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When it comes to North Korean education one should admit one important fact: for such a poor country, North Korea has a remarkably well educated populace. North Koreans claim that decades ago, they reached 100 percent literacy, and this is actually very close to the truth.
This is one of the advantages of Leninist/Stalinist states, most of which never completely abandon their enlightenment roots, remaining remarkably serious about bringing knowledge (albeit only of the politically correct kind) to the masses. When it came to primary, and to an extent, secondary education, their advantage was being able to ensure that every child could be sent to school.
Some critics of communism observed that such concerns were not merely driven by a wish to enlighten the masses, but also to indoctrinate the people. This is a fair remark: school curriculums in the communist bloc have always been politicized. Indeed, North Korean primary school math textbooks continue to ask how many American imperialists were killed by brave North Korean soldiers, and how many South Korean villagers are starving south of the DMZ. This might bring smiles to the faces of Western readers, but we should not forget that North Koreans learn how to read, write and count.
However, education under Marxism-Leninism tended to be less effective at the college level. No communist state has ever thought it good to send all teenagers to university. In essence, college education was rationed, with the government deciding on a quota, distributing places accordingly. In North Korea now, only 15 percent of the high school graduates enter the universities and colleges, while in South Korea the figure is close to 75 percent.
The government also decides which majors should take more students. North Korea was quite remarkable in its emphasis on technical fields and hard sciences. While the ruling elite of communist bloc countries sometimes played lip service to the humanities, in the depths of their hearts, they saw social fields as the handmaidens of an ideology that they did not take too seriously. For them, education was really about understanding science and technology, the humanities were a necessary evil to be kept at bay and used largely for propaganda.
In North Korea, this feature became especially pronounced, with Kim Il Sung himself making a number of statements to the effect that in a properly run country, the majority of college students should major in technology and hard science. It was also understood that engineers would also make the best managers and politicians. Indeed, most top officials in the country were trained engineers.
In real life, however, things might be different, since some majors officially seen as secondary are in fact thought of as highly prestigious. For example, in North Korea, the departments of foreign languages – English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese – have always been seen as far superior to the majority of other specialties. In essence, their standing was similar to law and medicine at major US universities. The reason is pragmatic: graduates of foreign language departments have a remarkably high chance of being employed at foreign trade agencies or to be sent overseas to work as diplomats, spies, and agents of the North Korean government. Such jobs are not only lucrative, but also highly prestigious.
Unlike South Korea, and many other Western countries, nowadays, post-graduate studies are not seen as highly prestigious by the lay public in North Korea. The reasons are, again, practical. In earlier times, North Korean professors and researchers were very well paid: in the 1960s, a university professor's salary was ten times the national average, but such days are long gone, unless you have some practical, sellable skills that are in demand in areas such as foreign trade, with military specialists also being rewarded very well.
Theoretically, North Korean admission to university is decided through competitive exams, and tuition is free. In practice, this may have never been the case: only sufficiently good connections could get you into a prestigious school until recently, while nowadays, connections have largely been supplanted by the bribe, so a hefty sum will get you admission to Kim Il Sung University, the best school in the country. However, in some cases, young bright students still can be admitted solely on the basis of their talent – especially if we are talking about less prestigious schools or more difficult majors (like, say, mathematics or nuclear physics).
At any rate, in spite of all its shortcomings and inequality, North Korea has a remarkably efficient system of higher education – at least for a country that has a per capita GDP roughly equal to Bangladesh. And this is good news.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
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