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🇰🇷 South Korea /Culture & Society

North Korea Closes Teachers’ Congress Ahead of Education Day, Calls for Smaller Urban-Rural Gap

From Dong-A Ilbo · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News From a news agency Outcome reported
  • North Korea held its 15th National Teachers’ Congress in Pyongyang on the 2nd and 3rd, seven years after the previous gathering.
  • The congress urged teachers to train students as capable personnel serving the country’s revolutionary goals and to reduce education gaps between central and local areas, and between cities and rural regions.
  • State media also reported calls to modernize education infrastructure, improve farming preparations and enforce electricity-use limits.

North Korea has told teachers to raise students as “strongly capable people who contribute to revolutionary practice” while making the education gap between cities and rural areas a central task.

The country held its 15th National Teachers’ Congress in Pyongyang on the 2nd and 3rd, closing the event after a seven-year interval. The meeting came ahead of Education Day on September 5. Participants reviewed education work in their regions and institutions and discussed ways to carry out the ruling party’s education policy during the next planning period.

strongly capable people who contribute to revolutionary practice

· North Korean authoritiesTeachers were instructed to educate students to serve the country’s revolutionary goals.

The congress’s training sessions urged teachers to recognize that “education work is conscience, devotion and patriotism” and to become “true teachers” respected by students. Officials also presented methodological issues involved in decisively narrowing differences in education standards between central and local areas, and between urban and rural communities. Teachers were called on to serve as direct implementers of an “education revolution” and frontline workers in talent development.

Education work is conscience, devotion and patriotism

· North Korean authoritiesA training session urged teachers to regard education as a moral and national duty.

The Rodong Sinmun carried the congress proceedings and closing news on its front page. It also published reactions from teachers, parents and students to a congratulatory message that Kim Jong Un sent to educators nationwide. Other pages reported a national sculpture and handicraft festival featuring about 300 works, preparations for autumn wheat and barley planting, and a call for factories and enterprises to observe electricity consumption limits.

The newspaper said wheat cultivation expanded by more than 20,000 hectares from the previous year, but harvests declined in some areas because of failures to respond promptly to weather changes. It also highlighted a provincial hospital’s locally developed medical equipment and new eye-surgery methods, as well as medical teams from central hospitals treating patients at coal mines.

True teachers

· North Korean authoritiesTeachers were encouraged to become educators respected by their students.
About this summary

Originally published by Dong-A Ilbo in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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