Oh dear! The new school year is just in the offing and I’ve got a lot to do, thought a girl, standing on the seashore.
She looked sad and her face was just about to cry. She was a teacher at the branch school on an islet.
She left the islet to attend an in-service training course on the land during the winter vacation. But she could not return to it as the temperature dropped suddenly and the sea froze, blocking the sea route. She had no choice but to wait till it was opened.
She went back to her lodging in great disappointment. But her mind flashed back to her students who would be waiting for her eagerly. Tears welled up in her eyes.
But what a pleasant surprise!
On February 14, Juche 73 (1984), someone came to her lodging hurriedly and told her to get ready at once for a flight, which was arranged for her.
She wondered if she was dreaming. So she pinched her hand, but it was not a dream.
No, it was not a dream. It was real.
The Chairman was reported on the fact that a girl teacher was crying as she couldn’t give her first lesson in the new school year and saw that a flight was arranged for her.
A helicopter took off with only one passenger, the girl teacher, on board.
She felt as if she was a heroine in a fantasy floating in the sky. Down below the lighthouse islet, her branch school and an airport came in sight. It was a helipad rather than an airport, to be exact.
The helipad also tells an impressive story.
There was no airport on the lighthouse islet till the year before.
So, in case freight was carried to and from the islet by a helicopter it had to load or unload it while in the air.
The Chairman saw the inconveniences the islet inhabitants felt and took a benevolent measure to build a helipad that summer for only a few houses on the islet, which is so small that it is not marked even as a dot on the map.
The first passenger who landed on this helipad was the girl teacher who brings up the “kings” of the country.
As a result, the bell also rang at the branch school on the lighthouse islet to signal the start of the new school term on the same day and at the same time as at all other schools across the country.
