Recently, The Pyongyang Times reporter Pang Un Ju visited the Sariwon Schoolchildren’s Palace which was newly built in the city of Sariwon of North Hwanghae Province.

Comprising a four-storeyed main building, theatre and gymnasium in a large area, it looked attractive at first sight for its modern architectural beauty well suited to the juvenile psychology.

Kim Jong Sun, director of the palace, said that it was built as a comprehensive extracurricular educational base for schoolchildren in December last year under the loving care of the Workers’ Party of Korea which regards children as precious treasures more valuable than billions of tons of gold and takes solicitous care of them.

According to her, the palace has dozens of hobby group rooms in the fields of art, science and sports and some 400 students in the city are presently developing talents in the hobby groups of their choice.

Guided by the director, I first dropped in at the national instrument hobby group room.

There, some students were practising kayagum, jottae, okryugum and janggo.

The instructor of the group said that the students are very eager to master the national musical instruments and improve their skills, and introduced me to Jo A Jong, a third-year primary schoolgirl.

Jo won the first place in the treble jottae solo contest of the 59th National Schoolchildren’s Art Festival last year. She said she is very fond of the instrument and would become an excellent jottae player.

Then, I walked into the narrative art hobby group room where instructor Yu Ok Ju was intently guiding the students’ narrating practice. I later found out that she was one of the most distinguished instructors of the institution.

The director told me that Yu guided the narration of the fairy play “Expelled Turtle” which was highly acclaimed by the audience at the New Year performance given by schoolchildren in the province on the New Year’s Day this year. She also said that Ri Ye Hyon and Kim Tae Gwon, who were trained by Yu, took the first place in the one-person show category of the individual contest of the 59th National Schoolchildren’s Art Festival.

She went on to say that thanks to the efforts of the instructors of the palace, many members of hobby groups performed in the New Year performance this year to show off their talents and please the audience as well as their parents. Listening to her story, I looked round the hobby group rooms for vocal music, fine art, information technology and Taekwon-Do, among others.

In every room, I could see enthusiastic instructors working hard to train more talented students by improving the quality of extracurricular education and cheerful schoolchildren developing their talents to their heart’s content.

Picturing the rosy future of the schoolchildren who are growing up in the bosom of the socialist motherland where all their cherished dreams come true, as a children’s popular song says, I left the Sariwon Schoolchildren’s Palace.