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North Korean Legislature Meets Amid Speculation About Reforms North Korea Promises Improvements to Its Educational System
(about 7 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s Parliament convened on Tuesday amid speculation among outside analysts that the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, might use the session to reshuffle his government and discuss economic reforms. SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s Parliament convened on Tuesday for a rare second session in a single year, amid speculation among outside analysts that the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, might use the meeting to reshuffle his government and discuss economic reforms.
As the Supreme People’s Assembly met in Pyongyang, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency gave few hints of what was on the agenda. In its first dispatch on the one-day meeting, the agency said that compulsory education had been extended from 11 years to 12, and that Mr. Kim had been in attendance. But the one-day session ended instead with an announcement of changes to the isolated country’s educational system — changes that analysts saw as potentially popular with the North Korean people. The rubber-stamp legislature extended compulsory education to 12 years from 11, promised more classrooms and said that teachers would be given priority in the distribution of food and fuel rations, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The session Tuesday was the rubber-stamp body’s second since Mr. Kim took power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, last December. The Supreme People’s Assembly also pledged to end the “unruly mobilization of students” for activities outside school. The official report did not elaborate on this; however, since famine struck North Korea in the mid-1990s, mobilizing students to gather firewood and animal waste for fertilizer has become a common practice in the country’s schools, and a major parental grievance.
When the assembly last met, in April, legislators elected Mr. Kim to succeed his father as chairman of the North’s top state agency, the National Defense Commission, the last of the top military, party and state titles he inherited. During his father’s rule, North Korea built nuclear weapons in defiance of international condemnation, even as its economy suffered from United Nations sanctions and many people died from famine. Analysts in South Korea said that in putting education at the center of the first policy changes made public under his rule, Mr. Kim was trying to reinforce the public’s faith in his family’s dynastic regime.
It is rare for the assembly to meet more than once a year. Analysts outside the isolated country have said that the additional session might be used to introduce new legislation to support Mr. Kim’s repeated promises to improve the living standards of his people. “This could prove popular among North Korean people, if it’s implemented,” said Chang Yong-seok of the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University.
Since July, various news outlets in South Korea have reported that Mr. Kim’s new regime has begun implementing cautious economic incentives aimed at boosting productivity at farms and factories. Some reports said the state was considering letting farmers keep at least 30 percent of their yield; currently, it is believed, they are allowed to sell only a surplus beyond a government-set quota that is rarely met. The government might also let factories choose what to produce and how to market their wares, splitting any profits with the state and paying their own workers, reports said. Since taking over after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December, Kim Jong-un has sought to project an image as a youthful leader who is accessible to his people, and particularly as one who cares for the country’s children. He dedicated one of his first public speeches to North Korean children, has ordered improvements to amusement parks and was pictured in the state media holding kindergartners on his lap.
Such changes, if implemented, would be the North’s latest — and perhaps boldest — effort to overhaul its economy. A similar effort failed a decade ago. The parliamentary session in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, was watched closely for indications of policy shifts under Mr. Kim. Outside analysts had speculated that he might use the session to discuss economic reforms, like giving more incentives to farms and factories to increase productivity, which various South Korean news outlets have reported as being under consideration. But the official report Tuesday made no mention of such changes.
“Perhaps North Korea believed that its economic programs were still in too early a stage of development, and too experimental, to be made public,” Mr. Chang said. “Instead, Kim Jong-un presented what could be a more ambitious, longer-term plan of normalizing his country’s educational system.”
The Assembly voted to extend state-sponsored free schooling to 12 years, for all children from ages 5 to 17. Previously, such schooling ended at 16. The legislature said the change was to meet the requirements of “the age of knowledge-based economy and the trend of the world,” a term that has been favored under Mr. Kim.
The report, which stressed education in computer technology and foreign languages, said the legislature promised to build more classrooms and dormitories and to ensure that school buses run on time. It did not say how the North would finance the first major overhaul of its educational system in four decades.
The legislature said it would crack down on “mobilizing students for purposes other than state mobilization.” That, in effect, meant that the country’s use of young students for a mass gymnastics festival — a key feature of its national propaganda — would continue, analysts said. Thousands of children are trained every year for the show, which also serves as a source of foreign currency from tourists.
“Kim Jong-un is trying to rebuild a loyalty in his socialist system by emphasizing free compulsory education,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “One more year of education also means producing a better work force for the regime.”