– Where This Song Was Born –
The song “We Are the Happiest in the World” is a popular song that the entire Korean people love so much to sing while saying that it is an excellent song to be only in their country.
The words of this famous song were created by collective work at the then Haeju Bereaved Children’s School where war orphans lived and studied.
In January 1951 that the country was in wartime, the Cabinet resolution of the DPRK on setting up the schools for bereaved children of patriotic martyrs and constructing a larger number of orphanages was promulgated and subsequently the Political Committee of the Party Central Committee discussed and decided the measure to bring up bereaved children of patriotic martyrs and war orphans at state expense. As a result, orphanages and primary schools for orphans were erected everywhere in the country. Haeju Bereaved Children’s School was one of them.
On May 22, 1959, the President visited this school and asked war orphans whether rooms were small, bedclothes were thick, what meals they used to take, they ate meats normally, what about teaching program and condition and what they wanted to do after graduation and so on. There was overflowing kinship at that time between the President and war orphans who kept firm holds on the President individually to get closer to him and remain longer beside him.
Later, the President made war orphans enjoy a happy time everywhere they went on an inspection tour with delight as if they had met their parents and brothers and sent a lot of musical instruments such as piano, accordion and kayagum and so on to this school.
The warm affection of the President was truly boundless, as he had embraced them, as well as all other bereaved children of the country as his sons and daughters and made them live not in sorrow and with nothing to envy in the world.
