Mick Hartley

More worrying signs of ideological nonconformity amongst North Korean youth. Time to polish up the old favourites. From the Daily NK:

North Korean authorities are significantly expanding anti-American ideological education targeting middle and high school students, ordering the content to be woven into virtually every school subject. The move points to deepening official anxiety about ideological drift among the country’s younger generation.

A source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK on Friday that on April 18, the provincial education bureau issued a directive to city and county education departments ordering schools to incorporate anti-American class-struggle education, a state indoctrination program designed to instill hostility toward the United States and reinforce loyalty to the ruling system, into a wide range of subjects. These include revolutionary history as well as Korean language, English, music, and art.

The directive also called for reviving the regular use of class-struggle education halls, dedicated state facilities found in communities across North Korea that display content about the Korean War and the perceived threat posed by the United States. The directive noted that these facilities had been operating in name only and ordered schools to begin scheduling regular student visits alongside the expanded in-class ideological content.

The provincial education bureau cited a deteriorating external security environment as justification. The directive stated that anti-American class-struggle education is urgently required given what it described as escalating U.S. and South Korean military hostility toward North Korea, and warned that even a brief pause in such education risks allowing class consciousness to fade.…

The source suggested the stated rationale is cover for a more pressing internal concern: that ideological commitment among teenagers is weakening at an accelerating pace. The fact that the directive targets middle and high school students rather than university students indicates that authorities are alarmed by signs of ideological disengagement even among those in their early teens.

The orders have left teachers visibly unsettled, according to the source. Until now, class-struggle education has been delivered selectively, tied to specific lesson content such as units on the Korean War. Being told to insert it routinely across unrelated subjects is being treated as an unprecedented instruction.

“Teachers never raised anti-American topics unless the lesson content directly called for it, such as material on the Korean War,” the source said. “Loyalty education around the leadership has long been a daily routine, but an order to make class-struggle education just as routine is the first of its kind.”

You can see the problem. Class struggle and the life-cycle of the fruit fly. Anti-American pottery classes. It could seem a bit forced.

It’s perhaps worth pointing out that American academics have been blazing the trail here, with anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and queer theory – and indeed anti-Americanism – inserting themselves into every discipline from literary studies to biochemistry. Probably pottery classes too. Could some lessons be learnt from the old enemy?