There was an article in the Mail yesterday on anti-American indoctrination in North Korean kindergartens. It's basically a re-write of an Associated Press piece by Jean Lee, attributed to a "Daily Mail Reporter":
At the Kaeson Kindergarten in central Pyongyang, one of several schools visited by the AP, U.S. soldiers are depicted as cruel, ghoulish barbarians with big noses and fiendish eyes. Teeth bared, they brand prisoners with hot irons, set wild dogs on women and wrench out a girl's teeth with pliers. One drawing shows an American soldier crushing a girl with his boot, blood pouring from her mouth, her eyes wild with fear and pain.
'The American imperialists and Japanese militarism are the sworn enemies of the North Korean people,' reads a quote from late leader Kim Jong Il affixed to the top of one wall in a large room devoted to anti-U.S. education.
Worth a read, perhaps, though there's nothing much that we didn't know already.
One of the pictures, though, is....bizarre:
The caption - "Curriculum: Aside from history, students learn to sing, dance and ride unicycles, and they get snack time".
Fabulous: learning to sing and dance, and to ride unicycles, plus snack time, and rabid anti-Americanism. North London parents could only dream of a curriculum like that.
It's worth pointing out, though, that AP has recently signed an agreement with the state-run Korean Central News Agency - and that Pyongyang bureau doesn't come without a price to be paid. The whole sordid tale of trashed journalistic standards has been exhaustively documented by Joshua Stanton at OneFreeKorea. Basically, what you're reading from AP is what the North Koreans are happy for you to read.
Every North Korean kindergarten teaches a vicious anti-American and anti-Japanese nationalism to its children? Very probably true. Every North Korean kindergarten teaches its children to ride unicycles? Not, I think, quite so likely. These will be privileged children with the very highest songbun status.
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