Wujiazi we formed a performance group based at Samsong school led by Kye Yong-chun. It was during this time that I was completing the script for The Flower Girl, which I had started whilst I was in Jilin City. Upon finishing the script, production of the opera began, and we staged the opera in the Samsong school hall on the 13th anniversary of the October Revolution. For many years after liberation, the opera hadn't been performed since, until it was improved and adapted for film, and re-written as a novel, under the guidance of the Organising Secretary (Kim Jong-il) and released in the early 1970s. Although it is commonly stated that Kim Il-sung was the sole author of the production, many critics in China cast doubts over the reliability of the claim, and suggest that other North Korean writers may have also had some form of interaction in the opera's production. The first official premiere of the opera production was held on November 30, 1972, in Pyongyang, where it was hailed as a great success. According to official North Korean reports, in April 1968, Kim Jong-il suggested that another revolutionary opera, Sea of Blood, be adapted into a movie. Since then, other works have also been adapted into movies "under his guidance", with The Flower Girl also being adapted. The opera was intended to promote the communist ideology, by incorporating themes such as the class struggle against the bourgeois; such themes were similarly maintained in the film. In April 1972, the film adaptation was officially launched. The film was directed by Choe Ik-kyu and the script was written by Pak Hak; Paekdu-san Group was responsible for the production of the film, which was filmed in color. Reception According to Paul Fischer, the author of A Kim Jong-Il Production, "it is almost impossible to exaggerate" the importance of The Flower Girl to North Korea's cultural history. The film was immensely popular both domestically and abroad, particularly in China. It was the first North Korean film to win an international film award, at the 18th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1972, and remained the only one until the 1980s. The opera and its film adaptation were both well received in the People's Republic of China when they were introduced there since September 9, 1972, the day both premiered, predominantly during the closing period of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of