Parents of school children in North Korea have begun openly complaining about the endless expenses since the beginning of the new semester, questioning whether they are “truly receiving the free education” the government claims to provide.
A source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK recently that with the start of the new semester, “parents have been forced to cover school uniform costs, facility repairs, and the collection of recycling materials, leaving many deeply frustrated.”
The North Korean authorities had announced before the semester that they would distribute uniforms at state-subsidized prices—supposedly at minimal cost—to reduce the financial burden on families. However, the actual prices proved shockingly expensive.
“The government promised to provide uniforms at state prices, but they adjusted these prices based on the recently increased official salaries,” the source explained. “These salaries exist in name only—hardly anyone actually receives their full salary, and even when they do, the amount is significantly reduced after arbitrary deductions for various state projects. And since the state prices increased tenfold alongside the nominal salary increases, everyone is outraged.”
With uniform costs supposedly provided at “state prices” now more than ten times higher than in previous years, parents of school-aged children have expressed bitter resentment.
Parents are also frustrated by schools openly demanding financial contributions from students to improve educational facilities at the start of the new semester.
Schools have required students to pay for remodeling revolutionary history research rooms, physics and chemistry labs, repairing fences, walls, and windows damaged during winter, and purchasing cleaning supplies—costs that inevitably fall on parents.
In Chongjin, some homeroom teachers withheld textbooks from students who failed to contribute to school repair funds, further angering parents.
While schools have abundant supplies of revolutionary history textbooks, they lack sufficient textbooks for core subjects like mathematics and English—not even enough for half the students. Teachers prioritized distributing these limited resources to students whose families had paid for school repairs.
“Parents are particularly upset that schools discriminated in textbook distribution, since students didn’t pay because their families couldn’t afford it, not because they were unwilling,” the source said. “Some teachers even punished children, confiscated their bags, or prevented them from going home. Parents had to hold back tears seeing their children dejected over this treatment.”
Parents have also openly criticized school campaigns to collect recycling materials after the semester began, complaining they were forced to “pay money instead of non-existent recycling materials.”
“People are saying that the government boasts about providing free education, but this isn’t truly free education at all,” the source said. “They feel it would be better if the state simply stopped making such false claims.”
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