“I defended the fatherland, but it did not defend me.”
Image / KCNA
Youth is not a time for making choices for North Koreans. Rather, it is a period of obligation to the state, a time when personal dreams and personal lives are strictly controlled. At the age when they should be exploring career paths, learning love, and discovering themselves through failure and challenge, young North Koreans are absorbed into the state under the name of military service.
The authorities forcibly take away the most precious ten years of young people’s lives under the pretext of defending the fatherland. The most energetic and creative period of a person’s life is given up to sustain the regime. Youth is treated as a resource to be mobilized at its convenience.
The background to this normalization of long-term military service lies in the myth of “youth heroes” formed after the Korean War. Stories of teenagers and young adults who fought without sparing their lives have been repeated ad nauseam, and to this day serve as the standard of loyalty and sacrifice.
This logic that youth has value only when it is dedicated to the fatherland is never questioned.
The story of one young man who once was an unforgettable part of my life illustrates this reality most starkly. He believed that on the day he completed ten years of military service and was discharged, normal life would finally begin. He expected that the time he had given to the fatherland would at least be repaid in the form of stability and care. But reality was harsh. What awaited him was neither gratitude nor compensation, nor any institutional support to help him reintegrate into society.
On the day of discharge, he was not even given money for transportation home. From that moment, the state no longer assumed responsibility for him. He had to walk a long way back to his hometown. Though hardened by years of service, what awaited him was hunger, insecurity, and a future with no guarantees.
On the road, he endured countless hardships. He had to sleep outdoors when he could not find shelter. He staggered on the verge of collapse from hunger.
“I believed I had defended the fatherland, but the fatherland did not defend me,” he said.
This single sentence reveals the reality that youngsters are heroes when the regime needs them, but are then abandoned once that need disappears. Loyalty and sacrifice are endlessly demanded, but no one takes responsibility for the life that follows. Individuals are consumed as tools of the system and then quietly discarded.
The ten-year military service is not simply a conscription system. It is a structure that systematically deprives a generation of time and possibility. During those long years, people lose the chance for proper education, fail to acquire skills, and miss even the minimum experiences needed to adapt to society. After discharge, they face another war for survival. Military service ends and the battle of life begins.
In this vicious cycle of the state demanding all and giving nothing back, young people forget how to dream and learn only how to survive.
Whose possession should youth truly be? Does the state have the right to forcibly take the brightest ten years of an individual’s life? Can we call a society normal when it demands loyalty and sacrifice, then severs all responsibility the moment of discharge?
In a system that elevates youth as heroes when needed, but turns away in silence once they are deemed useless, what are young people sacrificing their lives for? Why must ten years of youth in North Korea be a time not for preparing dreams, but for enduring survival?
Until these questions are answered, the future of youth in North Korea will remain abandoned on the road. And even now, North Korean youth continue to walk that same road. I met one such young man myself. That is why I tell his story.
Daenam, a former North Korean worker at a state-run company supplying rare commodities to the Kim family. He defected to South Korea with his family by sea in 2023. He is pursuing a degree in Security Science at a university in Seoul.
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- “I defended the fatherland, but it did not defend me.” - January 12, 2026