As a part of our collection inspecting the socioeconomic disparity between Pyongyang and different cities in North Korea, we’re trying on the variations North Koreans may expertise, relying on the place they dwell, throughout quite a lot of indicators together with: entry to electrical energy, telecommunications, business, transportation infrastructure, and training. To take action, we utilized two examples as proxies: Haeju, a consultant mid-sized provincial capital, and Kim Hyong Jik, a distant, rural county seat.
The primary article checked out North Korea’s new five-year financial plan unveiled by Kim Jong Un on the Ninth Celebration Congress in February 2026. And in a second, we explored the nation’s rural housing and rural industrial growth initiatives of the previous few years.
When Kim Jong Un kicked off the 20×10 regional growth coverage in 2024, he framed the initiative as citing the usual of residing in “backward” rural areas. Utilizing industrial satellite tv for pc imagery, state media evaluation, accounts of escapees and different information, these articles try and characterize how rural areas is likely to be “backward” compared with different much less distant areas.
This installment will look at variances within the nation’s entry to training amenities and the sources challenges that exist in numerous areas.
Instructional System Overview
The nationwide training system in North Korea is structured all through the nation into nursery, kindergarten (ages 5-6), major college (ages 6-10), junior secondary college and senior secondary college, faculty, and college. All training ranges are tuition free for residents and observe a normal curriculum. Academics’ pedagogical strategies are additionally mandated by the state for all colleges, although anecdotal proof hints that academics’ instruction strategies can differ broadly, from lecture-style courses to extra student-let dialogue. It’s unclear what the present prevailing methodology is in school rooms country-wide.
Whereas the training system and curriculum could also be uniform throughout the nation, colleges themselves, their sources and capabilities can differ broadly by metropolis and area. Know-how entry is especially difficult. Because the state pushes technological literacy, not all colleges are capable of assist this type of studying. Some stories notice that college students in rural areas take written exams about utilizing the pc or huddle round one display screen for classes, whereas others in Pyongyang have entry to sources that allow hands-on training for college students.
Colleges in North Korea are required to fund their very own intranet entry. Even when know-how and the intranet are part of state-level curriculum necessities, distant colleges in poor counties, corresponding to Kim Hyong Jik, could also be unable to offer this for his or her college students.
On the extra native stage, there’s a “assist group system” to assist handle a few of these challenges. This can be a mechanism during which enterprises are assigned to native colleges and supply labor by the use of renovations or different enhancements in alternate for lunch and cigarettes, normally equipped by households. Except there’s a well-resourced, state-favored enterprise connected, college households bear the brunt of this burden. Nevertheless, this implies the faculties which have the best want, are unlikely to have the ability to present the incentives for the assist system, particularly these in additional distant locations like Kim Hyong Jik county.
State Schooling Priorities
North Korea can also be discovering methods to leverage align training with regime priorities. In recent times, larger emphasis has been positioned on regional and workforce growth inside curriculum. This consists of a brand new deal with technical and sensible abilities—each for the development of those amenities and the information to function what’s constructed. Nevertheless, questions stay as to how widespread this extra technical sort of training is and, virtually talking, whether or not or not colleges exterior of Pyongyang are outfitted with related sources to assist some of these new initiatives.
A technique that the state is making an attempt to broaden the attain of those applications and domesticate a workforce pipeline is thru distance training. Whereas not a brand new phenomenon in North Korea, distance studying has been a precedence of Kim Jong Un’s since he got here to energy. On the Seventh Celebration Congress in 2016, digital distance training was declared integral to North Korea’s training modernization technique; in 2020, the Distance Schooling Act was put in place, codifying digital distance training in North Korea’s legislature. Not too long ago, it has been leveraged as a method to practice these exterior of the capital on function amenities—just like the sci-tech dissemination facilities or manufacturing unit equipment—constructed as a part of the 20×10 plan.
Throughout the second yr of 20×10 implementation, science and know-how hubs have been constructed in every of the chosen counties—and seems to be persevering with underneath the plan. Whereas the specifics of those sci-tech facilities are unclear from North Korean reporting, it seems they’re meant to function media rooms or laptop lab-type amenities that present e-library entry to space residents. Sci-tech dissemination facilities should not new to the nation. Between 2014 and 2016, North Korea quickly expanded their development.
The data sharing methods obtainable in every regional facility connect with the centralized Science and Tech Nice Corridor in Pyongyang, or the Sci-Tech Advanced, which serves as the nation’s largest digital information and e-learning hub, significantly for technical learnings and science and know-how information dissemination. This method permits researchers and different staff all through the nation to entry related technical info that’s obtainable solely via the Sci-Tech Advanced—one other type of distance studying. Together with these technical amenities inside the 20×10 industrial hubs is a technique to offer entry to technical info in areas the place technical training could also be extra scarce.
In accordance with a June 2026 Each day NK report, North Korea can also be attempting to institute hands-on instructing fashions at vocational schools. That month, the Ministry of Schooling held a distant demonstration in Pyongyang for instructors from vocational and technical schools throughout the nation that labored to establish a manufacturing drawback at a manufacturing unit and troubleshoot it. Nevertheless, academics from exterior of Pyongyang have expressed concern over whether or not or not this kind of mannequin or curriculum might be replicated exterior of the capital, with such a big disparity in sources and applied sciences.
Regardless of these considerations, anecdotal stories recommend one other instructional pattern rising is an elective system, promoted for the reason that Eighth Celebration Congress and significantly regarding STEM-related topics. This was rolled out nationwide at senior secondary colleges in 2026. The electives provided differ by area or county and are tied to native industries in efforts to create a pipeline of staff who’re well-suited to fulfill the business and enterprise calls for of their space. If a pupil needs to take an elective that’s not provided of their space, they’ll both rent non-public tutoring or attempt to acquire permission to stick with a member of the family residing in a unique space, probably underneath the guise of caretaking. This helps the North Korean regime’s major purpose of training: to domesticate a workforce.
Schooling in Pyongyang
The capital metropolis has the very best focus of all ranges of training—and, in flip, probably the most sources to offer for the good thing about college students and academics.
All through the nation, larger training is mostly not prioritized. Studies estimate that lower than 30% of the inhabitants has tertiary training, with anecdotal proof suggesting that determine just isn’t growing. Spots at universities are solely reserved for elites, a lot of whom dwell within the capital, making the biggest focus of the nation’s faculty graduates in Pyongyang.
A number of colleges throughout every stage of training can be found throughout Pyongyang, seemingly as a result of stage of sources designated to town in addition to the inhabitants dimension of the metropolitan space. Colleges and universities in Pyongyang are sometimes well-manicured and extra fashionable than in different areas of the nation. Universities like Kim Il Sung College have full campuses and ample amenities for college students.
Except for the amenities, Pyongyang units the path of curriculum and pedagogy all through the nation. Academics are sometimes introduced into Pyongyang for technical trainings. Nevertheless, this additionally exposes amongst academics and instructors the useful resource gaps between their colleges and the capital.
Some Assets, However Not Pyongyang: Haeju
As a provincial capital, Haeju is dwelling to quite a lot of instructional institutes throughout all ranges—from major and secondary colleges via extra technical colleges such because the Haeju College of Drugs, Haeju College of Know-how, and the South Hwanghae Agriculture Science Analysis Institute. Nonetheless, the world has fewer choices than Pyongyang.
Haeju’s training system is reportedly better-resourced than colleges in different areas exterior of Pyongyang. For instance, in keeping with a 2022 DailyNK report, laptop possession charges at elementary colleges in Pyongyang and Haeju have been highest nationwide at 63%, in comparison with nearer to six% elsewhere. Whereas solely a fraction of the entire image, that is one metric by which the useful resource disparity all through North Korea is obvious.
Entry to larger training is extra available in Haeju than many different areas of North Korea and its establishments are additionally incessantly cited by state media, particularly round bolstering the standard of academics and sources. A report from June 2026 famous that “…Haeju universities of medication have intensified sensible training to assist college students purchase information within the area of medical science and scientific skills, whereas elevating the academics and college students’ stage of mastering international languages,” and a November 2025 report highlighted efforts to “spruce up academics’ retraining institutes able to making a considerable contribution to enhancing the {qualifications} of academics.”
Different articles reference efforts at Kim Jong Thae Haeju College of Schooling, which was reworked in 2025, to show educators new methodologies—suited to totally different college students’ age teams—and new areas of curiosity, like robotics. This dialogue of various training varieties and instructing methodologies highlights that Haeju, whereas seemingly having fewer sources than colleges in Pyongyang, holds instructional significance within the nation.
The schools should not as expansive as they’re within the capital metropolis, however characteristic the identifiable college yard and lengthy, slender constructing. In Haeju, colleges are sometimes clustered round one another, although no sample has been discerned.
Challenges of Rural Schooling: Kim Hyong Jik
The state of the training system in Kim Hyong Jik county is comparatively unknown, largely because of its distant location. State media seldom mentions education within the space, nevertheless it has highlighted the Sampho Senior Secondary College and, in spring 2025, talked about Kim Jong Un sending devices to newly-built colleges in flood-stricken areas of Kim Hyong Jik.
Anecdotal stories spotlight the disparities between distant counties like Kim Hyong Jik and different extra city areas. As an illustration, a journalist as soon as famous {that a} college in Kim Hynog Jik held a cooking elective, however the college was unable to offer components for the category. As an alternative, instructors led a course on cleansing and sustaining the equipment present in a foodstuffs manufacturing unit—a extra sensible use case than what is often considered an “elective.”
Provided that Kim Hyong Jik County was the recipient of three factories as a part of the 20×10 regional growth plan and the state’s efforts to align training with native business, it’s seemingly that colleges on this county are strongly geared towards working factories and farming. Nevertheless, a scarcity of entry to sources—together with know-how, electrical energy, and at occasions, the intranet—name into query if the county’s training system possesses the capabilities to really practice residents to work in and function some of these factories or faucet into Pyongyang-led distance teaching programs.
Whereas we should not have any confirmed college areas in Kim Hyong Jik, we have now recognized seemingly colleges within the space that share signatures of facilities of training all through the nation, corresponding to a big college yard in entrance of the constructing. In rural areas like Kim Hyong Jik, it’s seemingly that a number of ranges of training are aggregated underneath one roof.
This analysis was sponsored by The UniKorea Basis.
