The Pothong River, a tributary of the Taedong River flowing through the central part of Pyongyang City, had inflicted untold disasters and sufferings upon its inhabitants before the liberation.

President Kim Il Sung initiated the river improvement project for freeing the citizens from natural disasters and broke ground first to signal its start on May 21, Juche 35 (1946). And he implanted the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance into the mind of the participants in the project, saying that we should accomplish such projects by our own efforts, even though we have to tighten our belts and that we should not want any help from others but carry out the Pothong River improvement project by ourselves, overcoming all hardships.

In fact, it was a huge project as hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of earth had to be removed and five kilometer-long embankment should be built before the rainy season. July and August are the rainy season in Korea.

True to the noble intention of the President, Pyongyangites formed a construction corps and pushed ahead with the project by their own efforts. After all, they could finish this vast project only in 55 days with more than 500 000 man-days of labor. During their occupation of Korea, the Japanese imperialists, too, attempted to carry out such project for ten years with mobilization of three million people, but in vain.

At that time newspapers described as epoch-making the successful project, the first victory in the grand nature-remaking work won by the Korean people who turned out in building a powerful, independent and sovereign state by their own efforts.

Today the DPRK people are displaying the said revolutionary spirit of self-reliance in the on-going offensive for making a breakthrough head-on to the full.