The Flower Girl

The Flower Girl
Opening title screen of the 1972 film adaptation.
Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl
Hancha	꽃파는
Revised Romanization	Kkot Pa-neun Cheo-nyeo
McCune–Reischauer	Kkot P'anŭn Ch'ŏnyŏ

The Flower Girl is a North Korean revolutionary genre theatrical performance, which was written by the country's first President Kim Il-sung according to official North Korean sources. The performance is considered as one of the "Five Great Revolutionary Operas" (Korean: 5대 ), a group of classical, revolution-themed opera repertoires well received within North Korea. It was also made into a novel. A film adaption of the opera starring Hong Yong-hee was made in 1972.

The story is set during the 1930s, and is based on the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement during the period of Japanese occupation in Korea. A poor, rural girl, around whom the plot is centred, picks flowers on the mountain every day to sell at the market, to care for her ill mother. Additionally, she has a blind sister, and her father is deceased. Her mother is in debt to the landlord, and is bankrupt and unable to purchase food. The landlord's subordinates frequently harass the girl and call for her to work for them, to which her mother refuses. The girl then finds her blind sister attempting to earn money by singing on the street, to her anger.

Eventually, she collects enough money to purchase medicine for her ill mother, but by the time she returns, her mother has already died. The landlord's wife becomes very sick, and suspects that the flower girl's blind sister is possessed by the spirit of her deceased mother, and so arranges for her to be frozen to death in the snow. When the flower girl returns home and asks where her sister has gone, the landlord's subordinates chain her up. At this moment, her brother, who has joined the Revolutionary Army, returns home to visit family when he realises that the flower girl has been locked up, and so organises a group of villagers to overthrow the landlord.

According to Kim Il-sung's personal memoirs, he personally created the ideas and foundation for the play himself whilst in a Jilin prison during the 1930s. The first section of his 1992 memoir With the Century, entitled "Anti-Japanese Revolution", notes that: