Editor’s Note: In Sep. 2021, North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly adopted the “Youth Education Guarantee Act,” one of the “big three” oppressive laws passed during the COVID-19 period. The law concretely defines a number of behaviors that young people must not engage in and obligates the government to control and crack down on these behaviors. Is this issue of youth education so grave that legal remedies are truly necessary? In a new series, Daily NK investigates how the lifestyles and ways of thinking among the MZ generation (early 1980s-early 2000s) compare to previous generations of North Koreans.
Article 41 (What Youth Must Not Do) of the “Youth Education Guarantee Act” prohibits North Korean youths from “using the pretext of family problems or illness to refuse to serve, marrying young to avoid conscription, improperly undergoing physical examination or personnel examination, evading service by inflicting physical injury, or any other act to evade mobilization for military service or otherwise failing to serve faithfully.
The problem of young North Koreans evading military service has now become serious enough to be explicitly mentioned in North Korean law. The phenomenon was particularly widespread during this spring’s conscription drive and was observed in several regions, including Pyongyang and Sariwon.
Daily NK worked with several sources inside the country to find concrete examples of young people dodging the draft, and took a deep dive into the reasons and environment driving young “MZ generation” North Koreans to avoid military service.
An astute new generation that values their personal lives and sees no benefit in military service
A source in Pyongyang told Daily NK that “there has been a big change in the way the new generation views its national defense duties. Many young people are avoiding military service in order to escape economic hardship [caused by military service], and this trend was especially pronounced during the conscription period this spring.”
A source in North Hwanghae Province similarly reported uncovering several examples of draft evasion. “During the conscription period in March, some young people in Sariwon avoided joining the military by joining the labor force, while other families with little disposable income were able to pay bribes to falsify medical records or otherwise have their children removed from the conscription list.”
This year, a particularly large number of households used their political or financial power to exempt their children from military service. In one case, a young North Korean was summoned to appear before the Socialist Patriotic Youth League after openly stating, “Why should every boy who graduates from high school have to go into the military? People with power should use their power [to contribute to the country], those with money should use their money, and those who have nothing should contribute to the fatherland by joining the military.”