{"id":54466,"date":"2023-03-24T16:43:26","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T07:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/?p=54466"},"modified":"2023-03-24T16:44:17","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T07:44:17","slug":"north-korea-push-military-enlistment-causes-discontent-among-young-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/north-korea-push-military-enlistment-causes-discontent-among-young-people\/","title":{"rendered":"N. Korea&#8217;s push for military enlistment causes discontent among young people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Discontent among young North Koreans is growing in response to recent government efforts to coerce them to petition to enlist or re-enlist in the military, Daily NK has learned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cRecently, Hyesan authorities have been pressuring young people and recent high school graduates to petition for enlistment or re-enlistment in the military. Young people are growing increasingly <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">upset about<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the coercion,\u201d a reporting partner in Yanggang Province told Daily NK yesterday, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, North Korean state-run media has claimed that \u201cthe United States and the puppet state of South Korea are staging unprecedented military provocations to threaten our country through their joint military exercises\u201d and emphasized that young people should take the lead in efforts to defend the motherland. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other words, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the North Korean authorities are using the pretext of the large-scale US-ROK joint military exercises (\u201cFreedom Shield\u201d) to raise tensions and encourage young people to petition to enlist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Mar. 20, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rodong Sinmun<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reported that \u201cthe ranks of young people boldly stepping forward and bracing themselves for battle are growing day by day in response to [the people\u2019s] soaring anger and hostility towards the rampaging American imperialists and South Korean puppet traitors and their schemes to provoke nuclear war.\u201d The newspaper also claimed that \u201cas of Mar. 19, 1.4 million young people from across the country have ardently petitioned to enlist or re-enlist in the People\u2019s Army.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The day before, the paper also reported that \u201cthe entire nation has been<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">galvanized <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by soaring hostility towards our sworn enemies, with whom we can\u2019t even stand to share the same sky.\u201d It went on to report that \u201con Mar. 17th alone, as many as 800,000 students and young party workers of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League have ardently petitioned to enlist or re-enlist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While North Korea may be reporting that young people are volunteering to enlist out of their own sense of animosity towards the US and South Korea, the reality is that these petitions are being coerced and domestic <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">discontent is growing as a result<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Daily NK\u2019s reporting partner said that young people who have been coerced into re-enlisting are particularly outraged.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s already unfair to graduate from high school and then have to spend the best years of your life in the military, but then to be forced to petition to re-enlist? That would make anyone furious,\u201d the reporting partner said. \u201cYet, they have no choice but to petition, because if they refuse they will be branded as reactionaries.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reporting partner spoke with a young man in Hyesan whose name had been put on <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the list of petitioners to<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> re-enlist. \u201cI don&#8217;t even want to think about the time I spent in the military, it was so awful,\u201d the petitioner said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t get enough to eat so <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">my<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> face became swollen and flabby, making me look strange<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Yet, I endured it and returned to society, only to get put on the list to re-enlist soon after I had gotten out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">begged<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the party secretary and manager at my workplace to take me off the list since my health is poor, but they criticized me instead, saying things like \u2018You\u2019ve served in the military, and if a war began you\u2019d be one of the first to go out and fight &#8211; how could you ask something like that?\u2019 and \u2018I bet you have other reactionary tendencies too. It\u2019s people like you who are reactionaries.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf it really seems like North Korea will be going to war, make discharged officers come back and put on the uniform. Why only pick on young people?\u201d Daily NK\u2019s reporting partner pointed out. \u201cYoung people are dragged into the military or labor brigades and have their youth stolen away from them by the state, but instead of taking responsibility for the rest of their lives, the state doesn\u2019t care at all. There won\u2019t be a single person who is happy to do their military service.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Translated by Rose Adams. Edited by Robert Lauler.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK\u2019s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/faq\/\"><i>here<\/i><\/a><i>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/20230323-4\/\"><i>Read in Korean<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Discontent among young North Koreans is growing in response to recent government efforts to coerce them to petition to enlist or re-enlist in the military, Daily NK has learned. \u201cRecently, Hyesan authorities have been pressuring young people and recent high school graduates to petition for enlistment or re-enlistment in the military. Young people are growing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":54468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,646,1360],"tags":[691,1430,1656],"class_list":["post-54466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-military","category-society","tag-military","tag-youth","tag-dprk"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>N. Korea&#039;s push for military enlistment causes discontent among young people - North Korea News \u2014 Daily NK | Latest DPRK Updates 2026<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/north-korea-push-military-enlistment-causes-discontent-among-young-people\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"N. 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