Flowing Water and Patriotism
On August 1, 2007, Kim Jong Il inspected a Korean People’s Army unit. He stopped at the vegetable greenhouse of the unit. It was wide and many kinds of growing vegetables including cucumber presented a good sight. As he was looking round the greenhouse with a pleased air, the commander of the unit told him that the greenhouse was heated by the hot spring water. The Chairman asked him questions about the water’s temperature, ingredients of the hot spring, the quality test of the water, and the volume of water flowing into the greenhouse. Pleased with the commander’s concrete explanation, he praised the officers of the unit for their efforts to use efficiently the hot spring. The hot spring water was used in the heating of the unit’s nine places: greenhouse, bath house, laundry, barber’s shop, hot spring treatment room, indoor swimming pool, horticultural greenhouse and mushroom culture and bean sprout rooms.
He praised them again for full use of the hot spring, adding that in other places hot spring water was used only for medical purpose. The Chairman said meaningfully, “Patriotism is expressed in sparing and efficiently using the flowing water.”
In fact, the unit’s commanding officers did nothing more than using the hot spring water for the soldiers’ material and cultural welfare in compliance with the intentions of the Chairman who had designated the unit’s base near the hot spring water.
After his visit, the officers of the unit resolved firmly to spare and take better care of every tree and every blade of grass and even a drop of water of the country.
