Korea Does What It is Determined to Do
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced in July 2010 the completion of the project for reclaiming 8,800 hectares of Taegyedo tideland. It is a great event which has assured the world community again that Korea never fails to do whatever it is determined to do.
The course covered by the DPRK can be called a history of its effecting what it has in mind.
There are plenty of precedents: Though the Americans had asserted that Korea would not be able to stand on its own feet above the debris of the Korea war (1950-1953) again even in 100 years, it finished postwar rehabilitation in less than three years followed by the accomplishment the giant task of industrialization within only 14 years, in the 1980s it built the West Sea Barrage, one of the world wonders, by damming the 8-km section of the rough sea in a short span of only five years.
Recent completion of the Taegyedo tideland reclamation project is another example.
Just as it was the plan of President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), founder of socialist Korea, so was it the resolve of leader Kim Jong Il and the Workers' Party of Korea, and the unshakeable will of the Korean people to obtain by their own efforts fertile land on which the coming generations would lead a happy and rich life.
It is said that. President Kim, Il Sung already matured a grand plan for tideland reclamation, while commanding the national liberation struggle of the Korean people to free from the colonial rule of Japanese imperialists (1905-1945). In 1943 he said that should tideland along the west coast be reclaimed after founding a people's state, hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile land would be obtained to produce rice in abundance. Even in the flames of the grim Korean war he took a measure to form a tideland survey team, looking forward to the victory in the war, and after the war visited the sites to inspire people to tideland reclamation.
Thanks to his leadership 5,500 hectares of tideland around Pidan Islet were reclaimed for the first time in the country, followed by the reclamation of several tidelands. The Workers' Party of Korea held its Sixth Congress in October 1980 and set forth the task of reclaiming 300,000 hectares of tideland as one of the ten long-term objectives for socialist economic construction.
The President attached special significance to the large-scale project of the Taegyedo tideland reclamation and wisely led the undertaking.
The Korean people, true to the plan and intention of the President, performed heroic feats of labour in carrying out the project.
Tsunami, the greatest of its kind in hundreds of years, hit the west coastal areas of Korea in August 1997; violent storms continued for long, and massive tidal waves washed away some 800 metres of dykes in four places of the reclaimed Taegyedo tideland and many construction machines and vehicles.
In those days the DPRK encountered serious economic difficulties due to the extreme "sanctions" and blockade imposed on it by the US-led imperialist allies, availing themselves of the collapse of socialism in the East European countries. Shortage of raw materials and fuel brought many factories and enterprises in the country to standstill, while food difficulty posed a serious threat to the existence of its people. To make the matters worse, tsunami damage inflicted on it rendered the reclamation project out and out impossible.
Nevertheless, the Korean people were never daunted by those difficulties.
Leader Kim Jong Il took a series of measures to carry out without fail the instructions of the President. Many hydraulic excavators and rolling stocks were provided and builders were in high spirits to tackle the construction again.
They cherished deep in their hearts the aphorism of Kim Jong Il that the word "impossible" is not to be found in the Korean vocabulary.
It happened when they launched into the final damming up. The final damming up was regarded as much impossible as to check lunar attraction since the water level differed over four metres, more than 250 million tons of sea water flowed in and out at a time at the speed of seven to eight metres per second at high and low tide, and the force of the current hollowed out the water channels from 17 to 35 metre deep. The rough sea even washed out in a wink stones, iron frames and concrete structures. But scientists, technicians and builders invented and applied scores of methods of construction appropriate to the extremity of final damming up and also unprecedented in the world history of tideland reclamation, thus harnessing the rough sea.
During the project they carried out some 50 blastings including 300 000-cubic-metre blasting and transported earth and rubble stones as much as over a million 10-ton lorries should carry to complete the 8 000-metre-iong Dyke No.3 and other dykes ahead of schedule.
With the completion of the project, Taedasa, Kacha, Soyondong and Taegye islets in the West Sea of Korea have been linked with long embankments, straightening the indentations of the coastlines and changing the country's map. A big farm has come into being on the reclaimed tideland, along with and a fish farm of 100 hectares, a salt work, a duck farm, a breeding ground for flatfish and other fishes, and a modern oyster bed, all these greatly conducive to the betterment of the people's living standard.
Development of the Korean-style CNC technology, establishment of the Juche-oriented steelmaking system, mass-production of vinalon and chemical fertilizers, and now completion of the Taegyedo tideland reclamation project-such achievements made in the DPRK have made the world community confirm that Korea's determination to build a thriving nation in the near future is not an empty talk and it has already been realized.
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