Dear Comrade Leader Episode 155
Junghwan’s words were true.
In fact, in recent years, a boom in private education has been taking place all over the republic, centering on the high-ranking people in Pyongyang.
“Dongsu, what did Abaddy say? What do you have to do well to become a good person in the Republic?”
“English! English is Power!”
“Yes. Now the people of the Republic are Americans… … Oops. If you go to the US, you will succeed and wait for a pile of dollars. Don’t worry about money, learn English well from your teacher and comrade today. Got it?”
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Not only hagwons, but also illegal private tutoring, tutoring by inviting native speakers, and even study materials brought in from South Korea were prevalent under the current general secretary Kim Jeong-hwan.Unlike Korea, where private tutoring was popular enough to legally ban illegal tutoring since the 1980s, there was no such thing as private education in North Korea before.
Under the communist ideology that all people and proletariats should receive the same (brainwashing) education without any difference, 12 years of compulsory public education was all there was from daycare centers (kindergartens), people’s schools (elementary schools), and middle schools.
However, when the market economy system was introduced and companies and parties began to select members with differential and superiority in screening, a boom in private education almost identical to that in Korea began to occur in case someone was not Korean.
Ironically, at the forefront of this craze for English education was the Labor Party executives who were at the forefront calling for the overthrow of the US imperialists, the ‘enemies of the nation’ just ten years ago.
As he was closer to power than ordinary people, he knew well the direction of Jeong-hwan’s policy and how North Korea would change as a result, so he noticed much faster than ordinary people about what to do and how not to fall into starvation.
‘In the days of President Kim Il-sung, you had to speak Russian well to be treated. In the days of the former general, I had to speak Chinese well to make a living. And now that the era of the new general secretary has come, you have to speak well in the US to get closer to power!’
‘Now, under Comrade General Secretary, the republic is likely to go to a capitalist system. You have to learn English to get information quickly, and it’s easy to buy money or goods from abroad and sell them in the Republic.’
This was also due to the changed external view of the general North Koreans, and no matter how censored by the propaganda and agitation department once, it was impossible to block all American content coming through legal or illegal channels.
‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ sells better than the Fatherland Liberation War documentary film ‘The Soldiers’.
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No one listened to the CD, which recorded ‘A bountiful harvest has come to the blue-green bees’, but everyone knew about New Kids On the Block.All of these music and movies are spoken in English by English-speaking singers and actors.
In the end, as the number of people dissatisfied with the current standardized (?) public education for various backgrounds and reasons increased day by day, Jeong Hwan had to reorganize the national public education system before it was too late.
However, in this matter, Junghwan made a decision in a slightly different way than usual.
As before, he did not decide to make a decision on his own, as the general secretary, but by collecting the opinions of other party officials and members of the Politburo.
And Jeong-hwan’s decision led to unexpected results at the Politburo meeting.
* * *
“Well, shouldn’t we have to go in the direction of filtering out the best elite of the republic? It became natural to treat the coal miners in the mines differently from those who will become the best brains in the Kim Chaek Engineering College from the very beginning.”
“I think the aim of education in our republic is to provide basic knowledge so that all people can develop their strengths to the fullest, Comrade General Secretary.”
“… … .”
“… … .”
Two people, Jang Seong-taek and Kim Yong-geon, who expressed completely opposite opinions at the same time, looked at each other with dazed faces even after speaking out.
All the members of the other Politburo members, except for Hong Gye-seong, who is the oldest and who has rapidly deteriorated these days, Hyun Young-sook, Kim Young-nam, Baek Seung-cheol, and Jeong-hwan’s secretary Yoo Hye-rim, all kept silent with a bewildered face.
Only the organizer of today’s meeting, Jeonghwan, sighed inwardly.
‘This is unexpected, I don’t think it’s going to be this completely different… … .’
There were several reasons why Jung Hwan decided to listen to the opinions of other members on education issues.
It is the most correct direction to decide alone, who knows the future, such as the investment portfolio of Peony Holdings, a sovereign wealth fund, or the composition of the nation’s main industry, and in fact, it has been proven so far.
But as far as education is concerned, I decided to open my ears to various ways because it is an important but not fixed answer… … .
“Comrade Foreign Minister Kim! what do you mean gee? Like now, with the leadership of the general secretary comrade, the republic’s economy is ascending to the sky, is it to provide basic knowledge? Is this the story of teaching the best elites of Joseon, who will be key workers of the future republic, in the same institute as ordinary students?”
“It is doubtful whether Comrade Jang, who is like that, is forgetting the socialist ideology of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. You may not be aware that the education of the elite minority is not ideologically compatible with this republic, but also promotes class formation and sectarianism.”
“You are a leader of classes and factions? How is it that discrimination based on academic ability promotes class? If it is practically devised, in order for this 23 million-population Joseon to survive among the surrounding great powers and the South Koreans, it is the way for this country to survive by cultivating the best elites and leading the ignorant ordinary people!”
“Isn’t this the case with countries the size of a pea like Singapore or Switzerland? In the midst of an explosive increase in the population of the Republic, an education policy that raises one top brain and discards ninety-nine ordinary people is a short-sighted measure that only thinks about the present and does not consider the future potential!”
“What, what?”
In the past, at the Politburo meeting, the right to speak was usually decided depending on who occupies a higher position in the party, and the pros and cons of the agenda were generally aligned with that.
However, as if reflecting the recent acceleration of mutual checks between the party and the cabinet, the leader of the cabinet, Kim Yong-geon, was building an angle with Jang Song-thaek, deputy head of the party’s organizational and leadership department, without retreating a bit.
Of course, there was also the reason that Jang Seong-taek’s authority was not the same since he was removed from office once by a comrade, the absolute general secretary of this position, which is recognized by everyone.
It would have been inconceivable to express objection to the leader of the party’s organizational leadership in public before his resignation, but now it is worth trying.
“Comrade General Secretary! What do you guys think… … .”
“… … What do other comrades think?”
Jang Seong-taek hurriedly looked at Jeong-hwan, as if asking him to take his side, but Jeong-hwan asked other Politburo members, who had only been ignoring him, for their opinions.
“It is said that education is a hundred-year-old system regardless of which country it is. As this is such an important agenda item, I will take into consideration all the opinions of the committee members at this meeting today, so please share your opinions without hesitation.”
“… … Isn’t it necessary to choose between a small group of people or a whole-person education?”
It was Hyun Young-sook, head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, who came up with a compromise between the two elements of tightly opposed party justice.
She wet her red lips as if she needed to fight, and opened her mouth carefully.
“Why don’t we take only the good points from both sides and conduct holistic education such as the Korean language, socialist ideology, basic liberal arts and arithmetic until the People’s School, and differentiate the superiority and inferiority in earnest from the third year of middle school?”
“… … Wouldn’t it be a problem to decide how much to cut it, manager Hyung? This Jang Sung-taek is the last, and he thinks that our republic should follow the Singapore model. Isn’t it right to drop off those who have goals early and to give scholarships or admission tickets to Kim University to excellent comrades?”
“I’m a Singaporean model, so let me explain in more detail, Manager Jang.”
As Jung-hwan seemed to be interested, Jang Seong-taek hurriedly started explaining what Kim Yong-geon was saying.
“You have to think realistically, comrade general secretary. Isn’t it no longer an era when we can say that our Korean people are the best in the world? The population of this republic is smaller than that of South Korea as well as large countries such as China and Russia. Only by cultivating a large number of talented people can only the education line of nurturing a few super-geniuses can guarantee the survival of the system.”
“Let’s be specific.”
“First of all, people’s schools and elementary schools are enough to provide holistic education. And when they go to secondary school, they will have to introduce strict tests to filter out those who seem to be cadres and those who will work under them from among the student comrades. I think that the middle school itself should be divided into two, and the advanced middle school should be taught early in the advanced middle school, which is raised by the elite of the republic, and the general middle school.”
The difference between Jang Seong-taek and Kim Yong-geon’s educational policy line was, in a word, whether they would go to education that nurtures a small number of elites and 99% of ordinary people, or whether they would aim for an overall upward leveling of 100% of ordinary people.
Of course, even with holistic education, China, where the population is huge enough to secure a high-quality talent pool to lead the country, and the United States, where human resources from all over the world immigrate even if public education is abandoned, will have relatively few such concerns, but North Korea is not like that. it was
The difference in the lines of these two executives encountered not only the overall direction but also specific issues such as how much permission to establish a private university and how much the quota will be granted.
“Singapore has only a few universities, but in South Korea and Taiwan, they say that they will provide university education to all people and easily grant permission to establish universities. Shouldn’t our republic not repeat these defeats?”
“Then what do you mean?”
“We need to reduce the number of universities so that only the best brains in the republic can enter, and make the entrance exam level difficult. Instead, I had to make sure that the tuition fees were low so that the comrades who entered the school could grow into talented people who could take good care of the general secretary in the future, and the benefits such as study abroad and academic exchange should not be inferior to that of the best universities in the US.”
The differences between Jang Seong-taek and Kim Yong-geon’s education policy also depended on where they spent their careers and what they saw.
In the case of Jang Sung-taek, of course, the comparison target was China.
“It is a Singaporean model who is going to study in China right now. Why would Chinese comrades with such a huge population put aside their pride and go out to learn? In Singapore, it is said that the results of the university entrance exam are published in all newspapers and broadcasts, but we Chosun must also learn this… … .”
“Singapore has a population of just over 5 million. Our republic is now close to 24 million, and it is growing more and more. Is Comrade Jang’s insistence on following the Singapore model make sense? If you provide advanced education to only a few, the Workers’ Party of Korea in the 21st century will be overflowing with Goal Bin Party members! You can use the full potential of 23 million, and I don’t understand why you’re trying to limit that possibility!”
On the other hand, in the case of Kim Yong-geon, his model was Japan, as if he had worked as the head of the Chochongryon on Sunday.
His argument was that the 6-3-3 holistic education system currently implemented in Taiwan and Korea should be benchmarked against the American system, but the broad and shallow learning system unique to Asia and, consequently, the Japanese system of education.
The current republic is rapidly growing in economic power at the right time, and the population is growing rapidly in line with it… … .
Considering the experiences of Japan and the Korean people, which had a similar high growth period, his claim that this was more suited to the situation of North Korea than the Singaporean style of nurturing small elites was also reasonable.
While it was unlikely that the two would narrow their differences of opinion, what caught Jung-hwan’s attention was the relatively quiet other members of the committee.
However, it was only that he could not speak, but from that expression on his face, it was not difficult to read that Junghwan had already decided on a side between the two.
Jeonghwan saw this and decided to wait and wait for a while instead of trying to make a decision between the two of them.
‘This is interesting, let’s see who side with whom for once?’