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When it comes to education, North Korea is clearly lagging well behind its southern rival and other developed countries, but it is doing exceptionally well for a country whose income is roughly equivalent to that of Mozambique or Ghana. The college admission rate in North Korea is a respectable 15 percent. In other words, North Korea is a remarkably well-educated country considering its extremely low income level.
How does the university admissions system work in North Korea? Currently, the North Korean college entrance exams consist of two consecutive phases. First, applicants sit exams in their native town or village, successful applicants go to a college of their choice to sit the next set of exams.
Local exams are conducted every year and most participants are recent graduates of high schools. There are six subjects examined – the revolutionary history of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, Korean language, foreign languages, mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Preliminary exams (as they are officially known) take two days – not the one day their South Korean equivalents take.
If one fails, it is possible to have another go, but not the next year (as is the case in South Korea). Female students have to wait three years before they can apply again, and for men the wait period is five years. After males end their obligatory military service (seven to ten years), they are given highly privileged treatment if they wish to attend college, so many North Korean males find themselves at college at the advanced age of 30. These students tend not to be academically mediocre, but the authorities see them as politically more reliable.
Relying on the results of the preliminary exams, local education departments choose a certain number of candidates to sit exams at the university or college of their choice. Each college and university has a certain prearranged number of available seats, so provinces and counties are issued quotas for each institution of higher learning.
This system is not only complex, but also opaque. Marks certainly matter, but the connections and family backgrounds of candidates are more important. Family background – the notorious "seongbun" – is of particular significance. A child born into a family whose class origins are deemed to be bad by the authorities has little or no chance of being accepted into the best schools – even if his or her marks are exceptional.
Nonetheless, it would be a simplification to say that marks do not matter or matter little. The exam success creates good opportunities for advancement for a person whose family political credentials are just mildly suspicious.
It seems from my frequent talks to North Koreans that political credentials tend to be much more important when it comes to languages and humanities, while they can be somewhat overlooked in the case of hard science or technology. In other words, a great-grandson of a pre-1945 court courtesan would probably have some chances if he is truly brilliant and wants to study ballistics. However, he has zero chance of being accepted to an English department (or Department of Economics, for that matter).
After preliminary exams, lucky candidates depart for the college of their choice to sit the next round of examinations. Generally, universities located in Pyongyang are considered to be far more prestigious than countryside schools (an attitude very similar to South Korea). Kim Il Sung University is the best school, Kim Chaek University of Technology and foreign language colleges come a quite close second.
The children of the elite tend to go for foreign language studies since they have fairly realistic chances of becoming diplomats, or better still, foreign trade officials (a highly profitable job) – sort of the North Korean equivalent of a corporate Manhattan lawyer. Meanwhile, bright children of less lucky families prefer to do technology – especially computer technology. North Korea's government takes technology very seriously and is willing to do its best engineers relatively well.
Technically North Korean college and university students are eligible for scholarships. But in the last fifteen years, inflation has made these completely inconsequential. Therefore, successful studies have become impossible without support from family back home. There are no part-time jobs available for North Korean students, so I am aware of a few cases of academically successful and ambitious North Koreans having to skip college or choosing to study in a less prestigious school closer to home.
Money talks loudly in North Korean universities nowadays, but North Korea's education system remains quite impressive though, and it turns out a number of world-class specialists – and not only in such areas as nuclear physics, missile ballistics and computer hacking.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
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