Mansudae Street taking shape in high gear in Pyongyang is changing its looks every day.

The exterior and interior of the apartment houses in the street are nearing completion. And the furniture intended for their rooms are being made to suit the emotion and aesthetic tastes of the Korean people.

Looking over Mansudae Street, the Pyongyangites remind themselves of the loving care shown by President Kim Il Sung and General Secretary Kim Jong Il to provide the people with better dwellings.

Under harsh conditions of the postwar days, the President took energetic measures to stabilize people's life as early as possible and took care that residential houses strictly met the will and requirements of the people.

The President visited a household in Chongnyon Street, not minding the driving snow in January Juche 47 (1958) and, hearing the simple wish of the housewife to have ondol (floor-heating system), lost no time in taking concrete measures to introduce ondol in multi-floor apartment houses.

Visiting a flat in Chollima Street in November 1970, the President said with concern the space of the rooms was small and reset the state standard of the space of each flat, stressing that the state standards should be set in the interests of the people.

The President always paid attention to the cultured life of agricultural working people, too. Making a round of village houses built tentatively in the suburbs of Pyongyang City in April 1973, he asked officials if they had heard the opinion of peasants.

When the officials told him they were very delighted, the President was deeply pleased and instructed them to build all the rural houses in that style.

Kim Jong Il saw to it that numerous apartment houses cropped up in Rakwon, Changgwang, Munsu and Kwangbok streets by working miracles unheard-of in the history of urban construction in the 1970s and the 1980s.

He inspected a tall apartment house in Changgwang Street in September 1980 and said it was really a high-class apartment and it was his desire to see all the people live in such houses.

Under the wise leadership of Kim Jong Il who is carrying forward in its entirety the idea of the President believing in people as in Heaven, more and more houses are mushrooming in urban and rural districts, unfolding the fairyland of the Songun era.