Throughout the world orphans wandering about the streets, number 100 million; among the hundreds of thousands emigrate to other countries or are even sold in the slave markets of a modern version.
Even the developed countries cannot solve the problem of orphans “showing the darkest aspect of the state and society” with social development and wealth.
However, it is very interesting that there is a country that has solved this problem; that is none other than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The happiness and future of children can be assured only by the bosom which looks after them at every step, not by words of sympathy, as a flower bud needs light and heat as well as human’s care to come into full blossom.
The Pyongyang Baby Home and Orphanage look like a mother spreading out her arms to embrace her children, drawing the attention of the viewers.
There are sleeping rooms, rooms of intelligent games that make the children give free rein to their power of imagination and inquiry, inner courts where they can have sunbathing in fresh air, outdoor and indoor wading pools, and other rooms numbering over 250.
Even the steps are delicately built so that the naughty children would not hurt themselves, and the tables and chairs of the dining rooms were made to suit their physical conditions.
Kitchen facilities and utensils satisfy their psychology, making them feel their parental affection.
Medical buildings with medical, surgery, and dental departments and barber’s shops are flawless, and the playrooms and the corridors are decorated with relief cartoon pictures, leading the people who visit them immediately to feel as if they were in a fairyland.
These can be called palaces and cradles for the orphans, which even rich countries have never built, which cannot be built on the strength of the doctrine advocating “charity” and “philanthropy,” and which can be found nowhere else in the world.
When the Korean war (1950-1953) broke out, the DPRK had already established the system by which the state takes full responsibility for the upbringing and education of the bereaved children.
What is more surprising is the fact that not only dozens of primary schools and kindergartens for orphans were set up but also a campaign involving the whole of society was launched to take care of the orphans, in which cadres and women volunteered to become their parents.
Today it has become a social climate that the state, as well as common people, volunteers to take care of the children without parents as they would do their own.
For instance, a girl who was working at a factory brought two orphans to take care of them; there are some who take care of ten, twenty, thirty, even more than a hundred orphans.
The Westerners, who are trying to find fault with the “human rights” situation of the DPRK, are well-advised to go to the Pyongyang Baby Home and Orphanage to see the reality with their own eyes. There they will find that the DPRK regards the children, who represent its hope and future, as treasures more valuable than billions of tons of gold, and spares nothing for them.