On July 26 July 90(2001), Chairman Kim Jong Il was on the train on the first day of his visit to Russia, which lasted for 20-odd days.
When the train just entered the bridge over the Tuman River, the Chairman drew back the curtain and looked down on the Tuman River. And he said that he was very thoughtful though he was not sure whether it was because he was crossing the river on a visit to a foreign country.
As an official told him that the river brings back many memories, the Chairman recalled the time when he went to the construction site in Wangjaesan passing by Hoeryong (the birthplace of anti-Japanese war heroine Kim Jong Suk) without stopping 26 years ago, and said that his mother once told him that the Tuman River was a river of grudge and bloody tears when she crossed it with her parents.
He continued to say that the Tuman River, which was a river of grudge in the past, became that of struggle and hope during the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle led by President Kim Il Sung and today turned into that of paradise and happiness flowing with people`s joy.
The river teaches us a profound philosophy, he said, and continued that it is because whether a river becomes that of paradise and happiness or that of grudge and bitter tears depends on whether the nation has a great leader or not, even though the river is associated with the soul of the nation with a long history and deep root.
And he stressed that we have to push forward with the construction of a socialist power more dynamically in order not to repeat such a miserable life of the past.
