“Unsan County is covered with mountains and hills on all four sides and a ramified web of rivers and streams. So it was often hit by flood in rainy seasons, but now it has undergone a sea change,” say residents of the mountainous county in North Phyongan Province. Improvement of river banks Visitors to Unsan county town can see improved river banks. According to its residents, the county town sits at a place where the Kuryong River with a large basin joins the Uhyon Stream. So heavy rains often inundated about 40 percent of the county town. “We had to improve the river banks before anything else to protect farmland and residential quarters from flood damage,” said Ri Tok Jun, head of the county land and environment protection and management department. He said the county has many rivers including the Samthan, Tapha and Munam streams with a total length of over 100 kilometres. The county came up with an ambitious plan to build banks along all rivers strong enough to control any flood and carried it out step by step. “We built the river banks stronger with the stones and soil we obtained by digging the river bottom and constructed roads over them for all kinds of vehicles. It was just like killing two birds with one stone,” Ri said. In the Kuryong River improvement project alone the banks were rebuilt over two metres higher than previously in a distance of several thousand metres and a 12m wide roundabout road to the county town constructed over them. The county population carried out millions of cubic metres of ground filling and river dredging and covered stones over hundreds of thousands of square metres of the river banks in recent six years. Roads revamped Roads in Unsan County have taken on new looks. In particular, roads on passes have seen further improvement in safety and technical conditions. “The county has many passes and as roads on some of them had many bends and were steep and narrow, they obstructed vehicular traffic in the past,” said Pak Su Nam, an official of the county land and environment protection and management department. But the dozens of kilometres distance of the road over Uhyon Pass far from the county town has been rebuilt two times wider than before, retaining walls and ditches built in high quality and several bridges and other structures constructed, completely improving its technical conditions. Most noticeable in the reconstruction of roads in the county is that mobile stone crushers have been set up at intervals of several kilometres of the road and tens of thousands of cubic metres of crushed stones produced there are laid over the roads every year to ensure evenness of road surface. The county regularly maintains roads while technically upgrading eight kilometres of roads every year according to its long-term plan. As a result, the main and branch roads in the county town have newly been paved and several roads of the county updated. ‘This is our village’ The panoramic view of the county town catches the eyes of visitors as it looks like a picture. Multi-storeyed apartment houses line up along the tidy and straight roads behind street trees, public buildings stand in fashionable styles, beautiful green lawns with a new species of turf sprawl over a large area and flower beds and flowerpot stands are covered with a variety of flowers. The stylish county gymnasium, hall of schoolchildren, wading pool, youth park and other cultural and leisure activity centres and public welfare facilities add colours to the beautiful scenery. On roof top of the county hall of schoolchildren is a green area in which green lawns, various trees and flowering plants grow. The county catfish farm produces hundreds of tons of catfish every year by using hot spring abundant in the county, enriching the dietary life of the county population. Other eye-catchers are new and reconstructed buildings in the county town and all other villages coated with acrylic water paints made in the county. Now Unsan people proudly say that they have realized through experience that proper land management leads them to happy life and rosier future. “We have built with our hands a good place to work and live in and now we do not envy urban dwellers. This is where we live.”