Yanggang Province authorities have begun looking into the practice of professors giving their students so-called “non-tax burdens,” Daily NK has learned.
A source in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Tuesday that the province’s party committee launched a fact-finding mission on Jan. 5 after learning that local university professors forced “non-tax burdens” on their students at the start of the new year.
According to the source, the provincial party committee called the practice of professors forcing “non-tax burdens” on their students “non-socialist behavior that makes a mess of the sacred teacher’s platform” and launched efforts to learn about the practice that has reportedly plagued campuses from the start of the new year.
In fact, provincial party officials have reportedly been visiting local universities and calling in university department cell secretaries, class presidents and ordinary university students to the university party committee office for one-on-one discussions.
The source said the officials are investigating how much money students raised for their head professors for the new year, how much they raised for their subject professors, whether cell secretaries or class presidents pressured students to raise money, and how other classes were raising money.
Party officials are also investigating whether students raised money for their professors every month last year as well, receiving anonymous written testimony because students are hesitant to speak.
The provincial party committee also learned that students in graduating classes are gathering money to buy high-priced gifts such as TVs and refrigerators to their head professor ahead of their March graduation, reportedly warning that it would expose such behavior.
Students may share a meal with their professors and present them with a bouquet of flowers as a symbol of gratitude, but last year, class presidents at Kim Jong Suk University of Education made rolls of cash from KPW 5,000 bills in imitation of “the enemy’s reactionary culture” (i.e., like they do in South Korea), and the authorities are warning that they will take serious political issue with a repeat of that behavior this year.
In particular, the source said the party committee is strongly warning that it can no longer overlook the recent practice of students performing the so-called “bottom dance” while handing over greenhouse-grown red and green bell peppers, calling the peppers “symbols of wealth.”
The source said the party committee believes cell secretaries and class presidents who are agitating to raise money for professors are also a problem and are “threatening to even expel them from school in serious cases.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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