Education in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is strictly controlled by the government. Children go through one year of kindergarten, four years of primary education, six years of secondary education, and then on to universities. Two notable universities in the DPRK are the Kim Il-sung University and Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, both in Pyongyang.

Formal education has played a central role in the social and cultural development of both traditional Korea and contemporary North Korea. During the Chosn Dynasty, the royal court established a system of schools that taught Confucian subjects in the provinces as well as in four central secondary schools in the capital. There was no state-supported system of primary education. During the fifteenth century, state-supported schools declined in quality and were supplanted in importance by private academies, the swn, centers of a Neo-Confucian revival in the sixteenth century. Higher education was provided by the Snggyungwan, the Confucian national university, in Seoul. Its enrollment was limited to 200 students who had passed the lower civil service examinations and were preparing for the highest examinations.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed major educational changes. The swn were abolished by the central government. Christian missionaries established modern schools that taught Western curricula. Among them was the first school for women, Ehwa Woman’s University, established by American Methodist missionaries as a primary school in Seoul in 1886. During the last years of the dynasty, as many as 3,000 private schools that taught modern subjects to both sexes were founded by missionaries and others. Most of these schools were concentrated in the northern part of the country. After Japan annexed Korea in 1910, the colonial regime established an educational system with two goals: to give Koreans a minimal education designed to train them for subordinate roles in a modern economy and make them loyal subjects of the emperor; and to provide a higher quality education for Japanese expatriates who had settled in large numbers on the Korean Peninsula. The Japanese invested more resources in the latter, and opportunities for Koreans were severely limited. In 1930 only 12.2 percent of Korean children aged seven to fourteen attended school. A state university modeled on Tokyo Imperial University was established in Seoul in 1923, but the number of Koreans allowed to study there never exceeded 40 percent of its enrollment; the rest of its students were Japanese. Private universities, including those established by missionaries such as Sungsil College in P’yongyang and Chosun Christian College in Seoul, provided other opportunities for Koreans desiring higher education.

After the establishment of North Korea, an education system modeled largely on that of the Soviet Union was established. The system faces serious obstacles. According to North Korean sources, at the time of North Korea’s establishment, two-thirds of school-age children did not attend primary school, and most adults, numbering 2.3 million, were illiterate. In 1950 primary education became compulsory. The outbreak of the Korean War, however, delayed attainment of this goal; universal primary education was not achieved until 1956. By 1958 North Korean sources claimed that seven-year compulsory primary and secondary education had been implemented. In 1959 “state-financed universal education” was introduced in all schools; not only instruction and educational facilities, but also textbooks, uniforms, and room and board are provided to students without charge. By 1967 nine years of education became compulsory. In 1975 the compulsory eleven-year education system, which includes one year of preschool education and ten years of primary and secondary education, was implemented; that system remains in effect as of 1993. According to a 1983 speech given by Kim Il Sung to education ministers of nonaligned countries in P’yongyang, universal, compulsory higher education was to be introduced “in the near future.” At that time, students had no school expenses; the state paid for the education of almost half of North Korea’s population of 18.9 million.

The economy of North Korea has been in a continued state of flux since the early 1990s, spurred by the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Other centrally planned economies in similar straits have opted for domestic economic reform and liberalization of trade and investment. Despite its recent moves toward limited economic opening, North Korea has thus far avoided making any fundamental changes. Its leadership seems determined to maintain tight economic control.

North Korea possesses extensive economic resources with which to build a modern economy. These include sizable deposits of coal, other minerals, and nonferrous metals. The river systems of the Yalu, Tumen, and Taedong, and lesser rivers supplement North Korea’s coal reserves and form an abundant source of power. Although the mountainous terrain prohibits paddy rice cultivation except in the coastal lowlands, corn, wheat, and soybeans grow well on dry field plateaus. The country’s hilly areas also provide for timber forests, livestock grazing, and orchards.

North Korea inherited the basic infrastructure of a modern economy at the end of the Japanese colonial era (1910-45) and achieved considerable success in spite of the of the socialist government’s restrictive controls of labor, capital, and rates of consumption. These controls had a cumulative effect, and by the beginning of the 1960s, the economy had reached a stage where delays and bottlenecks began to grow. Slow economic growth continued into the 1970s and 1980s. Based on Juche, the self-reliant economic policy emphasizes heavy industry. This policy, coupled with economic difficulties, has resulted in a poor record of exports, chronic trade deficits, and a sizable external debt, as well as foreign trade primarily oriented toward other communist countries. At the outset of the 1990s, North Korea’s economy was in a deep slump and in great disarray, and was significantly behind its neighbour, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), which has become a world-class economic powerhouse.

North Korea’s economy remains one of the world’s last centrally planned systems. The role of market allocation is sharply limited – mainly in the rural sector where peasants sell produce from small private plots. There are almost no small businesses. Although there have been scattered and limited attempts at decentralization, as of mid-1993, P’yongyang’s basic adherence to a rigid centrally planned economy continues, as does its reliance on fundamentally non-pecuniary incentives. As the country faced the 2000′s, more famines came, although South Korea aided the country with fertilizer and livestock shipments. In addition, the nuclear weapons program in 2006 created sanctions against the country. The collapse of socialist governments around the world in 1991, particularly North Korea’s principal benefactor, the Soviet Union, have forced the already depressed North Korean economy to fundamentally realign its foreign economic relations. Economic exchanges with South Korea have even begun in earnest. A recent attempt at creating Chinese-style economic zones is representative of North Korea’s current movement towards capitalism.

About 81% of North Korea’s terrain consists of high mountain ranges and partially forested mountains and hills separated by deep, narrow valleys and small, cultivated plains. The most rugged areas are the north and east coasts. Good harbours are found on the eastern coast. Pyongyang, the capital, near the country’s west coast, is located on the Taedong River.

Although most North Korean citizens live in cities and work in factories, agriculture remains a rather high 25% of total GNP, although output has not recovered to the levels of the early 1990s. While trade with the South has expanded since 1988, no physical links between the two remain, and the infrastructure of the North is generally poor and outdated.

North Korea suffers from chronic food shortages, brought about by the combined effects of a reclusive regime, successive natural disasters, structural constraints — such as little arable land and a short growing season — as well as the fact that food products are deliberately diverted away from citizens and into the military. These shortages were exacerbated by record floods in the summer of 1995 and continued shortages of fertilizer and parts. In response to international appeals, the US provided 500,000 tons of humanitarian food aid in the period July 1999-June 2000 through the UN World Food Programme and through US private voluntary organizations.