This commentary attracts on a corpus of Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) state media spanning 1998 to 2025, with a preliminary examine of early 2026 knowledge.
On April 18, North Hamgyong Province’s training bureau reportedly directed colleges to combine anti-American content material throughout a spread of classroom topics. A DailyNK supply described the cross-subject mandate as “the primary of its type,” although the directive itself has not appeared in official North Korean (Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) media. Removed from an remoted measure, this directive (hereafter, the April 18 directive), matches right into a broader sample in North Korea’s public anti-American messaging, which shifted first throughout and once more after summit diplomacy.
Probably the most dramatic narrative change was noticed in 2018, after the primary US-DPRK summit in Singapore. At the moment, Korean Central Information Company (KCNA), North Korea’s essential externally-focused state media outlet, largely dropped the core anti-American lexicon from its reporting for a interval of about 4 years. Primarily based on a 145,381-article corpus of Korean-language KCNA, the usual epithet 미제 (“American imperialists”) appeared on 84 p.c of publication days in 2017, fell to solely 16 p.c in 2018, and stayed close to zero from 2019 by means of 2021. The corpus captures solely public-facing output, and the timing alone doesn’t set up causation. Regardless, the dimensions of the change is troublesome to dismiss.
The parallel query is what occurred to anti-American training throughout the identical interval. Did the academic channel mute its messaging alongside exterior diplomacy, or did it observe a special trajectory? Though public reporting on anti-American instructional messaging contracted, accessible proof from textbooks, inside celebration supplies, and state media reporting on class-education establishments signifies that the broader infrastructure and inside messaging for anti-American training persevered throughout 2018–2021. In distinction to the near-total disappearance of anti-American terminology in KCNA’s diplomatic reporting, the academic report exhibits institutional continuity slightly than a documented rollback.
Since round 2022, anti-American terminology has resurged in KCNA reporting and new legal guidelines and mandates, such because the April 18 directive, have emerged to bolster anti-American training. These new instructional initiatives are meant to form the ideological framing of DPRK’s relations with the US for generations. A sustained alignment between public rhetoric and academic narratives can assist reinforce a extra sturdy identification framework. Nonetheless, a mismatch of messaging, reminiscent of what was noticed in the course of the summit interval, dangers producing confusion and undermining these frameworks. Understanding and monitoring whether or not and the way anti-American training develops alongside shifts in public messaging could due to this fact be helpful for assessing North Korea’s longer-term diplomatic intentions.
The KCNA Vocabulary Hole
The corpus, constructed from the kcna.co.jp archive, tracks these anti-American rhetorical shifts in KCNA’s public-facing output. KCNA is finest understood as an externally oriented state-media channel slightly than as a direct measure of home media consumption. As Rachel Minyoung Lee notes, KCNA transmits objects by means of feeds for outdoor subscribers and web sites accessible from outdoors North Korea, whereas home print retailers reminiscent of Rodong Sinmun could carry chosen KCNA-bylined objects deemed applicable for inside readers. Common North Koreans are unlikely to come across this Web-based output immediately; any home publicity can be mediated by means of chosen republication or adaptation in home retailers.
Whereas KCNA gives the exterior, diplomatic baseline proven in Determine 1, reporting on training is concentrated within the home each day Rodong Sinmun, which provides the measures introduced in Desk 1.[1]
As a result of article segmentation inside KCNA each day information is inconsistent throughout years, the unit of research is the publication day: whether or not a given key phrase appeared no less than as soon as on a given day. This measure higher displays modifications in editorial line whereas being much less affected by fluctuations in each day output quantity.
Determine 1 tracks two enemy-label phrases: 미제 (“American imperialists”) and 괴뢰 (“puppet,” used mainly for South Korean authorities). Determine 1 additionally contains 통일 (“unification”) as a reference time period from the identical peninsular political vocabulary, offering a reference level for a way a serious non-enemy time period moved throughout the identical interval.
In 2017, 미제 appeared on 306 out of 363 publication days. Nonetheless, following the Singapore summit in June 2018, that determine fell to 16 p.c. By 2019, the yr of the Hanoi Summit, each 미제 and 괴뢰 (“puppet,” used for South Korean authorities) hit 0.5 p.c, showing on solely two publication days every out of 364 for your complete yr. They stayed close to zero by means of 2020 and 2021.[3] Earlier than 2018, each 미제 and 괴뢰 had been prolific phrases in KCNA’s each day vocabulary. Their almost whole disappearance marked a brief suspension of the pre-summit risk lexicon.
Not solely have been these damaging phrases faraway from KCNA protection, however constructive characterizations of the connection with the US have been added. For example, on June 13, 2018, KCNA declared that the 2 international locations would “bury the sad previous” as “an period of DPRK-US cooperation” (조미협력의 시대) unfolded.[4] Nonetheless, this constructive shift in language didn’t final lengthy after the failure to succeed in an settlement with america.
The timing of KCNA’s preliminary choice to drop this language aligns with an editorial adjustment to create house for engagement with Trump. It’s much less clear why the vocabulary stayed suppressed by means of 2020 and 2021, though restoring it will seemingly have required deliberate planning. After the Hanoi Summit failed, COVID isolation set in, and KCNA narratives shifted towards self-reliance and pandemic mobilization. These circumstances could assist clarify why the regime had little quick incentive to revive phrases it had so not too long ago dropped.
The reemergence, when it got here, was partial. By 2023, 미제 appeared on 28 p.c of publication days. By 2025, amid renewed hypothesis a few doable Trump-Kim channel and Pyongyang’s conditional language towards Washington, the prevalence had hovered round 15 p.c.[5] The post-2022 spike additionally coincided with geopolitical realignment. The four-month hole between Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the resumption of anti-American army propaganda in June 2022 means that the shifting exterior atmosphere could have eased the sooner restraint on Pyongyang’s rhetoric, although the correlation doesn’t show causation.
By 2025, KCNA reviews on college instruction have been as soon as once more carrying a well-recognized warning: college students, it mentioned, have been being taught that “illusions in regards to the enemy imply demise.”[6] The road echoed Kim Jong Un’s 2015 area steerage on the Sinchon Museum of American Battle Atrocities, a web site constructed for anti-American class training, the place he warned that anybody harboring “even the slightest phantasm in regards to the enemy can’t escape demise.”[7] Whereas the state newswire’s return to such language doesn’t reveal what really takes place in lecture rooms, it does mark the reappearance of specific anti-American messaging within the regime’s public account of its instructional work. Whether or not the academic channel moved in tandem with KCNA’s diplomatic vocabulary is troublesome to find out from open sources. What might be examined, nonetheless, is the accessible report of textbooks, inside supplies, and institutional exercise in the course of the summit interval.
Why Lecture rooms, Not Newspapers
State media, particularly externally-focused messaging, can omit and restore vocabulary as wanted and as circumstances change. However this flexibility operates on a special monitor from the sort of cognitive framework colleges are supposed to construct, that are slower to vary and tougher to reverse. Ideological training itself will not be new; it has lengthy been woven into the regime’s identification and survival narrative.
Seventy-seven textbooks printed between 2013 and 2015 have been smuggled out of North Korea and analyzed in April 2017, when the identical editions have been confirmed in use below the twelve-year obligatory training system. A primary-grade morality textbook included a picture of a soldier taking pictures at American-soldier targets, captioned “beat the American bastards” (미국놈 때려잡기), and a high-school classical-Chinese language textbook known as 미제 (“American imperialists”) a “sworn enemy” of the Korean folks (철천지 원쑤). Comparable materials appeared throughout artwork, historical past, and different topics.[8]
Whereas newer editions have since been printed, no accessible reporting has documented a scientific elimination of anti-American content material from the curriculum in the course of the summit interval. Sources with entry to the North Korean instructional atmosphere on the time centered totally on the suspension of public rallies slightly than on curriculum modifications. No reporting of a curriculum-level rollback has emerged in both the summit years or the post-2022 intensification of ideological periods
Inner celebration supplies from the early part of the summit interval current the same image. A January 2019 DailyNK report, based mostly on party-lecture supplies circulated in late 2018, described america as “imperialist” and South Korea as an American “colony,” whilst KCNA had largely dropped such language from its public reporting. Though drawn from a single supply, the report is in keeping with the broader sample: the general public sign softened whereas the interior ideological pipeline continued to hold anti-American content material.
The institutional infrastructure for sophistication training predated the summit interval. Kim Jong Un, in his 2015 area steerage on the Sinchon Museum of American Battle Atrocities, designated anti-imperialist class training as “an vital route of our Social gathering’s ideological work,” warning that with “new generations who haven’t skilled the trials of warfare” forming the revolution’s essential pressure, such training was “an pressing matter that can not be uncared for for a single second.”[9] A yr later, the regime renovated and reopened the Central Class Training Corridor (중앙계급교양관) in Pyongyang.[10]
Through the 2018-2021 interval, this institutional infrastructure remained in place. Though KCNA’s protection of class-education halls fell by two-thirds, Rodong Sinmun continued to hold reporting on them at a largely regular fee,[11] NK Professional additionally documented continued weekday bus exercise on the Sinchon Museum from early 2018 by means of mid-2019, even after international tour teams have been barred from the location, although the guests couldn’t be independently recognized. This divergence signifies that though exterior messaging softened, the institutional infrastructure for anti-American class training remained operational and visual in home reporting. Nonetheless, college students who attended secondary college between 2018 and 2021 spent these youth in a media atmosphere largely scrubbed of the specific anti-American messaging that had helped form earlier generations. How this affected their understanding of america and the regime’s relationship with it’s not but clear from open sources.
Since 2022, it seems that efforts to bolster anti-American narratives in instructional settings have intensified. KCNA has reported class-education actions at universities throughout a number of cities, in addition to mannequin college actions and scholar rallies in Pyongyang in the course of the annual June 25 anti-US battle interval in 2025.[12] [13] On the bottom, the measures seem extra intensive: colleges in North Pyongan province reportedly shifted from quarterly to each day ideology periods, with college students checked for comprehension slightly than attendance. Cross-subject integration of political-ideological content material has lengthy been a precept of DPRK socialist training, however the April 18 directive in North Hamgyong province colleges reportedly made the anti-American element extra specific, requiring it to be embedded throughout Korean language, English, music, and artwork. These efforts have taken place alongside a broader tightening of ideological management over younger folks. The 2020 Reactionary Ideology and Tradition Rejection Legislation and the 2023 Pyongyang Cultural Language Safety Act, each enacted after US-DPRK negotiations had stalled, expanded the authorized foundation for focusing on international cultural affect amongst youth. Neither regulation particularly mandates anti-American training and the proof for implementation stays erratically distributed. Probably the most detailed accounts come from two Chinese language-border provinces, whereas Pyongyang’s official protection tends to focus on mannequin actions and ceremonial mobilization. That imbalance could mirror stronger enforcement in border areas, simpler info leakage, or each.
Desk 1 reinforces this image of institutional continuity from the home media facet. In Rodong Sinmun, specific anti-US training vocabulary fell to 2 p.c of its pre-summit stage after the Hanoi failure, whereas the broader class-education body barely moved, remaining above 80 p.c all through. What returned after 2022 was selective: anti-US training phrases re-emerged at roughly two-fifths of their pre-summit stage, whereas broader enemy vocabulary stayed flat, suggesting that the post-2022 push has been focused slightly than a wholesale restoration of pre-summit rhetoric.
How Training Frames Diplomatic Outcomes
The resumption of anti-American training doesn’t essentially negate future diplomacy with america. There are methods wherein the regime can body diplomatic outcomes to suit the broader narrative targets. For example, if a summit between Kim and Trump does finally happen and produces an settlement, lecture rooms can current the compromise as proof that North Korea’s nuclear resolve compelled Washington to desert its historic hostile coverage towards Pyongyang. If negotiations fail, the identical lecture rooms can current failure as affirmation of what they already train: that American hostility is structural slightly than situational. Both end result reinforces the underlying lesson. Latest regime statements treating the Iran strikes as validation of Pyongyang’s nuclear path counsel how rapidly exterior occasions might be absorbed into this logic, and there’s little motive to count on future summit outcomes to be handled otherwise.
Indicators to Watch
Given all these traits, three thresholds could point out whether or not the post-2022 intensification of anti-American training is a brief course correction or turning into nationwide coverage.
The primary is geographic unfold. The sort of cross-subject integration mandated by the April 18 directive has to this point been reported solely in North Hamgyong, although intensified ideology periods have individually been documented in North Pyongan. Comparable orders in different provinces would counsel coordination, and a national-level directive from Pyongyang would affirm that the marketing campaign has moved past provincial implementation.
The second threshold is administrative embedding: revised textbooks, standardized lesson plans, anti-American content material folded into examinations. A June 2025 KCNA article paperwork class-education actions at Pyongyang major and secondary colleges, however describes them as discrete occasions, not a coordinated curriculum rollout. KCNA’s protection of routine pedagogical work is partial at finest, and an absence in reporting shouldn’t be learn as an absence on the bottom. Nonetheless, formalization on the primary-school stage, notably with anti-American content material constructed into grading, would seemingly point out a deeper stage of implementation.
The best threshold is implementation capability: whether or not academics are educated, monitored and disciplined to ship the marketing campaign. Instructor reliability seems to have grow to be a regime concern. In 2025, DailyNK reported public criticism periods at Chongjin Medical Faculty, additionally in North Hamgyong province, towards instructors who skipped necessary ideological periods, with inspectors describing non-compliance as “a grave act that blocks the progress of the revolution.” That such periods are being held in any respect suggests the issue will not be remoted, though how widespread trainer non-compliance has grow to be is troublesome to gauge from open sources. Giant-scale retraining of academics, if it materializes, would counsel the marketing campaign has moved from directive to supply.
General, regardless of the modifications in anti-American vocabulary in the course of the summit and early-post summit interval, it doesn’t appear to have modified the ideological framing in North Korea’s instructional curriculum. As the general public narrative is reintegrating the anti-American terminology, and if the April directive holds, it seems this shall be intensified in lecture rooms as effectively. Whereas the summit interval produced a brief divergence between how the enemy was publicly named in state media and the way class-education exercise continued to be reported, it was solely non permanent. Nonetheless, the academic funding is more likely to outlast any single US presidency and colour North Korean perceptions and political will towards the US lengthy into the long run.
