The great leader Comrade
"Our honoured disabled ex-soldiers are revolutionaries, who fought valiantly at the risk of their lives for their country and fellow people, and they are precious treasures of the country."
An honoured disabled soldier poet Jo Kwang Won now lives happily in a flat in Chungsong-dong No.2, Rangnang District, Pyongyang.
He was only 21 years old when he lost his two legs and his right arm while saving a lot of people from a running train on his military mission.
Jo Kwang Won, who was in his blooming youth and was full of great dreams and ambitions, felt completely helpless and could hardly suppress the feeling of despair.
"What should I do and how should I start my new life now?"
Though crippled, he could not sit idle and live in despair. While he was under medical treatment in the military hospital he started learning to write with his left hand. He felt deep in his heart that his whole life would be lost if he lost his spiritual power and will.
Bedridden at the hospital and at home, he missed his parents, his teachers, his alma mater and his comrades-in-arms so much. The memories of them gave him an inspiration and he would write impromptu poems. He felt a strong urge to contribute to the society as a proud citizen. So he would go to the factories, enterprises, construction sites and cooperative farms with other disabled soldiers to do agitation activities, singing songs and reciting impromptu poems on the spot.
He felt grateful to his dedicated wife and wanted to show her that he could also do something for the country.
With a high ambition to produce masterpieces that fully reflect the reality and inspire people, he wrote many poems and many of them have been published including "Standing on the stairs of human love", "The man I am familiar with", "Green grass", "Full of spring fragrance" and "A shoal of fish". Though he was in his sick bed his heart could feel keener than anyone the sentiment of the fatherland.
Upon hearing that dozens of dead bodies of the people killed during the war were excavated in Susan-ri, Kangso district, he published the poem "Strata of blood" in which he cried out that this land had never-to-be forgotten strata of blood, the strata of class. He also made public a selection of poems "Sinchon has not been fully paid" after looking around Sinchon where the stains of barbaric atrocities of the US imperialists were still fresh.
His poem came top in the Mass Literature Prize Contest and won "June 4th Literature Prize."
With his poem published in the newspapers and his fame growing his heart was always heading for Mt. Paektu, the sacred mountain of revolution.
He set out on the journey to Mt. Paektu with his wife. When the group arrived at Janggun Peak after a long march through icy snowstorm and strong hailstorm, he suddenly flung away his sticks before anyone could stop him, stood on his prosthetic legs from his wheelchair for the first time, walked a few steps and shouted out.
"Ah, Mt. Paektu, you raised me up!"
Mt. Paektu worked a miracle and that anecdote developed into a poem.
This is how an honoured disabled soldier without his two legs and right arm became a poet well known to and loved by people by writing so many good poems displaying a strong will and indomitable efforts for ten years.
