High school graduates forced to “volunteer” for frontline duty… 90% are children of laborers and farmers
In this stock image, senior high school students in Pyongyang pledge to join the army. (Image: Korean Central News Agency)
Senior high school graduates in North Hwanghae Province are reportedly being coerced into volunteering for frontline border units.
Authorities held pledging ceremonies for students in cities and counties across the province in the first week of March after pressuring them to volunteer, according to a report in NK Times which quoted a source in the province.
Although North Koreans are not able to outwardly protest, the forcible volunteering has sparked something of a controversy as it has been revealed that 95% of the “volunteers” are children of workers and farmers.
For example, of over 300 graduates from Daesung Senior High School and Eunha Senior High School in the city of Sariwon, around 180 were forced to volunteer. All but ten were reportedly children of local factory workers.
Similarly, out of 170 graduates from Seoksan Senior High School and Ryongcheon Senior High School in Hwangju County, around 160 who “volunteered” were children of collective farm workers, according to the source.
“Every year, senior high school graduates are systematically forced to volunteer for difficult and labor-intensive sectors such as rural farming or mining,” he said. “But this year, they are being forced to go to frontline military units.”
“The 1st Corps and 5th Corps on the frontline have the worst living conditions. Once deployed there, soldiers cannot see their parents for 10 years, and many suffer from malnutrition and are discharged in a severely weakened state,” he said.
Given this, these two corps, which are in Gangwon, the only province that is itself divided between the two Koreas, are the ones which conscripts try hardest to avoid being deployed to. Hence the trend of forcing students into volunteering for them.
“Students from border cities like Hyesan, Hoeryong, Chongjin, Manpo, and Sinuiju are not as naïve as those from North Hwanghae Province,” the source said. “This is why they are sending so many from North Hwanghae Province. They are more easily manipulated.”
Kang is a reporter at NK Times, a Seoul-based media outlet focused on North Korean issues. He was born in 1978 in Chongjin and graduated from Chongjin 1st High School in North Korea. After 10 years of military service in the 4th Army Corps, he attended Chongjin Agricultural University before defecting.
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