The North Korean authorities are mobilizing elementary school children to participate in seasonal agricultural labor this year. The move is in contrast with many other years; it is mostly “senior middle school” (North Korea’s combined middle and high school) and university-age students that are sent out into the fields to transplant rice seedlings, with younger children only mobilized as necessary.
A source from South Pyongan Province told Daily NK on the 16th, “They are limiting the opening hours of Pyongsung Market (the largest wholesale market in North Korea) to send people for farming. They’ve even got thin-legged kids of ten or so carrying seedbeds around.”
“If you’re going to a place close to home then it is not all that bad, but if you have to go further away then you need to take lunch as well,” the source went on. “Some just work without lunch; it happens all the time. Corn porridge is given to the children, but the work of carrying seedbeds is tough.”
A second source from Hoiryeong in North Hamkyung Province noted, “Senior middle school and university students are usually the ones mobilized for farming, but this year they are also mobilizing elementary school students less than ten years old. They are carrying seedbeds and doing the planting just like the adults; some of them are also helping the farm workers.
“The farm mobilization started on the 1st of this month, then children started missing school to take part from the 10th. The authorities expect the mobilization to continue until the end of this month, but the rice planting is often extended until the end of June.”
“To raise the morale of the kids there is even a ‘propaganda troupe’ made up of elementary children,” the source revealed. “They have gongs and drums that they play to encourage the kids working in the fields.”
Sources note that this is not the first time children have been mobilized to take part in the transplanting of rice seedlings into the paddy fields. Children are often called upon to fill in when there is a lot of work to be done. However, they are not normally required to miss school or attend farming activities for an extended period of time.
