President Kim Il Sung achieved the historic cause of Korea’s liberation (August 1945) by leading the anti-Japanese armed struggle to victory.

The national liberation brought about a dramatic change in the destiny of the Korean people who were forced to be under the colonial slavery for 40 years under the military occupation of the Japanese imperialists.

The Korean people, who were deprived of even their elementary right to survive, to say nothing of national sovereignty, by the outside forces and regarded it as their inevitable fate to suffer every kind of maltreatment and contempt, could exercise the true rights of human beings as the masters of the country.

All fetters in the way of independent development were liquidated and the bright future of building a prosperous country was opened, with the result that they turned out as one in the nation-building drive.

The workers of the then Kangson Steelworks, who were fully aware of their mission to restore to the original state the steelworks destroyed by the Japanese imperialists, made vigorous efforts to rehabilitate the electric furnace and turned out the first molten iron in two months.

While the workers of factories were rehabilitating the destroyed machines and workshops, the peasants in the countryside launched a vigorous campaign for increased grain production.

The peasants became the owners of land thanks to the promulgation of the Law on Agrarian Reform on March 5, 1946. True to the slogan “Greet the first spring in liberated Korea with increased production, don’t let even an inch of land lie idle!” presented by Kim Il Sung, they increased crop yields by improving the fertility of soil, giving helping hands to those in need of manpower, seeds, draught oxen and farming tools.

In those days, a large number of shock brigades for increasing agricultural production were organized throughout the country.

As a result, the crop yields in the next autumn after national liberation reached over 14,500,000 sok (1 sok = 5 U.S. bushels) of grains, an increase of over 3,400,000 sok against in 1945.

Kim Je Won, a peasant in Jaeryong County of the then Hwanghae Province, who had worked as a servant of a landlord before Korea’s liberation, donated 30 straw-sacks of polished rice he had harvested on his land distributed by the country in order to live up to its benefits.

This initiated the patriotic movement to donate rice among peasants. Thanks to their sincerity, the first university of the country and Mangyongdae Revolutionary School were built.

Various mass movements were conducted vigorously in different parts of the country, including the anti-illiteracy campaign initiated by Ri Kye San, a woman in Phyonggang County, Kangwon Province, and the campaign for increased production proposed by railway workers in Jongju.

The Pothong River improvement project started on May 21, Juche 35 (1946) as the first grand nature-remaking project of the Korean people after national liberation.

It was a huge project to build a 5-km-long embankment and remove over 420,000 cubic metres of earth. But the Pyongyang citizens completed it successfully by pooling their efforts and performing shining labour feats.

The Korean people, who became the masters of the factory, the land, and the country, turned out in the building of a new country with much more enthusiasm with each passing day.