The Central Committee’s Propaganda and Agitation Department (PAD) has recently given orders for the children of docents and lecturers at battlefields and other historical sites regarded as being of “revolutionary” significance to be trained to carry on their parents’ occupation.
A source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Monday that PAD had given those orders to the propaganda offices in each provincial party committee in mid-August. The provincial party committees were instructed to give priority to the direct descendants of docents at historical sites in selecting students for colleges of education and to take responsibility for keeping track of them until they receive assignments as docents.
PAD has taken up the issue of bloodlines in selecting docents because sheltered university graduates often avoid assignments at the historical sites scattered around the country, the source said. Even when those graduates do undertake such assignments, they often have trouble adjusting to the local conditions or soon leave the position under the guise of marriage.
The solution devised by the authorities is to send the children and grandchildren of long-standing or retired docents at historical sites to be trained at colleges of education so that they can settle down in similar roles at those sites.
“PAD said the provincial offices should give preference in training to the descendants of docents who have met Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un personally or who have been commended by the Workers’ Party so that docent work at historical sites can be passed down from one generation to another. It also stressed that provincial offices should give the third generation of docents an opportunity for advancement within the Workers’ Party,” the source said.
“PAD is pushing the provincial offices to speed up the selection process this year,” he added.
Starting next year, the provincial offices are supposed to select candidates in the second year of high school, guiding their instruction, ensuring they are of strong moral fiber, and continuing to monitor them even after they enter university.
Following these instructions, the provincial offices are supposed to provide the central government with a list of the people selected in each province by the end of September and to also help those individuals enroll in colleges of education, the source said.
The PAD office in North Hamgyong Province is currently engaged in selecting future docents from the descendants of those who are currently working at all historical sites in the province as well as those who retired with distinction, he added.
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