North Korean Economy Watch

According to the Choson Ilbo:

Nachod is a small village in the Czech Republic around three hours by car from the capital Prague. It is an isolated place sparsely dotted with farm houses. On the outskirts of the village is a two-story factory called Snezka that manufactures sheets for cars and travel bags. Until 2007, the factory was filled with North Korean women who had gone there to work.

The European press described the women as “21st century slaves,” being watched 24 hours a day by North Korean minders and required to wire most of their earnings back to North Korea. The Czech government eventually sent back all North Korean workers by 2007, including the 90 women who had been working for Snezka.

As orders from European automakers skyrocketed, the number of staff at Snezka rose to around 700, but it was difficult to find cheap and dependable workers in such a remote place. That was when the North Korean Embassy in the Czech Republic called to offer the services of “loyal” workers. The first handful of North Koreans who were hired proved to be excellent workers and the factory kept on hiring more. “From an employer’s perspective, they were ideal workers,” one executive recalls. “Unlike Czech or Ukrainian workers, the North Koreans never wasted time drinking coffee and chatting. They were very good with their hands too. They were extremely accurate in their sewing, as if machines had done it.”

The executive objects to the term “21st century slaves.” The North Koreans worked eight hours a day, five days a week in two shifts — 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. Weekends earned them an extra 75 percent of their daily incomes, a standard uniformly applied to both North Korean and other workers. Factory staff say the North Koreans led a dull existence. Three or four lived in a house supplied by Snezka, and they traveled in groups of five or six even when they were going for a short walk around the factory.

They rarely talked to other workers. One worker from Poland says, “I never heard them say a single word about their family, friends or hometowns.” In time, around half of the 90 North Korean workers were able to communicate in Czech, but they were still said to be “quiet.”

Here is the town of Nachod.  I have not located the factory yet.

Previous posts on this story here (first) and here (second).

Also, North Korea gets trams from the Czech Republic.

Read the full sory below:
Czech Factory Regrets Departure of N.Koreans
Choson Ilbo
10/28/2009

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-10-26-1
10/26/2009

Companies in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) are pushing for permission to transport goods manufactured within the complex along the railway running from Kaesong to Sinuiju and the highways connecting Kaesong, Pyongyang, Sinuiju and the Chinese city of Dandong.

Currently, the majority of goods exported from the KIC flow through the South Korean port of Incheon. They are then distributed elsewhere after arriving at the Chinese port of Dalian. This route is expensive and slow. Shipping by sea costs 1,900 USD per container and takes as many as 10 days, while if the railway infrastructure was built up between Kaesong and Sinuiju, both the cost and the time could be significantly reduced.

Seventeen percent of Kaesong goods are exported not only to China, but to Europe, the Middle East and Russia. In the mid- to long-term, Kaesong needs to be connected with Rajin-Sunbong, so that goods can be distributed throughout Russia and Europe via the Trans-Siberian Railway. In order to make this happen, companies within the KIC are seeking to attract foreign joint-ventures and investments while at the same time lobbying North Korean authorities in an effort to convince them of the need for such land transportation infrastructure.

These companies are also pushing for improvements in the highway spanning the 160 km between the KIC and Pyongyang and the injection of KIC goods into the Pyongyang markets, where they could compete with Chinese imports. One part of this effort is promoting the attachment of ‘Made In DPRK’ labels to goods produced in these factories.

It appears that North Korean authorities have been receptive to these ideas, but questions still remain on the logistics of the project. One source has said that the North Korean Central Special Direct General Bureau has shown interest recently in the idea of including KIC goods in the annual Pyongyang International Trade Fair.

On the one hand, the number of North Korean workers in the KIC has now topped 40,000; but on the other hand, given the number and size of the factories in the complex, the factories are about 26,000 workers short of full capacity. The effort to find suitable workers means that now people from Sariwon, Pyongyang and Hamheung have been brought in. Companies in the KIC are adamant that construction of dormitories in the complex needs to be sped up. At the same time, North Korean authorities are demanding that workers be paid according to their level of education, job description, and experience.

For the first time in 13 months, trade between the two Koreas began to rise again. In September 2009, inter-Korean trade amounted to 173.17 million USD, a 2.6 percent rise over the 166.86 million USD recorded in 2008. The economy has shown signs of recovery since last July, and as inter-Korean relations have inched toward improvement, trade has also risen.

Photo by Eric Lafforgue

North Korean claims record production gains through ‘150-day battle’
Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-10-12-1
10/12/2009

It has been boasted that North Korea’s ‘150-day Battle’ to boost the economy (April 20-September 16) resulted in record-breaking jumps in DPRK production numbers, and it has been suggested that that by 2012, some enterprises will “attain production numbers higher than the best numbers recorded at the end of the 1980s.” This claim was made by Ji Young-il, the director of the Chosun University Social Science Research Institute, which is run by the pro-Pyongyang “General Federation of Korean Residents in Japan.”

In “Professor Ji Young-il’s Monthly Economic Review: The 150-day Battle and Prospects for Building an Economically Powerful Nation,” an article in the federation’s newspaper, Choson Sinbo, the author wrote, “There are more than a few enterprises that have set production goals for 2012 at more than three times the current level of production.” He also claimed that some enterprises in the mining, energy and railroad transportation sectors had set goals of as much as 6 times today’s production numbers.

Professor Ji went on to write, “Basically, it is an extraordinary goal ensuring growth of 1.3-1.5 times (a growth rate of 130-150%) per year.” He also explained that surpassing production rates as high as those seen in the late 1980s is one of the fundamental markers on the road toward “opening the door to a Strong and Prosperous Nation.”

Citing North Korea’s “Choson Central Yearbook,” he gave production numbers in various sectors of the DPRK economy at the end of the 1980s: electricity, 55.5 billion kWh (1989); coal, 85 million tons (1989); steel, 7.4 million tons (1987); cement, 13.5 million tons (1989); chemical fertilizer, 5.6 million tons (1989); textiles, 870 million meters (1989); grain, 10 million tons (1987).

Director Ji claimed that during the recent ‘battle’, production in the metals industries was up several times that of the same period in previous years, while energy producers generated several hundred million kWh of electricity, coal production was up 150%, and cement and other construction materials were up 140%. He pointed out that in 14 years of the Chollima movement, beginning in 1957, during which socialist industrialization took place in the North, the yearly average production growth was 19.1%, and he stated that the annual growth of 9 to 10% in industrial production over the past several years was a noteworthy record.

Moving to the agricultural sector, Director Ji also noted that while overseas experts have critiqued this year’s harvest, there has been a definite breakthrough in grain production with land cultivation hitting previously unseen levels over the past several years.

Previous 150-day battle stories below:
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Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-30-1
9/30/2009

North Korean laborers in the Kaesong Industrial Complex are gaining attention as they are awarded with the government’s certificate of high quality, a certification difficult for even South Korean companies to earn. It is very rare for the North Koreans to earn in only about one year what it takes South Korean small and mid-sized businesses 2~3 years to get.

On September 25, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry presented the food container-producing Sungrim factory, located in the KIC, with the Chamber’s ‘Single PPM Quality Certification’. This certification is awarded to the company that, during the last six months, have found less than 10 out of 1,000,000 products (0.001%, 10PPM) to be defective. To date, only 1,664 factories throughout Korea have earned the certificate, and this is the first time it has been awarded to a factory in the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

The Sungrim factory launched a ‘Single PPM’ project to boost the quality of its output in July of last year, and received the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s award just 14 months later. The KIC Sungrim factory was opened in April 2008, and manufactures food container lids for the CJ Corporation. It employs 88 North Korean workers and 3 South Korean supervisors.

When the factory first opened, the skill level of the workers was considerably lower than counterparts elsewhere, and this was reflected in the dissatisfaction of customers and large number of defective products. It appeared that workers were indoctrinated with the North Korean system of equality, in which production numbers were less important than providing meals, exercise facilities, and other benefits. However, as the workers became more loyal to the company, their efficiency improved as well, and employees even began repairing their own equipment in the event of a failure. The CJ management recognized this, and allowed the North Korean laborers to improve at their own pace, sparing no expense to support their efforts.

The result was that the factory which had produced as many as 650 defective goods per month at the beginning was able to reduce the number of maligned goods to 15 within a year, and eventually down to 1.8 PPM. This placed the factory more than 17 times higher than the 31.3 PPM average for the 111 companies receiving one of Korcham’s three certificates (Single PPM, 100 PPM, and 1000 PPM).

From Voice of America (excerpts):

In Russia’s largest port city on the Pacific Ocean, Vladivostok, several small-framed Asian men are bustling around a half-built apartment building, trying to move large metal beams. They are North Koreans sent out by their government to earn much-needed foreign currency for the country.

Kim Dong Gil came from North Korea’s second largest city of Hamhung. He brags that North Korean workers have the best skills in the Russian construction market, which is also filled with laborers from Central Asia and Vietnam.

The estimated 5,000 North Koreans in Vladivostok come from various backgrounds and even include doctors.

“I didn’t have any construction skills since I used to be with the military,” said Kim Soon Nam, who served in the army back home. “I learned from scratch when I arrived here. I got trained by a really young person who used to curse and swear at me all the time.”

Despite the stress of living and working in a foreign country, the North Koreans have come to appreciate the culture of capitalism.

“Back home I couldn’t make money even if I wanted to. But here if I work hard, I can make a dozen times more,” explained Han Jong Rok.

Choi Jong-kun, an assistant professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul, says money is just one reason to leave home. The other is improving one’s status among North Korea’s political elite.

“If they bring in more money, then they would sort of have sort of upward mobility in their social class,” explained Choi Jong-kun.

North Korea does not reveal significant economic data, but exporting workers is considered a key source of hard foreign currency.

A report by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul estimated in 2007 that Pyongyang earns at least $40 million to $60 million a year from labor exports. Outside of Russia, the institute has tracked North Korean workers in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bangladesh, China and Mongolia.

In Vladivostok, every North Korean worker is required to pay the Pyongyang government around $800 each month.

Kim Soon Nam says he works extra hours to make sure he has money for himself.

“If we want to save some money, we have to work Sundays and holidays, too,” he said. “We must earn a lot of money no matter what. North Koreans have to work from 8 am to 10 pm.”

The North Koreans in Vladivostok usually get a five-year visa, but many get extensions to earn more money. They sleep in dormitories and live to work, spending much of their time outside the construction sites doing extra jobs in local Russian homes.

Kim Chul Woong, a welder, says he is willing to sacrifice time from his family back in Pyongyang to give his son opportunities few North Koreans enjoy, like a computer.

“The video footage on the computer can enhance children’s intellectual development, but I don’t have the kind of money,” he said. “When I go back home after working in Russia I’ll have a good amount of money. I can buy expensive stuff for my son. If he wants to do music I can buy him a violin or a guitar.”

He says he is taking advantage of the work while he can get it. Kim Chul Woong says the construction jobs are dwindling in Russia because of the economic crisis. There is also greater competition from newly arriving Central Asians who are as hungry for dollars as he is.

Read the full story here:
N. Korean Workers Earn Dollars for Construction Work in Russia
Voice of America
Young Ran-jeon
9/28/2009

UPDATE 9/16/2009: Despite the downward trajectory that business in the Kaesong Zone seemed to be taking this year, things appear to have bottomed out.  According to Yonhap, the Koreas have signed a Kaesong wage increase.  According to the article:

South and North Korea agreed to a 5 percent wage hike at a joint industrial park on Wednesday, the Unification Ministry here said, in the latest sign of inter-Korean projects returning to normal.

North Korea earlier demanded a 400 percent raise in monthly wages for its workers at the South Korean-run park in Kaesong, just north of the border.

South Korea’s management office in Kaesong “signed an agreement on a 5 percent wage increase” with its North Korean counterpart, ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said in a brief statement.

The North voluntarily withdrew its earlier demand last week in a striking shift from its unyielding attitude in four rounds of negotiations from April to July. The demand called for monthly wages be raised to US$300 from the average $70-80, apparently in retaliation against Seoul’s hard-line policy toward Pyongyang.

The Kaesong park opened in late 2004 as an outcome of the first inter-Korean summit four years earlier. It houses 114 mostly small-sized South Korean firms producing clothing, electronic equipment, kitchenware and other labor-intensive goods with about 40,000 North Korean workers.

The venture is seen as a much-needed source of dollar income for the North, which is currently under U.N. sanctions for its May nuclear test that bans cash flows to the country.

The 5 percent rate hike will increase the minimum wage to about $58 from the current $55.

Separately, North Korea was conducting a door-to-door survey on South Korean businesses at the joint park, said ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo.

North Korea asserted that the two-day survey that continues until Thursday was to examine the firms’ output and “listen to their complaints and difficulties regarding tax and accounting,” Lee said. Such on-site surveys have been done sporadically, she added.

Although tensions might have eased, it remains to be seen whether the business community can be coaxed into making serious capital investments in the DPRK.

Read previous Kaesong Industrial Zone news below:

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(click for larger version)

Traffic Control Platform beneath Umbrella Installed at Intersections of Pyongyang

Pyongyang, August 13 (KCNA) — Unique platforms under umbrellas are being set up in traffic control posts at intersections of Pyongyang these days, attracting attention of people.

The round platform under well-shaped large umbrella is clearly seen at far distance.

The umbrella shields the traffic controllers from sunrays and rain and the platform shuts out heat from the heated asphalt.

The female traffic controllers are commanding the traffic with a bright face on the platform under the umbrella even in the hottest period of summer.

Passers-by stop walking for a while to see the new scene.

They say it can be seen only in the country led by Kim Jong Il.

The traffic controllers are moved by the warm affection shown for them by General Secretary Kim Jong Il who saw to it that the platforms with umbrellas are being set up this time after raincoats, rain boots, sunglasses, gloves and cosmetics as well as seasonal uniforms were provided to them.

UPDATE: MarkT seems to have discovered similar technology (though much older) in Afghanistan:

Image from Military Photos

China Daily reports on a North Korean restaurant in the Chinese border city of Dandong (hat tip to O.P.). According to the article:

Choe says she came to Dandong four months ago. Her restaurant is one of Dandong’s most luxurious and one of the few establishments in the Chinese city bordering the DPRK that is still seeing brisk business in the wake of Pyongyang’s nuclear test in May and subsequent missile launches.

The Korea Restaurant, is located near the only bridge linking Dandong and the DPRK, through which the Chinese army reached the DPRK and joined the Korean War in 1950. All of about 20 tables were full on the Saturday afternoon we visited recently, despite prices that are double that of common restaurants in Dandong serving the same food.

Some men from the DPRK in dark yellow or blue suits, with pins of DPRK leader on their chests, also dined there.

Choe’s colleagues, equally young and attractive, wait at tables in blue skirt suits and light makeup. They wear stylish, high-heeled shoes and watches, serving guests with smiles.

“The main reason for the restaurant’s good business is the DPRK waitresses. It’s the easiest way to meet people from that country,” said a taxi driver, surnamed Li.

“Though border trade has been slashed, more and more people are interested in the DPRK after the recent events. You can even see more Westerners here,” Li said.

Shan Jie, board chairman of the Dandong Federal Business Corp which runs cross-border trade, said the waitresses “are by no means common DPRK citizens”.

“They’re all children of DPRK cadres and graduates of Kim Il-sung University. They can speak Chinese, and are very talented in singing and dancing,” said Shan, who has conducted businesses with the DPRK for 16 years. Most of the DPRK cadres attend that university, he said.

The girls were sent to Dandong for training and will have “a promising future as civil servants” when going back home, Shan said.

“It’s a good opportunity for them to practice Chinese and meet Chinese people of all levels. Besides, they earn money for their country,” he said.

Pyongyang has many restaurants in Dandong, and many DPRK ministries such as the ministries of trade and security have their own restaurants there, Shan said.

Choe said the Korea Restaurant is of the same restaurant chain as Beijing Pyongyang Begonia Flower Restaurant, a famous luxury Korean restaurant said to be run by a DPRK merchant with a military background.

When asked whether she is the daughter of DPRK officials, Choe switched to speaking in Korean with a colleague before ending the conversation.

“The girls here mostly work for one and half years I’ll stay for about three years,” Choe said.

“Dandong is pretty and people here are quite nice. But I will go back to my country, Pyongyang is the most beautiful place in the world.”

If any readers in Dandong could help identify where these restaurants are, I would appreciate it.  I would like to mark them on Google Earth and Wikimapia.

Read the full article here:
DPRK waitress in China shares a day in her life
China Daily
Li Xiaokun and Wang Huazhong
8/14/2009

According to the Choson Ilbo:

The South’s Kaesong Industrial Complex Management Committee, which supervises the estate just north of the border, said Sunday visitors would no longer need to provide anything more than ID cards and travel permits.

Responding to complaints about inconvenience, the North agreed to allow the South’s office to process some paperwork on behalf of individuals.

“The extra documents were redundant because they carried exactly the same information as ID cards and travel permits,” the South’s office spokesman told AFP, adding the new rules would take effect from Monday.

Despite the easing of border controls, the fate of Kaesong remains uncertain because of the North’s demand for huge pay and rent increases, along with its holding of a Seoul worker.

Pyongyang detained the South Korean male worker on March 30 for allegedly criticising its political system and trying to incite a female North Korean worker to defect.

Kaesong, which opened in December 2004, is the last remaining large-scale reconciliation project between the communist North and the capitalist South.

Some 40,000 North Koreans work for South Korean firms in Kaesong.

Read previous Kaesong Industrial Zone posts here.

Read the full story here:
N.Korea agrees to streamline border crossing
AFP
8/2/2009

The Daily NK has run a series of interesting articles on education in the DPRK.  I have posted interesting excerpts below:

The Warped Nature of Gifted Student Schooling
Daily NK
By Moon Sung Hwee,
7/17/2009    
 

The birth of education for the gifted generated a new social trend which placed great value on science. First senior middle schools grew out of that trend.

In first senior middle schools, students are educated in the natural sciences using high quality text books produced especially for the task.

Only the graduates of these schools can enter elite science universities such as Pyongsung-ri College of Science, Kangkye College of Defense or the elite KimChaek University of Technology. Since 1992, the first generation of graduates has been distinguishing itself in professional fields. Naturally, they have had a great affect on military and scientific technological developments.

Being a first middle school student is even an exemption from compulsory military service.

In addition to being a shelter from undesirable military obligations, as graduates from the school tend to work in better positions in society, the first senior middle school is a great path to a comfortable future.

However, powerful and wealthy parents lobby hard to get their children into a first middle school, and as a consequence what was supposed to be national education for gifted students has degenerated into a school for the children of the rich and politically powerful classes. To add insult to injury, as the numbers of elite first middle school graduates rises, the number of opportunities for other, general students falls even further.

And indeed, since the March of Tribulation in the mid-1990s, this discrimination has grown more and more serious, so now there is practically zero opportunity for average children to enter the first middle school at all, and therefore little chance to use their innate abilities to climb the social ladder.

This is because, during and after the March of Tribulation, ideological training, “[proletarian] class spirit education,” seriously distorted the system of gifted-student education.

Through this “(proletarian) class spirit education,” under the slogan, “Without the revolutionary and proletarian classes we cannot maintain the achievements of the revolution,” the authorities emphasized the need for the Juche Ideology to dominate society. The classes encouraged abhorrence of capitalists and the bourgeoisie via lessons about capitalist contradictions and the superiority of socialist system.

Since 1998, revolutionary education facilities for (proletarian) class spirit education have been built in every province, city, county and neighborhood. This has changed society markedly, because since the Kim Il Sung period, until the March of Tribulation, the only area of life where class or family background had not had an effect on an individual’s chances was education.

This has resulted in the concept of three classes and 51 groups in society, formed originally in the 1970s, being more rigorously applied: the core class (workers, former farm hands, party members, intellectuals educated after 1945, etc.); the unsettled class (traders, intellectuals educated before 1945, former Confucian scholars and etc.); and the hostile class (former rich farmers, former landlords, pro-Japanese factions, religious persons, criminals’ families, those who have been exiled etc.). The unfavorable classes and groups have since grown more sharply defined and discriminated against, with different classes receiving vastly different treatment.

This has cemented a hereditary social system, and the vicious cycle of family background and class being passed down to descendants has irrevocably formed. Of course, the standard for admission to a school is also class. Ability is no longer of any relevance whatsoever. Now, countless young minds just wither on the vine.

General students feel defeatist when evaluating themselves, thinking they are losers with no social footholds. Since they are not elite students, and are not of a favorable class background, their chances are vanishingly small.

So, what do such groups do? Well, parents in lower classes who would have used education to help their kids escape from poverty or an unstable class have developed an interest in other methods, beyond the school gates. Money.

Since they cannot change their family background, these parents and students have started to believe that they need to earn a great deal of money to be able to give their children a chance. Not a side effect the authorities had hoped for. 

Private Education Is Most Effective for Every Class
Daily NK
By Moon Sung Hwee
7/24/2009    
 

Since the devastation wrought by the March of Tribulation in the late 1990s, education in North Korea has been firmly on the back burner.

When state food distribution ceased, teachers either could not go to school or simply handed in their resignations, while starving children simply stopped attending school. Therefore, even the basic operation of schools was extremely difficult.

One Seoul-based defector, who used to be in charge of military recruitment, explained the situation vividly, “More than half the candidates for military service came to take their physical examination wearing no underwear during the March.”

A Starving Student Rarely Attends School

Children whose parents had starved to death started appearing in large numbers, wandering the streets. People called them “kotjebi.”

Among those parents lucky enough not to starve, very few in the poorer classes bothered educating their children at all, saying, “Since you can’t move up due to your social status, you don’t need to go school. The only things you need are the reading and arithmetic that are needed in the jangmadang.” This has generated a vicious circle of poverty which continues to this day.

Meanwhile, most children in the middle social classes did not go to school either, but to the markets to do what business they could.

Declining attendances in schools wreaked havoc, of course. Since 2000 the North Korean authorities have been trying to bring schools back to life by harshly punishing parents whose children do not come to school.

Nevertheless, even elite children with politically and financially sound family backgrounds have given up on school. However, their reason is different; their parents are dissatisfied with the poor standard of education in public schools, so they have shifted into the private education field.

In reality, schools are equipped with ageing facilities, suffer a severe lack of materials and receive little state investment, so effective education is all but impossible.

For example, since 1985 there has been a chapter on computers in mathematics text books, and computer education has been nominally on the curriculum. However, IT education is purely theoretical, because there are no computers in any but the First Middle Schools.

A Starving Teacher is not a Good Teacher

A teacher who is not able to live on his or her wages alone will always have difficulties paying attention to teaching students, and either the teacher, or the students, or both, will seek alternative ways to achieve their goals.

From the late 1980s, informal private education started to appear in North Korea for the first time, in the form of music lessons. At the time, those who used to work for art units started teaching the accordion or violin to senior school students.

However, a decisive turning point in bringing about a boom in private education was the appearance of DVD players. Since around 2005, DVD players have become almost a necessity for senior school students.

Households use legal educational DVDs produced by Education and Culture Broadcasting, which is publicly aired only in Pyongyang, and illegally copied ones which feature recorded lectures by First Senior Middle School teachers. It is more effective than public school education, because they can see well-edited lectures by good teachers, rather than attending half-hearted ones by the disillusioned teachers in the general school system.

This home-schooling method has spread widely, even extending to elementary students.

In March this year, during the enrollment period for elementary school, an unprecedented “freshmen enrollment notice” containing a list of children required to start school was stuck up in public areas. This was due to rapidly declining freshman enrollment.

North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS) released the story on March 17, quoting a North Korean source as saying, “Such a notice is the first in North Korean history.” Additionally, the source reported, “Affluent people can educate their children privately with the money which they would have to provide to public school every month plus a bit more. Therefore, they will not send their children to school. Private math or physics tutors can earn up to 30,000 North Korean won per month, and music or art tutors as much as 50,000 won.” 

Student Labor Utliized in Every Field
Daily NK
By Moon Sung Hwee
7/28/2009    
 

As the Kim Jong Il period started in the 1980s, students became subject to many more kinds of unwelcome social mobilization.

For example, students were made to carry water from local rivers in order to build a skating rink every winter, and to take part in the construction of railroads, swimming pools and many other construction projects in their neighborhoods almost daily.

Farm support activities, the domain of third grade middle school students, have long been a conventional method of exploiting North Korean child labor. Every spring the kids have to build seedbeds of corn, transplant rice for more than ten days in summer and then help bring in the harvest for a full month in fall.

They are made to harvest crops until late in the evening, while five or six students are put up in each farmer’s house for the duration. In summer, schools give the students ten days vacation, in which they are ordered to collect fresh bracken and other wild plants.

The authorities in cities and towns periodically mobilize students and factory workers to repair railroads or roads as well. Sunday, the only official day-off in North Korea, is now a day for mobilizing students instead.

Since social mobilization comes frequently, students are often far from their studies, so teachers simply devote themselves to the maintenance of schools.

Since the March of Tribulation in the late 1990s, the atmosphere in the education sector has changed a lot. Since that time, the authorities have found it difficult to push students into social mobilization, since they can’t even afford lunch, or to manage schools, because the number of those who are willing to give up their chance of an education has drastically increased.

A source from Hoiryeong, North Pyongan Province reported recently that the percentage of students who go to school is now 62 percent, according to a recent report from the education department of Hoiryeong’s municipal Party Committee.

Absence from school is more serious on Saturday than on any other day because there are weekly evaluation meetings on the students’ daily lives, and several other onerous and to-be-avoided tasks like the offering of rabbit furs or metal scraps.

Meanwhile, the North Korean authorities have been focusing on inspiring student loyalty to the ongoing 150-Day Battle, but the result has been quite the opposite.

In 1980, the first work on the daily student routine was a “Sincerity Task;” cleaning up the surroundings of the local Kim Il Sung statue, portraits and the like. Students naturally addressed the task with care and diligence.

However, the number of students seen even doing such things has decreased markedly since the early 1990s, let alone doing it well. Moreover, students who are prepared to undertake such tasks are branded “brown noses.”

One recent example can be found in Hyesan: in advance of the anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s death on July 8, the authorities mobilized local students to clean up the Bocheonbo Battle Monument. Yet, on one of the allocated days only a few students turned up, while on other days there was no one there at all, according to our source.