The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom

by Ralph Hassig

  The value of these documents for foreign analysts lies in what they say about reality in North Korea. In a country supposedly without corruption, how is it that the fight against corruption is a perennial theme? Instructions on how to stamp out crime reveal much about its nature in North Korea, and lectures on preventing defections provide valuable information about how people defect. The lectures repeat what is presented in the mass media but cite social problems more concretely, whereas the newspapers tend to avoid any specific mention of problems in order to preserve the illusion that North Korea is a model society. The internal documents are also blunter in their language; for example, Americans and Japanese are routinely referred to as “bastards.”

  The documents follow a standard format. The first section introduces the issue to be discussed, the second explains why the issue is important, and the third discusses how to deal with the issue. Political instructors are urged to include local examples in order to relate the lecture to the audience’s immediate concerns and experiences. Defectors report that people do not take these lectures seriously but are forced to attend and answer questions about them. It is highly likely that the instructors do not take the lectures seriously either, for it must be demoralizing to give the same lecture year after year, only to see the problems it addresses, such as the spread of capitalism, worsen rather than improve.

  In lecture material distributed in 2002 titled “On Intensively Waging the Struggle to Smash the Capitalists’ Ideological and Cultural Infiltration,” marked “For Party’s Internal Use Only,” examples of capitalist infiltration include “reactionary and erotic” videotapes, American films, photo albums, picture books, novels, and Bibles. The videotapes in question are said to be circulated among friends and relatives, reproduced, sold, and rented in shops and in the markets, and viewed not just by individuals but by entire groups. The lecture also warns against possessing radio and television sets whose dials are not fixed to the authorized channels; singing South Korean songs; composing “bad songs and even replacing those elegant words of our great songs with vulgar and bad words” (presumably parodies); wearing “disheveled hair styles” and Western clothing styles, such as short skirts and “ugly pants that cling to the body”; using makeup in an “extremely grotesque manner”; getting divorced; engaging in superstitious behavior, including astrology and fortune-telling; believing in religion; and spreading false rumors.35 This pretty much covers the gamut of the antisocialist “sins” prevalent in North Korean society.

  In the introductory section to this same lecture, the “U.S. imperialists” are said to be intensifying their “slanders” of the DPRK with the help of the “Japanese reactionaries” and “South Korean puppet bastards.” The lecture warns that “people will ideologically degenerate and weaken, cracks will develop in our socialist ideological position, and in the end, our socialism will helplessly collapse,” as happened in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is claimed that people and the party bureaucrats are “going ideologically slack and becoming habituated to the bourgeois ideological and cultural infiltration.” Even bureaucrats in the Central Party organizations are said to be “infected with capitalist germs.”

  The lecture outlines four measures to “smash” this capitalist infiltration. First, North Koreans must “firmly equip [them]selves with the respected and beloved general’s revolutionary ideology.” The great irony here is that Kim Jong-il’s behavior exemplifies almost all the cultural vices mentioned in the lecture, including viewing foreign films and divorcing one’s wife. The lecture also advises people to follow the model of the Korean People’s Army, where “bourgeois ideology and culture can never set foot.” However, it is clear from other internal documents that exactly these same practices have taken root in the military—and the people surely know this.

  The second means suggested to combat infiltration is to block the channels of communication by having radio dials fixed and asking people to surrender forbidden materials such as videotapes voluntarily. People are also told not even to look at such materials or to inquire about them because they may be seduced even by a glance. Instead, people should live “in a revolutionary manner.” “Undisciplined life is a space where bourgeois ideology and culture can set foot and can spawn”—the North Korean version of the old Western saying “Idleness is the devil’s playground.”

  A third anti-infiltration measure calls upon the assistance of party and government bureaucrats and police officers to be vigilant in finding and eliminating foreign materials: “Many of the functionaries have never seriously taken issue with it [the infiltration of foreign materials], even when capitalist elements [i.e., materials] were appearing around them; they pretended not to know about it.” It is in fact widely recognized that many of these officials are avid consumers of forbidden materials and can best afford them.

  Finally, the lecture warns that those caught with bourgeois cultural materials should be “punished in the name of the party and the law” (notice that the party comes before the law). According to Article 193 of the 2004 North Korean criminal code, “Whoever, without authorization, brings in from other countries or makes or spreads music, dances, paintings, photographs, books, videos, or memory media such as CD-ROMs reflecting decadence, sexuality, and obscenity in content shall be sentenced to two years or less of labor discipline. In case the degree of culpability is serious, the offender shall be sentenced to four years or less of labor correction.” Article 194 specifies two to five years of imprisonment for anyone listening to or viewing such materials. Article 195 provides for two to five years of imprisonment for listening to foreign broadcasts.

  Three years after this lecture was written, the same themes were still being lectured on. A 2005 document titled “On Completely Destroying the Schemes of Our Enemies Who Are Spreading Exotic Lifestyles” condemns those who lead a “slovenly, corrupt, and rotten lifestyle,” watch “unhealthy and decadent movies and recorded cassettes,” and get divorced or live together outside of marriage. Koreans are urged to wear Korean-style clothing and traditional hairstyles, “make and eat lots of [Korean] food,” and address each other with traditional greetings.36 As a KCBS broadcast says, “When we sing, we have to sing with our own tunes, and when we dance, we have to dance with our own rhythm, and we have to positively preserve our national traditions and customs, including attire, food, and etiquette.”37

  Civilian and military lectures urge audiences to block illegal imports along the border with China. “Let Us Vigorously Wage the Struggle to Uproot Acts of Smuggling,” dated 2003, blames smuggling on “South Korean puppet ‘intelligence agent’ bastards” who operate along the borders of “neighboring countries” (i.e., China) and instigate people to get involved.38

  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.39 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.40

  “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”41

  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.42 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.43

  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 Py
ongyang. 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.