Kim Song Il, department director of the Ministry of General Education of the Education Commission, told KCNA:

The opening ceremonies of the school year are of great significance as the universal 12-year compulsory education is enforced all over the country this year.

All the schools in the country, including 100-odd technical senior middle schools, are fully equipped with school things, experiment and practice apparatuses and teaching aids under the care of the whole society.

The new freshmen received new school uniforms, bags and various kinds of school things thanks to the benefits of the Workers' Party of Korea and the state. And they had the first lessons amid the warm welcome by their teachers, parents and senior students.

Twin boy and girl, Ri Kwang Rim and Ri Yun Jong, new pupils of Changdok School, said that they are proud of studying at the school where the great leader Generalissimo Kim Il Sung studied, adding they would study hard to grow up into talented persons of prospering socialist Korea.

Kim Un Gyong, a new student of Wonhung Technical Senior Middle School in Samsok District, Pyongyang, said she would study harder and harder to prepare herself as one in charge of scientific fruit farming.

Ri Son Mi, mother of Kim Song Gyu who is a new pupil of Pyongyang Primary School No. 4, said that our children are studying to their heart's content thanks to the most advantageous socialist educational system in the world provided and glorified by the peerlessly great persons. She expressed her mind to live up to the benevolence by bringing up her children well.