North Korea: The old people danced all night

In Chilbong, in North Hwanghae Province, World Vision contributed to the community’s desire for clean water as its most urgent need.

Ministry of Agriculture deputy director Chun Myung-Chol told me that homes, a clinic, the school, pre-schools and kindergartens were all connected to the new water supply.

“Water is so very precious here that people used to say, ‘I can give you a bowl of rice, but not a bowl of water’,” he explained. “It was the most precious thing in the community, and that was when they were using dirty stream water.

“When the water project was completed and they had tap water in the village, the old people came out and danced for the whole day and night.”

Housewife and mother-of-two Mrs Kim Yong-Suk happily turned on her gushing kitchen tap for me, and said she reckoned she used to walk the 300-metre distance to a hand-dug well 30 times a day. Looking after her husband and children aged nine and 14 is far easier now.

“I can keep my house clean and I can do the laundry more easily,” she told me. “Sometimes my children used to get stomach aches and diarrhoea, but they don’t say that any more. And the water tastes good, too!”

This success has made the community keen to try to fix another problem – its lack of firewood for cooking and heating the homes in the freezing winters. Right now, people are walking 12 kilometres to cut branches from trees and carry them home.

The answer, a World Vision technician believes, is biogas. Chicken manure, available from a vast State-run chicken factory up the road, will be fermented to generate burnable gas that will be piped to local homes – after the occupants have been taught all the safety rules.

As my colleagues and I look on, some 50 volunteers are digging out the foundations of the new biogas plant, under the supervision of engineer Chol Jon-Sung. Every communal activity in North Korea is monitored by the state and soon a young lady connects a portable loudspeaker to a car battery and broadcasts stimulating Party songs to encourage vigorous labour.

The school, clinic, nursery, kindergarten and 100 local homes will all be connected to the gas supply once it is complete.

This is the fourth and final glimpse into World Vision's work in North Korea from WVI President Kevin Jenkins.