Pyongyang Grand Theatre and Okryu Restaurant that are placed as the architecture of the Korean style on the bank of the River Taedong, are well known not only among the Korean people but also in the world as a pride of Pyongyang.

  People who visit the Pyongyang Grand Theatre and the Okryu Restaurant well enjoy the performance and the Pyongyang cold noodle, and also drink in the elegance of the architecture.

  There is a touching story on the construction of these structures of Korean style.

  In April Juche 45 (1956) when the Pyongyang Grand Theatre was under design, President Kim Il Sung was reported from an official on the matters arising in its planning.

  At that time some specialists, being driven by a ready-made idea that Korean-style architecture could not be built on a large scale, were going to design the theatre on a small scale regarding that it was a Korean style to do so. Meanwhile, some people saying that it was useless to preserve national traits in modern architecture and it was a restorationism to build the theatre in the Korean style, and insisted that the theatre reflected in the master plan should be in the Western style.

  Debriefing such matters, the President instructed that the design should be done promptly to build the theatre as the most excellent one in Korea and also in the East. He continued that it was a wrong idea that a large-scaled theatre should only be occidental as some people thought, and said that the big theatre which was to be built in Pyongyang should be constructed on a beautiful place in Korean style by all means.

  Also, the President instructed several times that the Okryu Restaurant should be built in Korean style and visited the construction site to give detailed guidance and take necessary measures.

  Early in February Juche 49 (1960), President Kim Il Sung visited the construction site of the Okryu Restaurant where the frame fabrication was about to finish.

  Looking at the general map of the restaurant, he pointed the low corner rafters of the roof and instructed they should be raised like the wings of a flying crane as the roof of the Taedong Gate.

  Although he had already taught several times to build the Okryu Restaurant in Korean style, the designers had not been realizing his aspirations correctly.

  Lunchtime already passed but the President could not readily leave the construction site.

  At that point, an official reported that the construction of the restaurant in Korean style would require lots of building materials such as iron bars, timbers and building stones. The President didn’t blame him for his imprudence and said that building stones would be soon supplied, for a railway line into the Onchon Quarry had been laid. And he stressed that even though we could lack in the iron bars, timbers and paints, we must decisively construct this building in Korean style.

  As this, thanks to the unshakable will of the President to preserve and glorify the excellent tradition of the national style of architecture and to his benevolent measures of loving people, the Pyongyang Grand Theatre and the Okryu Restaurant were constructed in a Korean-style architecture at the centre of the capital like the shape of a crane with its feathers fully spread ready to fly.