Provincial graduates of North Korea’s prestigious Kim Chaek University of Technology are competing fiercely and resorting to bribery to secure job placements in Pyongyang. The university’s party committee set an Oct. 5 deadline for additional job placements, prompting a rush among rural graduates to contact university officials for positions in the capital.
According to a source in Pyongyang, bribes to secure positions as teachers or researchers at Kim Chaek University of Technology have increased since the end of last year as more and more graduates want to stay in Pyongyang. Graduates must now pay more than $10,000 in bribes to remain in the capital.
The bribes that graduates from the countryside must pay to stay in Pyongyang have risen sharply from $5,000 at the end of last year to $8,000 at the beginning of this year and now more than $10,000.
Rural graduates seeking jobs in Pyongyang have felt a heavy economic burden since the university party committee announced the deadline for additional job placements.
For graduates who have studied hard, getting a job in Pyongyang as a professor or researcher at Kim Chaek University of Technology is more than a simple matter of employment or residence; it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a better life and higher social status.
“For Kim Chaek University of Technology graduates from the countryside, getting a job in Pyongyang is important in determining their success and future,” the source said. “They are disappointed because even though they studied so hard, when it comes to finally getting a job, money is becoming more important than their skills, and bribes are increasing.”
Some university officials even sarcastically remark that graduates “could become Pyongyang residents and get jobs for $10,000, and they can just live in the provinces if they don’t have the money,” and that graduates “will have to pay even more in bribes next year, so if they can’t even pay the cheaper bribe now, they should forget about ever living in Pyongyang.”
This illustrates a structural problem in North Korean society, where people cannot get proper treatment or compensation through individual efforts alone. It also suggests that North Korea desperately needs a national rethinking of how it uses human resources.
Graduates from the countryside who are unable to find jobs in Pyongyang this fall are likely to be assigned as technicians in provincial factories.
“Basically, they tightened their belts and did their college work for free,” the source said. “It’s bad enough that wealth trumps academic achievement in securing jobs in Pyongyang, but with bribes continuing to rise, provincial graduates are naturally disgruntled.”
Some North Koreans are critical of the current situation, complaining of a widening gap between the national policy of human resource development and reality.
“Some of the graduates who gave up getting jobs in Pyongyang during the first two rounds of placements this year because they didn’t have the money and went to the provinces as factory technicians complain that the reality in which economic background rather than academic achievement determines one’s future harms the fundamental value of education,” the source said.
“Some of the graduates from the countryside who gave up trying to secure jobs in Pyongyang because they didn’t have the money even complained that the placement practices that favor money over skills are no different from the rotten, corrupt capitalist society the state keeps lecturing them about,” he added.
The Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. For security reasons, their identities remain anonymous.
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October 02, 2024 at 11:25AM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)