Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Keep Your Feet Firmly Planted on This Land and Look Out Over the World
The Natural Science Research Centre at Kim Il Sung University has many promising young scientists who are displaying their high abilities with a global view. Some time ago I had a chance to meet them.

Conquering the Unknown World

Researcher Jong Un Gi, 28, was good at his studies in his childhood. In particular he was very interested in physics. After graduating from secondary school, he was enrolled at the Faculty of Physics, Kim Il Sung University as he had wished. This brought an immense happiness to him.

As he had been fond of conceiving and making things from his secondary school days, he studied hard with unusual enthusiasm like a thirsty person looks for water. After he finished the university course, he went on to a postgraduate school as he was eager to learn more. His spirit of inquiry was so strong that his knowledge got consolidated and his view wider day by day.

As a postgraduate student he published a paper on phase change between diamond and graphite in a well-known Dutch magazine. It was his debut in the global physical field.

Working as a researcher at the Natural Science Research Centre, he soon began to distinguish himself. Over the last year he published six papers in different magazines of the world including a physics review magazine of the American Physics Society. He says, “The new 3G solar cell is now in the basic theoretical and experimental stage around the world. It needs solution of lots of problems.

I’ve presented a paper on inherent stability of this solar cell material and gave basic theoretical proof on what kind of element is good for increasing the inherent stability. Now I’m studying about the inherent stability of certain materials that changes according to light, humidity and temperature.”

He is fluent in three languages—English, Chinese and Japanese. He sometimes gives lectures to students. Giving lectures is indispensable to him because it helps him to find out new problems and make deeper studies of them. The university council has designated him as promising scientist of the highest ability in his 20s.

Days after he got married in April this year, he was provided with a new flat on the 48th floor of a 70-storeyed skyscraper in the newly erected Ryomyong Street, which is the highest apartment building in Korea. Whenever entering his new flat of a hundred and tens of square metres, he tells himself, “I’ll try harder to be an explorer of an unknown world.”

With His Feet Planted on Reality

Ri Kyong Jun, a researcher, was born in a scholar’s family. His father is a professor and a doctor at the Faculty of Physics, Kim Il Sung University and his mother was a journalist. He became a physicist thanks to the encouragement and help from his mother. His mother loved and respected her husband and asked her son to be a physicist like his father.

Listening to his father’s lectures during his university days, Kyong Jun nourished a dream of doing his own research, and he started a joint research with his father after he became a postgraduate student.

Seeking their high aim of practical introduction, they manufactured a 3D printer for the first time in the country. His father took charge of development of the hardware while Kyong Jun looked after programs. The veteran professor and the young scientist helped each other to accomplish the research work as soon as possible. As the new printer makes sure to save time, expenses and labour in making complicated parts of the machine, it was keenly needed in the manufacturing field.

“In the course of research work, my ability has improved. Indeed, it was a course of cultivating my self-confidence to make whatever I want. In the future, too, I’ll solve urgent problems that the reality needs,” Kyong Jun says. He is regarded as a competent young scientist in the university. Still single, he says, “I’d like to marry a girl who will be able to push and encourage me in the research work as my mother did.”

No comments: