hankyoreh

By Kim Kyu-won, staff reporter
North Korea held the second meeting of its Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) of this year on Sept. 25. The meeting, which took place amid widespread attention, produced decisions on educational and organizational matters, but no mention was made of agricultural and economic reforms.
The Workers’ Party of Korea convened the meeting, the sixth of the 12th SPA, at Pyongyang’s Mansudae Assembly Hall, with a large turnout by the North Korean leadership, including supreme leader Kim Jong-un.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the members of the assembly adopted an item increasing the duration of compulsory education from eleven to twelve years across the board. With this change, all young people are to receive free education for a period of 12 years between the ages of five and 17.
The system includes one year of pre-school, five years of elementary school, three years of primary middle school, and three years of advanced middle school.
Since 1972, the country has had compulsory education for an eleven-year period, including one year of pre-school, four years of elementary school, and six years of middle school. Not included is university, which lasts five to seven years.
The KCNA explained the nature of the change as “responding to the demands of the times by making decisive improvements and reinforcements to secondary general education and implementing a more stable and developed system of socialist education.”
The timeline for the change involves splitting six-year middle schools into primary and advanced levels during 2013 and 2014, and increasing the elementary school education period from four to five years following a two- to three-year preparation period beginning in 2014 and 2015, the news agency reported.
Decisions were also made on organizational matters. WPK central committee department head Kwak Pom-gi, the figure behind the so-called “South Hamgyong blaze” of economic development, was named chief of the SPA’s budget committee. Meanwhile, the party’s South Pyongyan committee chief secretary Hong In-bom and Kim Il-sung Socialist Youth League central committee head Chon Yong-nam were appointed to the SPA’s Presidium.
Prior to the meeting, the foreign press expected it to include measures for economic reforms and openness, including increased autonomy for farmers and expansions in special zones. Neither issues appears to have been addressed at the meeting.
　
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