Mick Hartley

From South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:

The North Korean regime has been sending elite young Workers Party functionaries into internal exile at remote construction sites to shore up crumbling discipline.

The practice is being presented as "volunteering," but it appears they are not given a choice.

One senior defector said, "One of the biggest problems leader Kim Jong-un faces is young people who have been influenced by South Korean culture and angry about the economic crisis. The aim appears to be to neutralize them so they can't foment internal dissent."

The official Rodong Sinmun daily on Sunday published a statement from Kim to mark Youth Day the previous day. "What makes me especially happy is to see young people who have been left behind make the magnificent decision to sacrifice themselves for their country and start fresh by moving on to difficult and demanding areas," he said.

He attributed the "weakness" of young North Koreans to the "stubborn ideological and cultural infiltration schemes of the imperialists."

The victims gathered in Pyongyang to hold what was billed as a "debate" last week. They included a graduate from Sariwon Teachers College who "volunteered" to teach in a school in a remote outpost, a youth guidance official from Nampo who "chose" to work on a cooperative farm, and a high-end store worker in Pyongyang who "opted" to work on a ranch in Kangwon Province.

The echoes of the massive reeducation efforts of China's Cultural Revolution or Cambodia's Khmer Rouge are unmissable.

One intelligence official here said, "Many young North Koreans are essentially being sent to labor camps."

Here's the Rodong Sinmun report on these brave young people "demonstrating the stout mettle of the Korean youth with hot blood and soaring passion in every corner of the country". Deep breath…

Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, sent a letter of congratulations to the trustworthy young people who volunteered to work in the difficult and challenging sectors of socialist construction on Saturday. 

The full text of the letter of congratulations is as follows: 

In the stirring period, when a dynamic struggle is being waged for the rejuvenation of our great state, our excellent young men and women volunteered to work in the difficult and challenging sectors of socialist construction, instilling a firmer confidence and greater fighting spirit in all other people and demonstrating far and wide the revolutionary character and fighting mettle of the Korean youth, who go through fire and water in response to the call of the Workers' Party of Korea. 

With an ardent affection for and unshakable conviction in socialism, you have turned out to work bravely for the revolution, defying trials and sacrifice; I highly appreciate your laudable patriotic deeds, and extend warm congratulations and militant greetings to our young people. 

My warm thanks go to the excellent parents and teachers, who supported the laudable determinations of their beloved children and students and encouraged them without hesitation, and to the organizations and officials of the youth league, who helped these young people's valuable decisions turn into patriotic minds and inspired them. 

I also would like to extend warm congratulations to all other young people across the country, who have greeted Youth Day while demonstrating the stout mettle of the Korean youth with hot blood and soaring passion in every corner of the country. 

Though your native homes and the dreams you nurtured in your minds are different, you, with the same dream and ideal of supporting the Party's intention, have settled in the workplaces, to which others do not dare to go, and in other places strange to you; you are a great pride of socialist Korea and source of its great strength, as well as young patriots of our era, beloved of your country and fellow people. 

Your deeds are an expression of your thoroughgoing faith to share your destiny for ever with socialism, your ardent love for your state and your outlook on beautiful life of finding the honour and worth of life on the road of working for the Party and revolution. 

Amid the remarkably soaring enthusiasm for volunteering by young people in response to the call of the times and their motherland in practice, not in words, the ranks of young people who volunteered to the difficult and challenging sectors have increased rapidly after the Eighth Congress of the Party; this fact showcases the wonderful ideological and spiritual state of our current young men and women. 

Young people around the world are flowing into their capital and other cities in pursuance of their avarice and personal pleasure. Only the Korean young people who have grown up under the embrace of the socialist motherland unhesitatingly volunteer to exchange their cards of capital citizenship with notes of dispatch to coal mines, cooperative farms, grand construction sites and islands far from cities. 

Our Party identifies, in your beautiful and laudable spiritual world, the patriotic soul and revolutionary spirit which remain unchanged and yet alive no matter how many generations have been replaced. 

You volunteered for the posts at which, you knew, you would have to suffer extraordinary hardships away from your dear homes, brightly illumined cities and beloved families. Your lofty spirit is a splendid inheritance of the ennobling spirit of the anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters who fought shedding blood in the blizzard-swept wilderness after parting with their families. 

The red blood of the anti-Japanese forerunners who pioneered the revolution under the leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung is now running through the veins of the rising generations, and this clearly proves that the lineage of the revolutionary cause of Juche which started in Mt Paektu is being stoutly inherited. 

The enemies are now trembling with terror at this powerful current and spirit. 

The imperialists' anti-DPRK attempt to degenerate and undermine the ranks of our young people by means of vicious sanctions and pressure and tenacious ideological and cultural infiltration has vanished like bubbles in the face of this strong current. 

It is a wild goose chase to try to pull down the bulwark of socialism by breaking away our younger generations from the revolution. 

The revolutionary advance made by you, hot-blooded young people, is heightening the morale of the ranks of the general onward march as the days go by and injecting confidence in sure victory and youthful vigour into the whole country….

[Continues…]