Leader Kim Jong Il always believed in the people as in heaven, spared nothing for them and worked energetically to give the best things to them like President Kim Il Sung had done.
The Ice Rink, the monumental edifice in the era of the Workers’ Party was built with a peculiar architectural form on the bank of the Pothong River. It contains the moving story that leader Kim Jong Il devoted his all to provide the people with a fine sports, cultural and amusement centre.
Early in the morning on August 13, 1981, the newly-built Ice Rink was brimmed over with joy and happiness of the officials and builders.
That morning leader Kim Jong Il was to make an on-site guidance to the Ice Rink whose interior was completed.
The officials who completed last-stage work of the interior and waited for its inaugural ceremony from a few days ago made round of the enormous creation with pride and excitement.
They thought that every part of the Ice Rink was perfectly designed and built—architectural form is peculiar, skating space and auditorium big and wide and players’ rooms, saunas and resting rooms furnished with modern equipment.
But their thoughts were soon turned into heartbroken self-reproach.
When leader Kim Jong Il visited the Ice Rink, he opened and shut the door leading to the inside of the Rink from the hall on the ground floor and said that the door to be used by many people would not last long as it was as same as that of a guest house. Saying that the door was fixed without deep consideration, he said that formalism was prevalent in the current design and construction and it was a wrong idea to design and build every building without consideration and hand it over to the organs concerned.
He came out to the corridor and looked round walls, columns, floors and stairs of the hall one by one. Pointing out that the walls were roughly plastered with coating material in an easy way, he said that plastering the inside walls with coating material was unprecedented in the construction history and that tiling the floor for many passersby degraded the building.
Then he asked the officials if they complied with the people’s opinions when it was under construction.
One official answered that they collected opinions only among the designers. Leader Kim Jong Il said that anything only the designers like is not useful but what the people like is really good one. He said the Ice Rink looked like a “beauty at a distance.”
A “beauty at a distance” means that one looks pretty at a distance but looks ugly nearby.
The officials felt guilty, thinking that the Ice Rink was built not as a “beauty nearby and at a distance” or a “double beauty”, but as a “beauty at a distance” due to their formalism. Leader Kim Jong Il looked at them and scolded them mildly.
Saying that the present Ice Rink can not be presented to the people, he continued as follows; the Ice Rink is not a possession of an individual but the building to be used by the people. That is why it is important to build it with sincerity. It is necessary to scratch away coating materials pasted on the walls of its interior and columns, off the tiles on the floor of the hall and plaster again the back of the stairs out of sight.
It is by no means easy to destroy those that consumed much material and labour and do them again. However leader Kim Jong Il demanded so strictly to give only best ones to the people.
The Ice Rink had been rebuilt and turned a “beauty at a distance” into a “double beauty” before it was inaugurated.
