Teachers who criticized new textbooks and maps erasing Korean reunification references were summoned by state security after their comments at a drinking party were reported to authorities.
The teachers at a Kwaksan county high school made the comments during drinking sessions following an Education Day athletics competition on Sept. 5, criticizing official orders related to the “two hostile states” doctrine.
“Teachers at a high school in Kwaksan county were drinking amid the excitement of an athletics competition to mark Education Day on Sept. 5, when they made angry statements about the disappearance of terms related to the Korean nation or reunification in new textbooks and about how South Korea was missing on new maps,” a Daily NK source in North Pyongan province said recently. “Ultimately, they were summoned to the Ministry of State Security.”
The incident began during a boisterous athletics competition that included teachers, students and parents. Parents prepared special food to treat their children’s homeroom teachers, and when the event ended at 3 p.m., some teachers gathered in groups to eat, drink and chat instead of heading home.
Controversial curriculum changes spark anger
During drinking parties that lasted late into the night, conversation naturally turned to the school’s new textbooks and maps. The teachers noted that terms referring to a single Korean people, such as minjok or hangyore, had been deleted from new textbooks, along with expressions highlighting the Korean nation in workbooks.
“This basically overturns Kim Il Sung’s Three Principles of National Reunification — independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity — and his dying wish for peaceful reunification,” they said.
Some teachers appeared quite angry, saying authorities “couldn’t just erase the idea of the Korean nation like that,” and that it was “shameful as a teacher to provide children with an education that erases the idea of the Korean nation.”
They also complained about new maps that depict only the northern half of the Korean Peninsula while filling in South Korea with gray, and orders to collect all old maps for disposal.
“In the past, we used the maps of Korea to learn all the South Korean regions, too, teaching students the South’s administrative districts like Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces, but if things continue like this, our descendants won’t even know South Korea’s place names in a few dozen years,” the teachers said.
However, one teacher at the drinking party reported the comments to the deputy headmaster the next day, apparently to avoid potential consequences for himself, which caused the incident to suddenly escalate.
The specific comments made at the drinking party were immediately relayed to the school’s state security officer. All the teachers who drank together were summoned to the local Ministry of State Security branch for questioning.
All the teachers told state security officers that they “couldn’t remember what was said because they were drunk” or that they “drank a lot because they hadn’t drank in a while, and that they didn’t know what was said because they were too hammered.”
Within the local state security branch, officers urged that the teachers — “people unqualified to be educators” — be severely punished. However, the matter was ultimately handled quietly, as they were intoxicated at the time and most were related to officials.
Word of the incident spread throughout Kwaksan county, with people expressing sympathy for the teachers’ predicament. According to the source, people found the situation particularly troubling since even educators felt ashamed about teaching materials that treat fellow Koreans as foreigners. The incident highlighted a broader frustration that citizens can only voice their true feelings while intoxicated, as sober criticism risks arrest.
