In mid-June Juche 57 (1968), President Kim Il Sung gave on-spot guidance to several sectors of North Hamgyong Province and examined a blueprint of an international hotel to be built in Chongjin City.

   Looking carefully at the blueprint, the President was so thoughtful of the fact that woollen carpet was to be laid on the interior floor of the hotel.

   After a while, he looked around the officials and said that it was the time-worn method of 18^th and 19^th centuries to lay the floor with woollen carpet which was difficult to handle and originally used in cold areas, asking why it should be used in the late 20^th century.

   The President said that woollen carpets are easily dusty, difficult to clean and unhygienic while Korean mats are much better than them. He continued with a hand gesture that a foreign head of state visited our country turned up his thumb at the Korean mat.

   In retrospect, from the age of the Three Kingdoms Koreans have already made mats with sedge abundant in our country to be used not only in the living room but also for an honoured guest at home or at various ceremonies, and when girls get married, it had been a custom to prepare mat to take with them.

   The sedge used for Korean mat is annual or perennial cyperaceous industrial crop which is native to our country.

   Our people made mat, basket, cushion, summer hat and the like with the stem of the sedge and used its leaf as a raw material for paper.

   The President said with pride that the Korean mat is the best in the world, stressing that we should not follow others but do in our own way in installing the equipment for the international hotel.