Yoon Sae-joong’s “Amid the Ordeal” is a representative literary work of North Korean literature in the 1950s, and is a noteworthy “labor literature” in the history of literature throughout South Korea and North Korea. This literary work is a full-length novel composed of 12 chapters, a volume 1,700 sheets of manuscripts. The background of the times of this novel is from August 1953, one month after the cease-fire, to the next year autumn of 1954. The “xx Iron Mill” overlooking the Daedong River is mostly set as the spatial background of the novel. The “xx Iron Mill” is “Hwanghae Iron Mill” where the novelist Yoon Saejoong stayed for full 2 years from 1955. This novel describes the process of “rehabilitation of the iron mill” carried out in the heavy industry sector during the postwar 3 year economic plan of the rehabilitation of the people’s economy of North Korea. The vivid description of the landscape of North Korean laboring field and the graphic portrayal of the characters make this novel outstanding. This researcher attempted to read the inside of the text actively. Through this, how “the socialistic human types and the characterization of the laboring classes” were formed in North Korean literature and what the arguments over the history of North Korean literature aimed to do were examined. Also, how the voluntary agreement and participation of the people within North Korea during the postwar rehabilitation period were realized, and how the party’s instruction was realized in the laboring field were analyzed through analyzing the literary text. Through the analysis on the “Amid the Ordeal”, this researcher confirmed that the remarkable economic growth that North Korea had achieved in the postwar rehabilitation period was attributable to having laborers as the masters of the country and “the socialistic climate” in which the laborers’ self-esteem was encouraged. The master consciousness of the laborers was promoted amid assiduous learnings and discussions within the workplace. However, as the autonomous and independent attitude was oppressed by the party organizations, the shapes of the North Korean laborers tended to be stereotyped. The “Amid the Ordeal” vividly shows that as the party’s instruction within the factory organizations during the postwar rehabilitation period was realized in connection with technocratic elites, the autonomous power of the laborers with the skilled laborers as central figures had weakened. Skilled laborers’ leadership within the factories was criticized as “the-rise-in-the-word-ism or conservatism” or sometimes was stigmatized as the attitude responding negligently to the orders of the party and the country. In this sense, it can be inferred that the vitality that the North Korean society had in the 1950s was based on the autonomy of the laborers, and afterwards the depressed period was attributable to the weakening of the laborers’ autonomy as the only-thought system was established based on the party rule.