A Massive Book-Donation Campaign

President Kim Il Sung said:

"A mass movement is an efficient way of mobilizing the masses. It is a revolutionary work method of accelerating the revolution and construction by relying on the collective strength of the masses."

The history of the revolutionary leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung, who cherished the opinion that belief in people wins the sky as a revolutionary belief and foundation of the revolution and embodied it in the course of revolution and construction, includes the story of building the science library of Kim Il Sung University in less than one month after the foundation of the university.

In the early days of its founding, there were many difficulties and bottlenecks in the work of Kim Il Sung University.

One of those was that the university did not have a proper library yet.

At that time, there was a ‘library' which was as small as a reading-room with only a few books.

In order to improve the level of education at university and for students to gain a more comprehensive knowledge, it was vital to have a large-scale library with lots of volumes.

But at that time, no one could find the right way to build and operate a library and solve the urgent problem of books and thus some of the individual teachers were assigned to collect books.

It was none other than President Kim Il Sung who solved this problem in most reasonable way.

He said that a library should be built as soon as possible since the university opened when he met an official of the university on September 19, Juche 35 (1946). He added that the university library should be a comprehensive and modern science library, and that the books to be collected for it should be of all the countries and times with all the valuable literature and data of our country in particular.

He also elucidated the way of building the library. He told us to collect the books possessed by individuals and bookstores and make sure that the massive campaign of book donation should be conducted by appealing to the local people and all the institutions, enterprises as well as businessmen and this will lead the entire people to actively engage in building the library.

The campaign was another popular movement launched by dint of the revolutionary mode peculiar to the President, who always trusted the masses and solved everything by relying on their strength.

Thanks to his wise leadership, a massive book-donation campaign was launched on a nationwide scale.

Patriotic people from all over the country actively turned out to the building of the library of Kim Il Sung University, and they volunteered to donate their valuable historical relics and books to the university, which they had kept hidden in the Japanese colonial period.

Meanwhile, valuable books collected from several parts by the officials and writers sent by the President, reached Pyongyang by sea.

Thanks to the sincere devotion of the people throughout the country, a science library with more than 50, 000 volumes on the shelf opened in October, Juche 35 (1946).

The foreigners who were in Korea at that time were surprised and said that it was an unbelievable miracle.

The wonderful science library built in less than one month after the establishment of the university was indeed a brilliant fruition and a noble crystallization of the wise leadership of the President.