
North Korea’s University of Technology of Songrim conducted a campus-wide review last month of violations against the country’s anti-reactionary thought law, Daily NK has learned.
“Late last month, all students and staff were summoned to the university’s assembly hall,” a source in North Hwanghae province told Daily NK recently. “The review examined every ‘anti-socialist and non-socialist’ incident that occurred on campus during the past year.”
Officials from the city’s unified command on non-socialist behavior attended the session, creating a tense atmosphere as they detailed 2024’s violations and subsequent punishments.
Among the cases highlighted was a professor caught possessing illegal USBs and SD cards. Despite containing few files and the professor claiming mere curiosity, the offense resulted in dismissal and six months of forced labor – officials emphasized that merely possessing such materials constituted a serious crime against the regime.
Another case involved a third-year metallurgy student who sang a foreign love song during a phone call with his girlfriend, which officials labeled a “serious example of capitalist cultural infiltration.” The student faced a Socialist Patriotic Youth League criticism session and received four months of forced labor before being allowed to resume studies. His classmates who “failed to take his crime seriously” were punished with a month of campus cleaning and guard duty.
“Following the unified command’s offer of leniency for voluntary confessions, several students came forward with prepared statements about past infractions,” the source said. “Despite following pre-written scripts, they received lighter treatment for coming forward voluntarily. Instead of criminal punishment, officials ordered self-criticism letters and ideological training sessions to ‘rearm themselves with revolutionary ideology.'”
The officials concluded by warning that reactionary thought and culture represented “a grave threat that could spark a national crisis” and constituted “an enemy trick to erode youth ideology and decay the revolution’s future.” They announced plans to “strengthen the system for self-reporting, complaints, and informing on others, while intensifying ideological inspections of professors and students.”