North Korea—Education System
North Korea's P'yongyang regime has been singlemindededly dedicated to transforming society, nature, and human beings; the efforts to accomplish these three are known as the three great revolutions. The educational system is charged with the responsibility for kyoyuk (instruction in scientific knowledge and technical skills) and kyoyang (indoctrination), which transforms North Korean citizens, young and old, male and female, into loyal Communists. The Communist ideology that undergirds the educational theory and practice of transforming human beings from birth to death is articulated in Kim Il Sung's treatise "A Thesis on the Socialist Pedagogy," published 5 September 1977.
Compulsory Education
The present educational system in North Korea has gone through five separate revisions. It now maintains an eleven-year universal, free, and compulsory school system, followed by a higher educational system that covers diverse areas of study and varies in the number of years it requires. The primary and secondary school system starts with one year of kindergarten schooling followed by four years of primary education. This is done at Inmin hakkyo, or the people's school. A six-year course of secondary schooling follows, and the institution responsible for this education is called Kodung chunghakkyo or the higher middle school. All children in North Korea have the same opportunities for education from kindergarten to higher middle school, but the quality of schooling they receive varies greatly.
Generally speaking, children in P'yongyang have access to the best education available in North Korea. The capital of North Korea is a city where only people chosen for their loyalty to the regime are allowed to live. Provincial cities tend to have better schools than do the agricultural and industrial cooperatives to which North Korean citizens are assigned to work and live. The recent economic hardship in North Korea, however, worked havoc on almost every aspect of education: textbooks and notebooks are said not to be readily available, and children in rural areas lack pencils.
Higher Education
There are different types of higher education. First, there are three major universities: Kim Il Sung University, Kim Ch'aek Technical University, and Koryo Sungkyunkwan University. But in the true sense of the word, there is only one university in North Korea: Kim Il Sung University. It is the only academic institution in the country offering a variety of programs comparable to those of Western universities. The number of years required for graduation is between four and six, depending on the field of study.
Second, there are colleges that instruct students in specialized areas of study such as light industry, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, architectural engineering, transportation, international relations, People's economy, foreign languages, medicine, pharmacy, and horticulture. These colleges generally have a four-year course of study, although some require five years for graduation.
Third, there are teacher-training institutions that are divided into levels. There are kyowon taehak, threeyear institutions in which elementary schoolteachers are trained, and sapom taehak, four-year institutions in which teachers of higher middle school are trained.
Fourth, there are colleges established at various industrial, agricultural, and fishery plants where workers can receive their higher education. These are known as factory colleges, agricultural colleges, and fishery colleges. Besides these institutions of higher learning, there are also technical high schools that offer a three-year course of study in various fields such as automation, printing, railroading, commerce, and building materials.
Students are normally admitted into major colleges and universities primarily on the basis of their songbun, or class background (whether one was born into a landlord family, a tenant family, a family that collaborated with Japanese colonialists, or a family who fled to South Korea before or during the Korean War; family background also depends on the degree of loyalty one shows in speech, work, and life attitudes) and tangsong, or party loyalty rather than on their academic merits. Students are recommended for higher education by their secondary school principals and teachers, and students with undesirable class background or low party loyalty are usually not given recommendations for further education. Those failing to advance to higher education are given an opportunity to join the military, and those who fail to do so are then assigned to various workplaces such as collective farms or mines. In North Korea today, one's class background and party loyalty are the two most crucial factors that determine one's success.
Further Reading
Henriksen, Thomas, and Jongryn Mo. (1997) North Korea after Kim Il Sung: Continuity or Change? Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
Hunter, Helen-Louise. (1999) Kim Il-Song's North Korea. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Hyung-chan Kim. (1969) "Ideology and Indoctrination in the Development of North Korean Education." Asian Survey 9, 11: 831–841.
——. (1970) "Teaching Social Studies in North Korean Schools under Communism." Social Education 34, 5: 528–533, 542.
——. (1973) "Patterns of Political Socialization in North Korean Schools." Peabody Journal of Education 50, 4: 265–275.
——. (1981) "For the Heirs of the Revolution: Current Educational Practices in North Korea." Social Education 45, 7: 574–577.
——. (1994) "Towards a New Philosophy of Education for a Unified Korea." Korea Observer 25, 2: 261–289.
——. (2000) "Prospect for Social Change in North Korea: Reflections on My Trip to Pyongyang." Korea and World Affairs 24, 4: 619–629.
Park, Han S. (1996) North Korea: Ideology, Politics, and Economy. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Ryang, Sonia. (1997) North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
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