Voice of Korea

/ Culture - Art and Sports

First Winner of WIPO National Award for Creativity

Dr. and Assoc. Prof. Choe Ryon, Teacher of Kim Il Sung University

Choe Ryon is the first winner of the WIPO National Award for Creativity in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. She wrote the novel "Make Your Youth Stay Young".

Choe Ryon said: "For a writer a work is as good as his or her child. This means that the writer devotes his or her energy to his or her work and completes it stage by stage with his or her painstaking efforts. As the work like my child has been highly praised, I feel as if I am a happy mother."
She was very fond of reading and writing and dreamed of becoming a novelist from her childhood.
After entering the Faculty of Korean Philology and Literature of Kim Il Sung University, she took to literature and became a teacher through the postgraduate course.
She said: "I love Kim Il Sung University. I respect scientists and educators of my university and love the vigorous researches and all life. So I reflected those experiences in my work.
While giving lectures to my students, I always maintained that the young people should live with high ideal and dream for the country. I wrote the novel with an urge to give all the young people in this country the true textbook of life telling with what kind of ideal and goal they should work."
The novel with a girl researcher making researches into an unfamiliar advanced material called graphen as a heroine impressively shows that patriotic conscience and attitude are more precious and essential than the talents and passion for the young scientists of new generation with strong emotion and appeal on the basis of feminine details.
It is for the first time that Choe Ryon wrote the novel this time. But she is well-known to the literary world as she wrote many works with their own characteristics and creative personality.
She wrote more than 60 works including the short story "Blessing", the epic "Dream of Korea" and the essay "Love and Motherland", which have all characteristic points.
Concerning it, she said:
"What is the happiness of a woman? Almost all my works deal with the happiness of women.
Generally speaking, it is the happiness of a woman to be loved by her husband and bring up her children well. To this end, she should have a social duty.
When I devote myself and make a contribution to the society, I can be loved by my husband and bring up my son wonderfully. This is the happiness of a woman, I can say.
Women will be heroines of all my works in the future, too."
In the novel "Make Your Youth Stay Young" and other works, Choe Ryon clarified truthfully yet meaningfully that for a woman, the value of her life lies in patriotism beyond the bounds of a family.
This is unthinkable apart from her life experience.
She graduated from the university and finished her postgraduate course without paying a penny. After her marriage, she could fully display her ability and talents under the social benefits for women.
In order to repay the gratitude she remained faithful to her duty as an educator and did not stop her creation even a day.
As a housewife of a family and mother bringing up her son, she is a lady writer who was awarded doctorate and associate professorship and became the first winner of the WIPO National Award for Creativity. She remains infinitely true and sincere to the literature and lives with a high goal to lead the thoughts and feelings of masses. Her tireless thinking and efforts go on.