North Korea

IV

Education and Cultural Activity

Education and culture in North Korea are under state control and are utilized by the governing Korean Workers’ Party regime to indoctrinate and foster its ideology.

A

Education

Education is free and compulsory in North Korea for the first ten years of schooling. In the late 1980s, some 1.5 million pupils were enrolled annually in elementary schools, and another 2.8 million students attended vocational and secondary schools. Statistics for subsequent years are unavailable. The principal institution of higher education is Kim Il Sung University (founded in 1946) in P’yŏngyang. Total enrollment in some 280 institutions of higher education exceeds 300,000. The literacy rate is estimated at about 99 percent.

B

Cultural Life and Institutions

Cultural activity is aided, encouraged, and shaped by the government in consonance with its political goals. Historical museums and libraries are located in many of the larger counties. The government has also formed national symphony, theater, and dance companies.

C

Communications

The government-run Korean Central News Agency is the principal distributing source of news in North Korea; several daily newspapers are published. Radio broadcasting is under the auspices of the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee. Television broadcasting was instituted in 1969, with programming limited to the evening.

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V

Government

Following World War II (1939-1945), the Korea Peninsula was divided into two military occupation zones. The northern zone was occupied by military forces from the Soviet Union, and the southern zone was occupied by United States military forces. In 1946 the Soviet Union recognized a government led by Kim Il Sung, the leader of the Korean Communist Party, in the northern zone. The Korean Communist Party merged that year with another group to form the Korean Workers’ Party. In 1948 the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was formally established as a centralized Communist state under the control of the Workers’ Party, which espoused a Marxist-Leninist ideology. Following the departure of Soviet advisers and forces in 1958, however, North Korea began to lessen the importance of Marxism-Leninism compared to a nationalistic ideology known as juche (self-reliance). Juche was linked to “Kim Il Sungism,” which extolled Kim Il Sung as the personification of national pride. This ideology continued even after Kim Il Sung died in 1994 and was replaced by his son, Kim Jong Il.

North Korea’s first constitution was approved in 1948. It was revised in 1972, 1992, and 1998. Before Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, executive power in North Korea was vested in a president, who was head of state, and a premier, who was technically head of government. The president was elected by the Supreme People’s Assembly, the unicameral legislature, for a four-year term. The president in turn appointed the premier and members of the Central People’s Committee, the government’s highest policymaking body. The post of president was vacant following the death of Kim Il Sung and was later abolished by the 1998 constitution. Kim designated his son, Kim Jong Il, as his successor; however, Kim Jong Il did not assume the presidency. Under a 1998 constitutional amendment, the chair of the National Defense Commission, a post held by Kim Jong Il, was recognized as North Korea’s “highest office.”

The 1998 constitution created the National Defense Commission and gave the armed forces increased governmental power. The commission was described as “the supreme military guidance organ of state sovereignty.” Kim Jong Il became chairman of the commission as well as general secretary of the Workers’ Party. The office of president was abolished.

Nominally, the Supreme People’s Assembly was to hold ultimate authority in the land under the 1998 constitution. But the chairman of its presidium, or executive committee, became a de facto ceremonial head of state, whose major function has been to represent North Korea in dealings with other national leaders. In June 1999 two official organs of the Workers’ Party Central Committee, in a joint article, indicated how powerful the North Korean army had become. The article equated the North Korean army with the people of North Korea. It declared that “giving priority to the Army is the perfect mode of politics in the present times … a mode of leadership which solves all problems arising in the Revolution. Our revolutionary philosophy is that the Army is precisely the Party, people, and state.”

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