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Ri Po Ik, Ardent Patriot

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

   Pyongyang, May 31 (KCNA) -- May 31 is the birth anniversary of ardent patriot Ri Po Ik, grandmother of President Kim Il Sung.
    She was born into an honest but poor family with strong sense of justice in Oryu-ri, Sadong District, Pyongyang in 1876.
    She lived with fortitude, remaining faithful to the national principles even in the dire poverty and hard toil.
    She instructed her sons that one should be always righteous. After Kim Hyong Jik, her eldest son, embarked on the road of revolutionary struggle, she actively encouraged and backed up him in his revolutionary activities, saying that in order to achieve the great cause of national liberation, a man should fight to the end with a firm determination.
    After Kim Hyong Gwon, her third son, took part in the revolutionary struggle, following his eldest brother, the Japanese imperialists further intensified outrages on the Mangyongdae family, but she did not yield her revolutionary constancy.
    When Kim Hyong Jik passed away in Juche 15 (1926), she even in deep sorrow said to President Kim Il Sung:
    "You must pick up the cause where he left off and win back the country, come what may. You may have no chance to take care of me or your mother, as is your filial duty, but you must give yourself heart and soul to the cause of Korea's independence. "
    When the President waged the anti-Japanese armed struggle, the Japanese imperialists sent renegades of the revolution to the house in Mangyongdae, carrying a fat roll of bank-notes with them in an attempt to make him "surrender".
    They tried to tempt her with the words that they would give him the post of commander of their Kwantung Army or commander of the Army present in Korea if he came over to them, but they failed.
    They forced her to join in the "surrender campaign" and dragged her to the rugged mountains of the shore of the Amnok River and northeastern areas in China, but they did not attain their purpose.
    At last he liberated the country. On October 14, 1945 when the President called at Mangyongdae, his dear native village, twenty years after he had left there, she said with happiness that she freed herself from life-long worries.
    Though her grandson was the head of state, Ri Po Ik, an ardent patriot, lived a frugal life, doing farming till the last moments of her life and died at the age of eighty-three.