A young teacher in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong province, faced public criticism and lost her teaching position after attempting to dodge mandatory militia drills – exposed by a colleague’s report to authorities, Daily NK learned Thursday.
The incident involved a teacher in her 20s, identified only as Kim, who sought help from a parent with connections to the city’s militia department. She hoped to obtain falsified documents showing she had completed the required Worker-Peasant Red Guards exercises during winter break.
In North Korea, all unmarried women, including teachers, must participate in these militia drills. The training runs for two weeks at Red Youth Guards camps located throughout the country’s cities and counties. While men must continue participating after marriage, women gain exemption upon wedding – leading to the common joke that women should “marry quickly if they don’t want to lug a gun and a backpack during drills.”
The scheme unraveled when a fellow teacher reported Kim to authorities. She was subsequently labeled “ideologically ill” during a faculty assembly and stripped of her classroom duties.
“The whistleblower had long envied homeroom teachers’ positions,” the source explained. “Homeroom teachers can sustain themselves through parents’ bribes, while teachers without classrooms struggle financially.”
The source revealed that schools typically have five or six teachers without assigned classes, creating intense competition for homeroom positions. “The start of each year brings fierce competition for classroom assignments,” they said. “The reporting teacher deliberately waited for the right moment to target Kim, hoping to secure a classroom position for the new semester.”
However, the whistleblower’s actions have backfired among colleagues. Other teachers have condemned her as “mean” for betraying a colleague to gain a classroom position. Since using connections to avoid militia drills is common practice among teachers, they view the betrayal as worse than the attempted drill-dodging.
“Ultimately, she won’t get a classroom assignment, and her reputation is ruined,” the source concluded. “Some suggest there must have been good reasons she wasn’t assigned a class in the first place.”
