calendar>>March 2. 2009 Juche 98
Vibrant Sports Village in Mt. Paektu Area
Pyongyang, March 2 (KCNA) -- Athletes, working people and school youth and children from different parts of the country are conducting winter physical culture and sports activities in the well-furnished sports village in the Mt. Paektu area, a comprehensive winter sports centre.

Its total floor space covers 248,000 square meters at the foot of Pegae Peak.

The area around Pegae Peak some 1,600 meters above the sea level is endowed with favorable natural conditions as winter sports centre as it has low temperature, much snow and thick woodland.

There is in the sports village an ice rink built in a unique form of architecture, a skiing contest ground, an ice hockey gymnasium. A distance skiing course, a skiing jump place, a highland skiing course along the slope from the top of Pegae Peak and a tourist skiing course for visitors and tourists were built in harmony with the grand landscape.

It is also furnished with a lodging billet for athletes, a juvenile sports school, skier's rest-room and other accessory buildings and cultural and welfare facilities and a 900-odd-meter chair-shape aerial cableway from the foot of Pegae Peak to the top of the mountain, which is capable of carrying hundreds of athletes, visitors and tourists per one hour.

Having every condition convenient for the sports activities and life of athletes, the village can fully ensure international winter sports contests.

Kim Thae Yong, secretary of the Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission, said that such grandiose winter sports centre could be constructed amid the care of the government. He added:

Now athletes are engaged in training on the wide skating rink where various skating contests can be held and on the well-built skiing course.

The school youth and children and tourists are also training themselves, overcoming the section difficult to go through.

Recently the skiing event of the Paektusan cup sports contest took place there amid interests and expectation of sports experts and skating fans on the occasion of the auspicious February holiday.

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