Early in April Juche 68(1979), Chairman Kim Jong Il climbed up on top of a building under construction.
Looking at the scene before him, the Chairman pointed at a vast site on the banks of the Pothong River where the Changgwang Health Complex stands at present and proposed the accompanying officials building a public bathhouse there.
It was so unexpected that the officials wondered why he was going to build a mere bath at such an excellent location.
Then the Chairman told them that it was the site of Thosongrang filled with sorrow which had been submerged by only three days of rain to leave the poverty-stricken residents homeless and cleaned out.
Thosongrang was a synonym for distress to the Pyongyangites back in the days when Korea was under Japanese military rule.
Only then could the officials realize his noble intention to make the people, who had suffered so much due to water, lead a happier and more civilized life by dint of water, and guessed that the public bathhouse he intended to build was beyond their imagination.
Eventually the modern Changgwang Health Complex was built on the banks of the Pothong River.
Happy laughter of the people relaxing their bodies in the clean and clear water came to be heard all the year round in the public amenity which was built at the site of Thosongrang with a lamentable past.
