Music Prodigies of Korea

Child prodigies from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are now bringing into the limelight of the international community. Some of them are introduced below.

Inborn Genius

Ma Sin A, who is studying at the central musical institute under the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory of Russia, began to read the Korean alphabet when she was only two years old and liked singing songs very much.

When she entered a kindergarten she sang We Are the Happiest in the World. Her singing in perfect tune and distinctive voice attracted the kindergarten teachers. While receiving professional education in piano at the kindergarten, Ma displayed her talent in reproducing a musical score or a song as it was once she saw or heard it.

At six she arranged a piece of piano music in her style and played it charmingly, amazing the experts who predicted that Ma, a genius in art, would soon achieve her reputation as a music prodigy thanks to her inborn sensibility, techniques and arrangement ability.

Their prediction proved true in international contests.

She won admiration of many experts in international contests for her clever and polished techniques and renditions. At the 9^th Rakhmaninov International Piano Contest held in Velikie Novogorod, Russia, in April 2014, she played compulsory pieces so excellently that jurors and the audience all gave her a big hand and compliments. A professor from the Russian Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory and other experts praised Ma for charmingly playing difficult pieces, young as she was, and said she had a very promising future.

Boy Born to Play Piano

Choe Jang Hung, studying music in Beijing, China, is a taciturn boy with little smile at ordinary times, but he is quite a different boy in character and taste before the piano.

It happened when he was a kindergarten pupil. One day his kindergarten headmistress and teachers were about to go home when they heard the piano sounds. Puzzled, they went to a room and there they marvelled what they saw. Choe was playing the piano skilfully and elegantly under the instructions of his class teacher. The boy was unaware of holidays and Sundays when he was playing the piano. 

When he won the top prize at the 20^th International Chopin Juvenile Piano Contest, the jurors unanimously praised him that he had mastery of piano.

Calm and Correct Girl

Choe Ji Ye is appreciated as an optimistic and passionate yet a calm and correct student in every respect at the Vienna Conservatory in Austria.

She attends her piano lectures with tremendous concentration and after lectures makes energetic efforts to master the playing techniques she learned within that day. Before the piano she always takes a calm and composed posture and plays the piano correctly as noted in the musical scores.

She once performed A Bumper Harvest in the Chongsan Plain, a famous Korean music, in an artistry presentation held as a routine in her kindergarten. The piece was too difficult and incomprehensible for a child. Her class teacher and even the examiners watched her in apprehension. However, when the girl executed the rendition and that in a very calm posture and correctly, all of them gave an exclamation.

She demonstrated her calmness and correctness in international contests, too.

Her composed and correct performance in playing the complicated and difficult compulsories in the 2013-2014 Henle Piano Contest won her the first prize.

Cradle of Music Prodigies

Ma Sin A, Choe Jang Hung and Choe Ji Ye were all educated at the Kyongsang Kindergarten in Pyongyang, the capital city of the DPRK. The kindergarten plays an important role in the early musical education system unique to the DPRK.

Kim Hyang Suk taught those three children and other talented ones in musical art.

She said: “The early musical education system in our country is a cradle of child prodigies. Whenever I took my pupils to international piano contests, I always keenly felt the superiority and vitality of our educational system. In the future I will develop continuously educational methods and playing techniques to bring up more music prodigies.”

Children Are “Kings” of the Country

It is said that children of a country reflect its future.

In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea children are called “kings” of the country.

Found in this country are palaces for children: the Pyongyang Students and Children’s Palace on Jangdae Hill in downtown Pyongyang and Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace in Kwangbok Street, and Kaesong Schoolchildren’s Palace in the area near the Military Demarcation Line that bisects Korea from the north to south.

The Pyongyang Students and Children’s Palace occupies a floor space of 50 000 square metres and a building area of 110 000 square metres and is 48 metres high. It has over 500 rooms for various activities in the fields of social and natural sciences, art and literature, sports, national defence, industry, agriculture and others. There are also a 1 100-seat theatre, an indoor stadium which accommodates 500 people, an outdoor practice ground, and a library with a capacity of housing hundreds of thousands of volumes. On the tenth floor are an astronomical observatory and a sightseeing platform. More than 10 000 schoolchildren engage in activities to realize their hopes and talents in the rooms for such sectors as political and ideological education, science and technology, art and sports. There are more than a hundred establishments for similar purposes in good locations all across the country, named as students’ halls of culture.

In the scenic spots of the DPRK are built children’s camps: Samjiyon at the foot of Mt. Paektu in the northern tip of the country, magnificent Mt. Myohyang, Songdowon in the east coast, Mt. Ryongak in the suburbs of Pyongyang and many other famous places house splendidly-built children’s camps.

In recent days they are undergoing reconstruction in conformity with the modern aesthetic sense and developing trend of architectural art. Typical example is Songdowon International Children’s Camp. International Friendship Children’s House, camp buildings, gym and wading pool, outdoor playground and open-air pool, archery field and other latest facilities furnished in the magnificent architectural buildings and establishments—they all elucidate how dearly children are loved in this country.

Pyongyang Maternity Hospital, a palace for babies, is another indication of affections shown by the country. It is regarded in the country that birth of triplets is a good sign of country’s prosperity. It sends helicopters or planes to the remote and secluded areas for women pregnant with triplets. When triplets are born, it even gives ornamental silver daggers for boys and gold rings for girls.

In this country orphaned children are in good care and enjoy ecstasy of happiness.

The newly built Pyongyang Baby Home and Orphanage illustrate this. They are well furnished with over 250 rooms including those for nursing and educating children, play rooms and intelligence game rooms, medical treatment ward, and indoor and outdoor wading pools, playgrounds with a fine assortment of amusement facilities and playthings. It is noteworthy that all the furniture and fixtures, amusement facilities and even interior decorations are all designed to satisfy the children different in age and psychological nature as well as improve their intelligence and morality. Such a palace for orphaned children is unprecedented in history of any other country and nation. It is the realities of socialist Korea that children bereaved of their parents enjoy happiness the same as those with parents.

The state sets it as its principle of giving the best things to the children, and, based on it, provides the children with necessary things in a responsible manner. Hence such legend-like anecdotes as the operation of school trains and buses for a few children and the establishment of branch schools for one or two pupils in desolate islands.

In the streets of Pyongyang many often witness the vans bearing the letters of “soya milk” on their sides. They carry soya milk to the children at nurseries, kindergartens and schools every day, thus earning the name of “king’s van.” It is a praise for the genuine image of socialist Korea in which rising generations are treasured as “kings” of the country.

Another example is the Okryu Children’s Hospital that was built a few years ago. Furnished with up-to-date facilities, operation rooms, sick wards and other treatment rooms, playgrounds and a heliport, the hospital also has classrooms for inpatient children to continue with their school courses. More conspicuous is a fine display of paintings on the walls which grip the children with such a juvenile delight as to forget their pains. For this, it is called an art gallery in hospital.   

Schoolchildren’s palaces, children’s camps and all other establishments for the sake of the children in the DPRK attract special attention of the international community not only for their magnificence in architecture and modern facilities. The huge sum of fund invested in constructing modern buildings and purchasing high-end machines and facilities go beyond imagination, and, more than that, they are enjoyed free of charge by children of ordinary working people whereas they are in the possession of those of a few millionaires and the privileged in other countries.

Bright is the future of the DPRK that treasures the children as “kings” of the country.

By Our Nation Itself

On June 15, 2000, the North-South Joint Declaration, regarded by the Korean people as a milestone for their reunification, was made public in Pyongyang, DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).

Nearly 15 years have passed since then. However, the ideal of By Our Nation Itself, the fundamental spirit of the joint declaration, has been an unchangeable banner of Korea’s reunification.

The ideal is run through with the thoroughgoing spirit of independence.

As is generally known, Korea was divided not by any internal contradiction within the Korean nation, but was enforced by foreign forces.

Having occupied south Korea under the guise of “liberator” after World War II, the US has ceaselessly strengthened its military rule over south Korea with an ambition to dominate the whole of Korea and the rest of the Asian Continent. Outwardly it has pretended to be interested in the reunification issue of the Korean nation, but has not wished them to take the road of reconciliation, unity and reunification and laid one obstacle after another on the road of their reunification movement. This has created serious challenges for Korea’s reunification and forced its people to suffer the tragedy of national division.

The history of national division spanning nearly 70 years vividly shows that the independent development and reunification of the Korean nation cannot be realized without putting an end to domination and interference by foreign forces.

The reunification question of the country must be solved by the efforts of the Korean people, its masters, and in accordance with their opinion and demand. In other words, it is a question related with the right to national self-determination. There is no reason for outside forces to interfere with it. This is just the raison d’etre of the ideal of By Our Nation Itself.

The ideal which embodies the thoroughgoing spirit of independence of the nation is most reasonable and righteous in view of the situation on the Korean peninsula divided by outside forces and of the essential nature of the issue of relinking the bloodline of the nation.

The ideal reflects the Korean nation’s will to defend peace.

All the Korean people are desirous of putting an end at the earliest date to the sharp military confrontation for several decades between the north and the south and of achieving peace and reunification.

However, owing to the active participation by the south Korean authorities in the tenacious isolate-and-stifle policy and military threat of the US against the DPRK, military confrontation and tension, instead of peace and stability, constantly prevail on the Korean peninsula. In January this year the DPRK National Defence Commission made crucial proposals to the south Korean authorities on adopting practical measures to cease extensively all military hostilities against the other side. Nevertheless, the US and south Korea further increased the tension in the region by conducting large-scale Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises from the end of February.

Had the south Korean authorities not followed outside forces who are intent to do harm to their fellow countrymen and had they rejected the joint military exercises with the US and not allowed their land, sky and sea to be turned into venues of war games by US troops, in other words, had they respected the ideal of By Our Nation Itself, the situation on the Korean peninsula would not have faced such a crisis as it is today.

Peace and security on the Korean peninsula is linked to peace and security in the world. If another war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, it will inevitably be developed into a thermonuclear war mankind have never experienced. It will spill over into the wide areas of the world imposing great losses and calamities upon mankind. The US will never be safe either.

The ideal of By Our Nation Itself also reflects the spirit of great national unity.

The eye-opening and impressive events that took place on the Korean peninsula after the publication of the June 15 Joint Declaration eloquently prove that reunification of Korea can be fully achieved only when the whole nation is united.

The railways and roads were relinked and the air and sea routes opened between the north and the south of Korea, making breakthroughs in the walls of division. Inter-Korean high-level political and military negotiations and over 20 rounds of ministerial-level talks discussed matters of common interest of the nation to reach agreement. An industrial park was established in Kaesong situated near the Military Demarcation Line as a symbol of economic cooperation and exchange between the two sides. A tourist route to Mt. Kumgang, a world-famous mountain in the north, was opened for south Koreans.

Reunion of separated families and their relatives in the north and the south took place on several occasions. Joint entrance of the players from the north and south in international matches flying the flag of reunification and joint cheering by people from both sides touched the heartstrings of the world people. The world realized the Korean people are of one blood with one language and culture and it must be reunified.

The demonstration of great national unity by the north and the south of Korea, which had been hostile to and confronted to each other for over half a century is the fruition of the ideal of By Our Nation Itself advanced by the June 15 Joint Declaration.

The international society wishes the north and the south of Korea to be faithful to the last to this ideal, the major spirit of the June 15 Joint Declaration.

On the way of defending and achieving this ideal lie the reunification and common prosperity of the Korean nation and peace and security of the region and the rest of the world.