MIRROR IMAGE OF A CULTURED SOCIALIST NATION

The Masikryong Ski Resort gives a glimpse of the future of a cultured socialist nation Korea is striving to build. It will be no exaggeration to say that the country is now on the home straight in the race for building such a nation.

“Your eyes are not deceiving you. This is socialist north Korea,” said a CNN anchor a few years ago, televising live a nocturnal scene of the Kaeson Youth Park fashionably built in Pyongyang. Since then the Rungna People’s Recreation Ground, Ryugyong Health Complex, People’s Open-air Ice Rink, Munsu Water Park, Mirim Riding Club and many other world-class cultural resorts have been built in the country.

They were followed by the ski resort built on Masik Pass, whose name was derived from a legend that the pass is so rugged and stiff that even a horse had to have a rest while crossing it (ma means a horse and sik a rest in Korean). Its construction gave birth to another word representative of the times, the craze for skiing on Masik Pass.

The credit for all this goes to the supreme leader Kim Jong Un of the DPRK. In late May two years ago he visited the pass and said in the following vein: Skiing is a sport favoured by all the people, young and old, to say nothing of the athletes. If a ski resort is built here, a new craze for skiing will sweep across the country. He then pictured in his mind the days when the people would build up their bodies and enjoy the natural scenery.

True to his plan, the soldier-builders of the Korean People’s Army built the ski resort in the short span of a year to the wonder of the world.

Foreigners who have been to the resort say in admiration that it has excelled the world standard. Mimura Mitsuhiro from the Northeast Asian Economics Institute said, “This is a mirror image of a cultured socialist nation.”