One July day in 1951 when the fierce Fatherland Liberation War was in height, President Kim Il Sung saw a mortar unit crossing a high pass. He approached the artillerymen who were climbing up the steep pass while shouldering heavy disjointed base plates, gun carriages and barrels and asked them whether they were laborious. The latter answered unanimously that they were not.
Kim Il Sung summoned the artillery commander as soon as he arrived at the Supreme Headquarters and told him that the artillerymen would feel it laborious to pass mountains with 82-mm mortars and shells on their shoulders. Kim Il Sung told him that, if they used horses in carrying mortars and shells, the horses would lighten their burdens and the artillery unit would pass the mountains rapidly in such a topographical condition that there were many mountains, rivers and streams in the country.
Later, the artillerymen of the mortar units of the Korean People’s Army passed over steep mountains rapidly with their mortars and shells on the back of horses, thus annihilating the enemy.
