A Study on North Korea’s Education-Centering for Middle School

This paper deals with the reality of North Korea’s education and its middle school education. North Korea still maintains its own curtain and remains isolated from the rest of the world. For that reason, it is very difficult for an individual researcher to get closer to the reality of North Korea’s education. To overcome the limitation, this article actively utilizes a means- interview with defectors who live in South Korea. To understand the current situation of North Korean education, the author interviewed 38 students. It is very useful in order to know the reality that cannot be accessed in the official way. This article firstly examines the general goals of North Korean education and the characteristics of the school curriculum. Next, this paper describes the features of North Korea’s middle school students’ life. Through examining the educational situation of North Korea, the principles of North Korean education have been revealed as fostering newly developed communists. Furthermore, it is a principle that the texts included in North Korea’s national language textbooks should stick to the communist partisanship and reflect socialist patriotism