Education
The North Korean leadership takes great pride in its free education system. When the communists came to power in 1946, illiteracy was widespread, and fewer than 20 percent of all Koreans had gone beyond elementary school. Now 99 percent of the population is literate. To accomplish this end, the country dispensed with complex Chinese characters in favor of sole reliance on the indigenous, simple, and phonetically precise choson’gul (Korean script; known in South Korea as hangul) writing system.
Against its advantages in being a relatively easy language with a nationalistic appeal, reliance on choson’gul has had the disadvantage of further isolating North Korea from other countries of East Asia where knowledge of Chinese characters remains the “linguistic glue” binding China, South Korea, and Japan together. Ignorance of Chinese characters has been a major drawback for North Korea in its efforts to expand trade and other foreign contacts and an embarrassment in terms of its academic and scholarly standards.
There is the psychologically stifling pressure of how much Kim Il Sung is constantly on the minds of the North Korean people, not just forever in their sight. Beginning in nursery school, children memorize poems about Kim’s early life and make up their own poems and drawings in his memory. In later years, they act out stories of his life, and in middle and high school they memorize long passages from his teachings.
The one day that seems to stand out as the most exciting day of childhood is the day a boy or girl becomes a Young Pioneer between the ages of nine and 11. It marks the only gala celebration of a child’s life up to that point, because birthdays are not celebrated in any special way. Children receive the Young Pioneer red scarves and buttons at a ceremony held at school and attended by their families, usually on a national holiday such as Kim Il Sung’s birthday (April 15), Army Day (April 25), or National Day (September 9).
The political pressures of the adult world begin to engulf teenagers when they are 14 to 16 years old. If any one event can be singled out as marking the end of childhood, it is entry into the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League, which brings tremendous new pressures to conform, endless new requirements for work, study, self-criticism, dedication, and service to the state. The symbolism involved in giving up one’s bright red Young Pioneer scarf in exchange for the much more somber league button seems to capture the mood exactly. Entrance to the league is by examination, but it is not difficult, and almost everyone eventually passes it by the time he or she is 16 years old.
Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League officials are responsible for organizing student volunteer labor. They are told the number of laborers needed for each project, and they see to it that all students in their jurisdiction are assigned on an equitable basis. Almost all North Korean students in upper-middle school, high school, and college, as well as many adults, including members of military units, help with the spring planting and fall harvests. Schools are essentially closed during these periods.
Some of the most difficult moments of a person’s life in North Korea are spent in self-criticism meetings, which begin with joining the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League and continue until life’s end. Each school and work unit sets aside a particular afternoon or evening every week for criticism meetings, which consist of both self-criticism and criticism of others. There is a knack to surviving these sessions with minimum danger and minimum psychological stress. The trick is in making oneself and others seem guilty but not dangerously so and, in the process, to score points by citing Kim Il Sung constantly.
The absence of true higher education and an educated, intellectual class is the most serious deficiency of the system. Sixty years after its founding, Kim Il Sung University remains the sole civilian four-year university. Its graduates, numbering about 3,000 a year out of a total student body of 12,000, who constitute the educational elite of the country, represent less than 0.01 percent of the population. The university, like every other educational institution and perhaps more than others, subordinates education to unrelenting political indoctrination.
An educational system that puts a premium on political skills naturally motivates the bright and ambitious to cultivate their political rather than academic skills. Guaranteed as they are of a successful professional career in the future, privileged students at the best schools feel relatively little need to do well. Even in technical fields the regime has remained relatively unsophisticated. Political distortion is even more noticeable in the social sciences. North Koreana know nothing of US involvement in World War IIor much else of world history, focusing instead on Korean history and the study of Marxism-Leninism.
Perhaps the greatest privilege of the elite is access to the finest education. Although all children go to nursery school from the age of three months, the children of the privileged attend the celebrated 18 September Nursery, a showcase school featuring a heated swimming pool, modern playgrounds, specious classrocms, and a well trained staff. None of the other 60,000 nursery schools or kindergartens. which accommodate some 3.5 million children up to the age of 6 have similar facilities.
Privileged children living in Pyongyang have the opportunity to pursue extra-curricular activities at the plush Children's Palace, a huge complex of some 500 rooms offering courses in music, dancing, embroidery, the martial arts, science, mechanics, painting and sculpture, gymnastics, swimming, boxing, soccer, basketball, volleyball, weight lifting, and ping-pong.
As many as l0,000 of North Korea‘s most privileged children, ages 8 to 16. use the Children‘s Palace daily. A staff of 500 full-time teachers plus another 1,000 part-time teachers direct their activities. Apparently, some students get to go more often than others depending on the prestige of their schools.
The exclusivencss of higher education is a major source of dissatisfaction. In a system that promotes the sons and daughters of the elite by virtue of their having the best songbun.
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