Korean Children’s Union Members
Korean Children’s Union Members
New Delhi : (Arsh News) -June 6 is the day when the Korean Children’s Union was founded.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea celebrates this day as a national holiday every
year. This eloquently proves how much importance the country attaches to the children’s union.
Looking back, President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) organized the Children’s Corps during the
period of the Japanese military occupation of Korea (1905-1945), with a view to training the
Korean children into hot-blooded fighters who were loyal to the revolution and motherland from
their childhood and ready to devote their all to them.
The Anti-Japanese Children’s Corps members performed brilliant feats at the outset of the
Korean revolution.
They took part in various activities like enlightening the masses, giving artistic performances,
standing guard duty, delivering messages, reconnoitering enemy movements, and capturing
weapons from the enemy. And during battles to defend the guerrilla bases they inspired the
guerrillas and other defenders to the struggle by means of bugles, drums and mouth organs. A
Children’s Corps member died a heroic death after luring Japanese soldiers attacking a guerrilla
zone towards himself and saving the people in the zone, and another member kept the secret of the
organization and sacrificed herself at the age of nine. Still another shouted at the last moment of his
life, “Don’t kill me by shooting, but with bayonets, and instead send the bullets to the guerrilla
army.” Another member thrust into the stove his foot in a straw sandal in which he kept a secret
message and did not take it out of fire to the last moment of his life despite the enemy’s kicks and
blows. There are many similar stories about the ennobling ideological and spiritual world and
heroic mettle of the children’s corps members.
The feats performed by the Anti-Japanese Children’s Corps members served as the basis of the
proud traditions of the Korean children’s movement.
After Korea’s liberation (August 15, 1945) the Korean children’s enthusiasm for the revolution
and patriotic zeal soared high with the founding of the Korean Children’s Union on June 6, 1946 as
a momentum.
During the Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953), KCU members formed children’s
vanguards and guerrilla detachments to fight the enemy.
According to data, the children’s vanguards and guerrilla detachments organized in the
northern half of Korea during the strategic, temporary retreat numbered more than 60.
On July 5, 1951 the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly issued a decree on
conferring the Orders of the National Flag and medals on the children’s union members who had
rendered distinguished services in assisting the people’s guerrilla movement in the Fatherland
Liberation War.
KCU members continuously demonstrated their ennobling spirit and heroism on a high plane
in every decade of socialist construction. They prepared Sonyon trucks and tractors through their
endeavours for the children’s five-year plan and children’s seven-year plan and sent them to the sites of socialist construction.
In 1958 they presented trains, cranes and other machines bearing the name Sonyon to the
country out of their patriotism. They were followed by Sonyon excavators, bulldozers and trucks in
the 1960s.
In response to an appeal made by the KCU members in Phyonggang County in 1967, all the
KCU members across the country turned out and presented Sonyon planes, tanks and warships to
the country to mark the 20th founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Army.
In May 1970 a KCU member died heroically in raging flames after defending precious forest
resources and his comrades. He became the first boy Hero of the Republic.
Today the Korean children are displaying patriotism on a higher level, giving birth to countless
moving stories.
At a critical moment when her house was about to collapse in a landslide caused by a heavy
rain, a schoolgirl in Sinhung County saved the portraits of President Kim Il Sung and Chairman
Kim Jong Il by plunging into a rapid stream holding them in her arms.
During the period of the highest-level anti-epidemic emergency campaign in May last year, as
many as 191 300 KCU members across the country sent the anti-epidemic sector over 1.5 million
packets for medicine, over 66 500 bottles for medicine and letters of encouragement.
Greeting the 70th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK and the 74th anniversary of the
founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea, KCU members across the country donated Sonyon light
airplanes.
It is quite natural that KCU members, who have inherited the traditions of loyalty and
patriotism, are regarded as a powerful mainstay that supports socialist Korea and the blood vessels
that guarantee the invincibility of the Korean revolution
