INSIDE NORTH KOREA’S EDUCATION SYSTEM
North Korea is one of the world’s most isolated countries and flagrant abuser of human rights. Its citizens are victims of mass media surveillance and monitoring, and are devoid of freedom of speech and association. Yet, not coincidentally, they idolize the Kim family, maintaining the regime for the next heir.
The reason for this irony stem from North Korea’s education system. The North Korean government indoctrinates their citizens with loyalty through idolization in the school curriculum. The school curriculum justifies Kim Jong-Un’s dictatorship and Songun Politics that neglects human rights of North Koreans via historical distortion, and focuses to strengthen violence and hatred through hatred education. The North Korean education system completely ignores international laws that the government has ratified, which is severely disruptive to the intellectual development of the students.
During the height of the Arab Spring, the South Korean government dropped propaganda leaflets in impoverished areas of North Korea containing information of the democracy uprisings in various Middle Eastern countries. It was thought that perhaps this could foment an uprising in North Korea. After all, North Korea shares many of the same characteristics as Egypt, Libya, Syria, and various other nations who participated in the Arab Spring. Ruled by authoritarian leaders who amassed massive amounts of wealth; mass poverty and economic malaise amongst the general population; a few wealthy, politically connected elite; suppression of dissent; human rights abuses conducted by administrations.Yet none of these nations were quite as isolated as North Korea, nor did they have such a large-scale system of indoctrination, brainwashing, propaganda, deification of leader, and distortion or history that North Korea maintains through its education system.
For this very reason, North Korea cannot have a “Korea Spring.” Nowhere in the world has there ever existed a system of ideological manipulation in such magnitude as the education system in North Korea. “I feel such pity for children in the system. They can’t see the world but learn to live like that unconsciously,” said defector Yeon-ri Kim.
It is the education system which renders the people of North Korea blind and voiceless, unable to speak up against their oppressive leader. The rest of the world can’t just be waiting, expecting the Kim regime to be toppled by a revolution. As long as the international community allows for North Korea to continue its education system the way it is, the established cycle of tyranny and suppression will continue.