of the country and the promotion of the people’s well-being.
So people hold them in respect, calling them doctor couple and theirs family of associate professors.
They feel embarrassed to hear people call them so, he said before adding, “How could we imagine our family’s today apart from the benevolent system that took care of us, children of a landlord’s hired hands who were maltreated like roadside rubble stones in the past? We’ll do much more things for the good of the country and the people. My wife and I will become one on the road forever.”
We left the flat hoping that the family would produce more laudable stories.
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《Korea Ryugilo Editorial Bureau》