The Chollima era is proudly etched in the course of development of the DPRK replete with creations and transformations.

In the stirring era, all the Korean people, upholding the ideas and leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea, continuously made great leaps forward and innovations in every field of economic construction by waging a dynamic struggle to increase production and practise economy.

They broke from the existing concepts and formulas at their workplaces and thereby achieved remarkable successes in economic construction one after another.

Everything was utterly destroyed in the Korean war (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953) which was unleashed by the US imperialists. In the period of postwar rehabilitation, the economic situation of the country was so difficult that the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung said that 10 000 tons of more steel would greatly help the country. In hearty response to his appeal, the workers at the then Kangson Steel Plant produced 120 000 tons with a 60 000-ton-capacity blooming mill, kindling the torch for great upsurge and launching a drive for increased production called Chollima movement.

Following suit, the workers in the metallurgical industry sector mass-produced section steel, round steel, steel plate and special steel of various sizes, making 1957 a year of increased production.

In 1960 the share taken by machine-building industry in the value of total industrial output increased to 21.3 percent from 17.3 percent in 1956 and the rate of domestic supply of machinery and equipment reached 90.6 percent as against 46.5 percent in 1956, fully displaying the potentials of the country’s machine-building industry dashing towards socialist industrialization.

The railway workers manufactured an electric locomotive in a short span of two years entirely by their own efforts and technology. Until then electric locomotive was regarded as an ensemble of modern electrical engineering and machine-building industry and made only in a few developed nations.

Builders constructed a large vinalon factory in a little more than a year in a patriotic bid to establish a modern, self-sufficient chemical industry base.

Large power plants including Jangjingang Power Station No. 5 and small- and medium-sized power stations were built across the country, creating additional generating capacity of 93 000 kW of electricity in 1959.

The coal-mining industry developed many coal mines, large and small, thus securing 3.5 times more reserve coal in late 1960 than that in 1956.

Dynamic mass-based movements were launched under the collectivist slogan of “One for all and all for one!”

A typical example was the Chollima workteam movement. More than 8 600 workteams across the country took part in this movement in less than 18 months after it started and various other movements named after Chollima were launched throughout the country.

In the flames of great Chollima upsurge, the First Five-year National Economic Plan was carried out in two years and a half in terms of the value of total industrial output and in four years in terms of items of products. And industrial production increased at the annual average rate of stunning 19.1 percent from 1957.

In the era ordinary persons developed into heroes and heroines and created what they called miracles of Chollima and the spirit of the times. The revolutionary spirit and work style of the heroic generation in the era is still carried forward generation after generation as an element of ideological and spiritual features and mettle of creation unique to the Korean people.

Ko Chol Hwa