August 15 is a significant day when the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung smashed the gangster-like Japanese imperialists and achieved the historic cause of national liberation by leading the two-decade-long arduous anti-Japanese war to victory.
On this day, people from all over the country respectfully pay their deep gratitude towards the benevolent liberator, the peerless patriot and tender-hearted father of our people.
When the country was just liberated, the national treasury was left empty due to the cruel colonial rule and plunder by the Japanese imperialists. The living conditions of our people were indescribably poor.
In a newly liberated country, a lot of things came to the fore in the work to reconstruct the economy and stabilize people’s livelihood. However, the great leader proposed the issue of pencil production as the first item on the agenda at the first session of North Korean Provisional People’s Committee which was held on February 20, 1946.
The officials were rather surprised by this unexpected proposal and asked how about importing the small items like pencils from other countries, since we did not yet have any experience nor technique for pencil production.
The great leader said that the production of pencils is not a mere technical issue but a political one of paramount importance related to the upbringing of our posterity into talented personnel and to the realization of a long-cherished desire of our people.
He went on to say as follows: Our people were unlettered and subjected to backbreaking labour under the Japanese colonial rule of atrocity. But they would put pencils into the hands of their children, willing their children at least to learn the three R’s. If we could satisfy this life-long desire of our people, how happy they would be. We should produce pencils at any cost by our own efforts, using our own technology and resources. His every word was in earnest.
This is how the first pencil christened “Samchonri (three thousand ri)” was produced in our country. Subsequently, in every part of the country, voices reading the text aloud as part of literacy campaign and learning campaign reverberated far and wide above the sky.
There is no record of such an example in the chronicle of any country where the issue of pencil production was top on the agenda for discussion at the very first meeting of the newly formed government in order to shed light on the people at an early date and throw the doors for learning wide open to children.
Under the warm care of respected Comrade Kim Jong Un who inherited the warm outlook of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung on future and posterity as a whole, the legend of Samchonri (three thousand ri) pencil is continuing with heartwarming stories of Mindulle (dandelion) notebook, Sonamu (pine tree) schoolbag and Haebaragi (sunflower) stationery – items of our children’s choice.
