North Korean officials in Chongju, North Pyongan province, conducted a five-day inspection of local schools in early September to check for excessive mobilization of students during summer vacation. The inspection followed a directive from the Cabinet’s education ministry urging schools to prioritize students’ physical and mental well-being by avoiding excessive academic pressure and mobilization during vacations.
A source in the province told The Daily NK recently that Chongju education authorities have begun to evaluate whether schools have properly implemented their orders to ensure that students can rest, but due to the constant social mobilization tasks they receive, schools have had no choice but to call in their students even during the holidays.
Students have to go to school on Saturdays, even during the holidays, to have their homework checked by their teachers and to attend weekly struggle sessions. They are also mobilized for all kinds of work, including weeding campaigns. Most importantly, this year schools have been tasked with choosing days of the week to send students to farms that have been hit hard by the recent floods, to straighten fields and repair farmhouses.
“In the past, students went to school once a week during vacation, but this year, students were mobilized an average of three times a week, ostensibly for flood recovery,” the source said.
The problem is that the Chongju Education Department launched the inspection of the schools’ implementation of the education ministry’s order, even though it was fully aware of what schools were facing. The department put aside the schools’ difficulties and conducted a performance review to look good in front of Pyongyang while tormenting the educators among them, according to the source.
“The Law on the Implementation of Education Decrees states that educational institutions must organize vacations in a planned manner in accordance with education decrees, but educators are not in a position where they can organize vacations in a planned manner in accordance with the law,” he told The Daily NK. “Even during the 10 days of lectures that educators have to go through during the holidays, they worry about adjusting the number of personnel for the mobilization tasks assigned to each class.”
Facing potential punishments, teachers up in arms
In fact, the Chongju Education Department’s inspection has sparked discontent among educators.
According to the source, a teacher at a high school in Chongju complained that “conducting such a review when schools have to mobilize students almost every day is essentially like murdering a man and then stopping by to console his family. (It’s not like I) called the students to take care of my home garden.”