The Hidden People of North Korea (31 page)

The specific items to be on the lookout for are transistor radios, religious tracts, CDs, DVDs, and videotapes. Equally important is banning trade in the other direction that is used to pay for these items, including the selling of metals, agricultural products, and historical artifacts. Ironically, the lecture also warns against earning foreign currency by selling classified documents, such as “documents on our internal life, educational lecture plans, and state price tables.” And so it came to be that the very lecture warning of smuggling out internal lectures was itself smuggled out.

The Stalin regime was famous for blaming the Soviet Union’s troubles on “wreckers,” said to be disloyal and traitorous individuals bent on ruining the socialist system (in most cases, they were simply people the regime did not like or trust). The Kim regime has its own designated wreckers, most notably, lazy bureaucrats who stay in their offices and give orders rather than go out among the people to lead them in Kim’s teachings. Alleged spies also come in for some of the blame, although the mass media rarely refer to them because to do so would acknowledge that the North Korean police are not in complete control of society. A June 2004 SSD document titled “Mass Education Material for the Anti-Spy Struggle” provides a number of examples of people who have wrecked the system.
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A certain “rascal” Ri Song-chun, formerly a trade bureaucrat, is blamed for being lured through sex while traveling overseas into the grasp of a CIA front organization and subsequently importing defective equipment and providing the CIA with economic intelligence. According to the lecture, Ri was “sternly judged by the people” for his crimes. Another “rascal,” Kim Sun-chol, also a former trade bureaucrat, is accused of falling into a trap set by South Korean agents while on an overseas business trip and then embezzling his organization’s funds. For his crimes he was “drastically punished.”

In a country that has never publicly acknowledged a mine disaster, this internal lecture refers to two of them. In one case, a “spy who sneaked in [to the country] under the guise of a ‘traveler on personal business’ ” is said to have bribed an electrician at a coal mine to sabotage a hoist, resulting in six coal cars crashing down into the mine. In another case, a spy “instigated impure elements” to steal an electric motor from a crane, and when the motor was replaced with manpower, an unspecified “commotion” occurred at the mine.

School Lessons

The North Korean regime has two goals for its education system: to make young people good communists and loyal supporters of the regime and to teach them the academic skills necessary to make North Korea a
kangsong taeguk
(“powerful country”). Article 43 of the DPRK constitution says that the goal of “socialist pedagogy” is to “raise the younger generation as resolute revolutionaries who wage struggles for the society and people and as new communist people equipped with knowledge, virtue, and physical health.” The DPRK Education Law describes socialist education as “human remolding work” whose dual goals are to develop “independent consciousness” and “creative ability”—although these goals should not be taken literally.
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“Independent consciousness” is better interpreted as subscribing to the Kim regime’s
Juche
ideology, whose sole living interpreter is Kim Jong-il, and “creative ability” is limited to tackling economic problems without worrying the government about them.

Korea’s Confucian society has always valued education deeply, and under the egalitarian communist system, eleven years of compulsory and free primary and secondary schooling boosted the literacy rate to almost 100 percent. North Korea’s educational system was a great success in the 1950s and 1960s, but the quality of education has declined for at least three reasons. First, as the Kim cult developed over the years, studies of the Kim family began to crowd out standard academic subjects. Second, North Korea’s self-imposed isolation has cut it off from foreign advances in knowledge. And third, economic problems have degraded the educational infrastructure. By the 1990s, the economy was in such bad shape that many students and even some teachers were skipping school in order to search for food. Meanwhile, school buildings fell into disrepair, and fuel was so scarce that classrooms were often unheated in the middle of winter.

After the collapse of European communism in the early 1990s, Kim Jongil put greater weight on the importance of ideological training to prevent the younger generation of Koreans from imitating their European counterparts. Then, in 2001, it occurred to Kim that the only way to pull the country out of its economic slump was to remake the economy with modern technology, and to that end schools were urged to teach students the latest technology, which was unfortunately not available in North Korea. These two curricular areas, ideological indoctrination and technical training, remain the cornerstones of North Korean education. The priority given to ideological education makes sense from Kim’s point of view because an economically successful North Korea without the Kim regime is of absolutely no interest to him. Better that people be poor and under his thumb than well-off and self-sufficient. Defectors have estimated that between 40 and 80 percent of school time is spent on ideological lessons, although since the 1990s more emphasis has been placed on science and technology and less on ideology. In elementary school, students learn about the lives and alleged virtues and accomplishments of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and his mother, Kim Jong-suk. As children get older, they study the principles of communism and
Juche
;in college, they study
Juche
economics,
Juche
literature, and such. As an example of what teachers are taught, here are the titles of the first ten articles in the journal
Kodung Kyoyuk
(“higher education”) for August 2006:

• “In the Days of the Military-First Revolutionary Leadership: While Leading to Be Always Faithful to the Cause of the Leader’s Immortality”
  
• “The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung Is Always with Us”
  
• “The Immortal Achievement Engraved in the Development of Educational Work at Technical Schools”
  
• “Introduction to a Military-First Animal: The Korean Bear”
  
• “In Order to Realize Kim Il-sung’s Greatness with One’s Heart”
  
• “Explaining in Depth Even a Single Piece of Educational Data”
  
• “On the Basis of Highly Practical Educational Data”
  
• “With the Faith of Sure Victory and Optimism Possessed by the Anti-Japanese Revolutionary Fighters”
  
• “Legend of a Great Man: Amazing Prophecy”
  
• “Introduction to a Military-First Animal: The Squid”
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Despite the regime’s insistence that capitalism is evil and doomed to be replaced by communism, a few students are exposed to capitalist ideas to prepare them to do business with foreigners. As early as 1996, Kim Il-sung University offered a few lectures on capitalism—originally taught by professors visiting from North Korean–affiliated universities in Japan.
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In recent years, North Korean students have also been sent abroad in small groups to study capitalism, for example, at Chinese universities. Students have also been sent to universities in Western countries, including several hundred to the United States. Syracuse University, for example, has had an ongoing exchange program in computer sciences with North Korea’s Kim Chaek University of Technology.

It is difficult to say exactly how much ideological education students receive because academic subjects are suffused with ideology and the worship of the Kim family. The first songs students learn are songs of praise for the Kims. In history class, they study the military victories of the Kims. In math class, they work on problems about how many American soldiers North Korean soldiers can kill. In art classes, they draw pictures of the Kim family home. A reading lesson from a first-year book goes like this:

I want . . .
I want to be a KPA soldier
To defend our motherland. I want to be a KPA soldier.
I want . . .
I want to be a hero soldier
For our great general.
I want to be a hero soldier.
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Another lesson shows little children gleefully playing with a remote-controlled toy tank:

Mini-tank advances,
Our tank advances,
Crushing American bastards,
Mini-tank advances.

Children have one year of preschool, four years of elementary school, and six years of senior middle school. The school year starts in April, and a typical school day begins as students assemble on street corners at 7 a.m. and march off to school behind their homeroom leader. The first half hour of school is devoted to listening to the teacher read the news or present political messages—the same activity their parents are participating in at work. Classes begin at 8 a.m., with a lunch break at noon. Elementary school children do not attend classes in the afternoon, but middle school students have classes until 3 or 4 p.m. In better times, children brought lunch boxes containing rice and vegetables, but today some students are lucky if they can bring a cupful of corn kernels.

Like adults, children are kept busy with group activities. After school, they perform school and community service, and once or twice a week, they participate in the children’s version of political-criticism sessions, where they write down “mistakes” they have made and indicate how they will make their lives better. Children also participate in group sports activities, as do adults. Gymnastics is highly developed and showcased in mass displays in Pyongyang. Soccer, basketball, and table tennis are played outdoors at schools and in parks when the weather is warm; in the winter, ice skating is popular. Adults also enjoy traditional Korean folk dancing. All of these activities can be pursued with a minimum of equipment and facilities. Sports like tennis, bowling, and skiing are reserved for the wealthy, who have access to special facilities and equipment.

In line with the regime’s 2002 economic self-sufficiency policy, it has become the responsibility of students, their families, and teachers to provide school supplies, repair school buildings, and bring wood or coal, if any is available, to heat the classrooms. In addition, the government requires that schools contribute quotas of recycled goods, such as metal and rubber, and locally sourced goods, such as mushrooms and seafood. Raising rabbits for their fur and meat is also a required task for many students; those who cannot provide, say, their quota of rabbit skins are supposed to bring money instead, and students who do not fill their quotas are publicly criticized. Older students are sent to rural areas to help with rice transplanting and harvesting. Students in Pyongyang are called upon to participate in gymnastic displays, parades, and mass rallies.

Due to a chronic paper shortage, most students share textbooks, which are often printed on
osari
paper made out of cornhusks. The print is difficult to read, and
osari
notebooks are difficult to write in. The school must purchase other educational supplies, such as computers, after conducting a money-earning drive. Students who want special attention or recommendations to college are expected to provide gifts to teachers and administrators in the form of money, food, cigarettes, and clothing.

In each district, students who show promise in science and mathematics are selected to attend special senior middle schools, known as the “number one” or “first” schools, where they will be prepared for advanced study. Knowing the reputation of universities as breeding grounds of dissent, the Kim regime keeps careful watch over its students, requiring them to engage in the usual extracurricular activities, including military training and political self-criticism sessions. Mandatory labor assistance (for example, on farms) may take them away from their studies for three to four months a year. North Korean university education is highly regimented; after all, the goal is for students to become productive members of Kim’s socialist society, and in this sense college students are already employees or warriors of the regime, although most do not see themselves in this way. North Korean university students probably make up the most liberal segment of society, but they are also among the most privileged and must protect this status by behaving appropriately. Like soldiers, students are prohibited from marrying, and also like soldiers, they resort to secret love affairs.

University faculty members work under the watchful eye of the government and the party. A German professor who taught for a year at the prestigious Kim Il-sung University said she found little evidence of independent thinking among her students, who spent about half of their class time on ideological studies. Professors were required to obtain official approval for every lecture they delivered, and the German professor was not able to strike up a social relationship with any of her North Korean colleagues or visit any of their apartments.
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Unauthorized Sources of Information

If Kim Jong-il had his way, North Koreans would have absolutely no access to foreign sources of information, which compete with and contradict the official propaganda. It is a criminal offense to listen to foreign radio broadcasts, view foreign videotapes, or read foreign newspapers, magazines, or books. Even engaging in conversation with a foreign visitor can get a North Korean into trouble. But the Kim regime does not have complete control over the information environment. When foreign radios are brought into the DPRK, they must be registered at the local police station and then taken to the local communications office, where the dial is soldered to the frequency of KCBS. Inspectors make surprise visits to households to check that the dials on their radios remain fixed, because for just a few dollars, a freelance electrician can unfix them. North Koreans returning from overseas sometimes discard their imported radios rather than live under a cloud of suspicion, or they bring home two radios, hiding one and letting the authorities fix the dial of the other. The government also tries to jam foreign radio broadcasts, but jamming is never entirely successful and in any case requires large amounts of electricity. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union reportedly employed ten thousand technicians to drown out foreign broadcast frequencies, an effort that required twice as much electricity as all the foreign stations were using to target the Soviet Union.
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Television signals travel shorter distances than radio signals, but residents of Pyongyang can sometimes receive South Korean television broadcasts as long as they use (illegal) foreign-made television sets.