Warm Benevolence Reflected in a Letter
Preserved as they were at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum are letters between the brave fighters on the front and the people.
The timeworn discolored letters tell different stories but running through all of them are strong confidence in victory, optimism and feelings of army-people solidarity.
The letters which passed between the front and the rear served as a bloodline which hardened the bonds between the fighters at the height and the people and another weapon which was more powerful than guns.
In December １９５２, a meeting of high-ranking officers of the Korean People’s Army was held under the guidance of President
One day, the President was informed that Ryu Kyong Su, commander of the Third Corps, went out somewhere after the meeting every day and returned late in the evening.
Reading that he was worrying himself with an unavoidable condition, the President asked him before the meeting began the following day where he had been.
Ryu Kyong Su told him the following story.
Going round the units of the corps the day before he went to the Supreme Headquarters in order to take part in the meeting, he realized a soldier was troubled with anxiety for his family whose life or death he didn’t know.
Ryu told the soldier he was going to Pyongyang the following day and recommended the soldier to write a letter, promising he would find his family without fail.
Consequently, Ryu went to Pyongyang with the soldier’s letter and went out to the city every day after the meeting, tracing rumors, to find his parents.
The President felt so disappointed about Ryu not informing him of the situation and earnestly taught that it was by no means a trivial matter.
He said the young soldier fighting on the front would be so lonely when other soldiers were reading letters from their parents, wives and children, relatives and friends.
The same goes for his parents in the home village who would feel upset when others were gladly reading letters from sons and husbands, he added.
Ryu felt a lump in his throat.
Looking round Ryu and other commanding officers, the President instructed that the tenser the situation was and the greater the hardship was, the more carefully we had to look after the people and the soldiers lest there should be any slight worries in their minds.
He taught that the political officials and officers, in particular, had to read from the faces of soldiers what they were thinking and what difficulty they had.
The President proposed to join efforts to find the parents of the soldier by mobilizing the officials of the Party and power organs.
Thus, a measure was taken to deliver the letter of the solider to his parents at a meeting for discussing the issue for dealing with the enemies’ "new offensive".
From that day on, all the officials of the Party and power organs were mobilized to find the house of the soldier.
Thanks to the attentive benevolence of the President, they traced the house of the soldier to a village in Taedong County and the letter from the son was conveyed to his parents amid the tearful excitement of everyone.
The parents wrote in the reply letter to their son that no one loves and cares for the people so sincerely as General
Keeping such letters in their hearts, the brave soldiers of the Korean People’s Army blocked the firing enemy pillboxes with their bodies, shouting "Long live General
Rodong Sinmun