Far East: The Legal Foundations of Ideological Control in North Korea
Steve Barker
North Korea’s education has long seen an integration of political messaging with everyday classroom instruction and textbook designs. This year, however, many North Korea news agencies reported that the country has woven anti-American ideological education into nearly every subject. At the same time, many schools now have students taking daily “ideology sessions”
In the past decades, anti-American messaging could be found easily in history courses; for example, a high-school classical-Chinese textbook called “미제”, meaning “American imperialists”. But today, North Korean education is going even further. Instructors are now required to design lesson plans including anti-American messages in other subjects such as literature, Korean Language, geography, physical education, and art. This move marks North Korea’s goal to reshape how future generations understand both the United States and the state's own legitimacy.
According to a director of the provincial education bureau, the primary motive behind North Korea’s changes in the education system in 2026 was rooted in official anxiety about ideological shifts among young people. The director further emphasized that, because the younger generation has never experienced war, it is even more important for them to realize their sacred duty to defend the country and its people, and such a sense of responsibility must be reinforced through education. Loyalty education around the leadership has long been a daily routine in North Korea, but for middle and high school students to attend class-struggle classes everyday was the first time in the country’s educational history. Furthermore, during North Korea’s ninth Party Congress in 2026, the government stated the importance of increasing repression on young people through ideological and information controls.
According to Human Rights Watch, North Korea, ruled by a third-generation hereditary totalitarian leader, is one of the most repressive countries in the world. Much of this expanding system of control and repression has been formalized through a series of legislative changes introduced in recent years, many of which have broadened the state's power to regulate culture, language, media consumption, and the behavior of young people.
Legislative Changes After 2020
Since 2020, North Korea has passed laws to regulate how people speak, dress, consume entertainment, and express themselves in daily life. As part of the expansion of anti-American ideology, ideological offenses can lead to penalties exceeding those for traditional crimes against the state.
1. The Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law
In December 2021, the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law (반동사상문화배격법) brought out a new vague definition for “ideology”. The vagueness in nature allows the authorities to criminalize almost any foreign cultural material like Hollywood films, Japanese media, South Korean TV, religious materials, democratic ideas, and so on. The law prohibits the act of viewing, distributing, smuggling, and producing any source related to foreign cultural materials.
Punishments vary depending on the offense. For example, if being caught posing or watching content, such as South Korean movies, the law stipulates at least five to 15 years of reform through labor. Additionally, article 27 states that the import or distribution of South Korean movies, TV shows, songs and books will lead to the penalty of an indefinite period of reform through labor or death. Organizing or encouraging group viewing of the same content is considered the highest level of crime, with the punishment specified as death.
North Korea’s Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law is an example of a state elevating cultural consumption to the level of a national security offense. In a country that values political and ideological loyalty, any sense of adopting new or foreign values is considered an attempt to weaken loyalty.
2. The Youth Education Guarantee Law
In 2021, the country passed the Youth Education Guarantee Law (청년교양보장법), which specifically target the younger generation. The law’s mission is to “prepare young people as reliable successors to the revolutionary cause of Juche and contribute to further consolidating the position of a youth power.” In article 4, the law specifies that the state has the responsibility to protect young people from the invasion of reactionary ideology and culture in all spheres of social life.
Notably, the Youth Education Guarantee Law lists a number of actions in detail that are illegal for young people, including performing a non-Korean dance, getting a divorce, being religious or superstitious, and, as imagined, importing, producing, copying, storing, distributing, or watching sources of foreign cultural materials. The law is not only repressive in its pervasiveness of intrusion to personal life, but how vague each article is in nature. For example, “conversing or writing in an unusual way of speaking” is considered illegal according to the law, but it doesn’t specify what "unusual" means in the context. No. 14 of article 41 states the illegal behavior of disturbing the “wholesome atmosphere of society by dressing in clothes that is not our style”. Yet, there are no further explanations of “styles” that are appropriate to wear according to the law. In general, the Youth Education Guarantee Law regulates young people’s daily behavior, prohibiting certain ways to talk, write, dress, and live. Rather than simply banning foreign media, it seeks to cultivate a "socialist lifestyle" through everyday habits and values.
3. The Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Law
In 2023, North Korea passed the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Law (평양문화어보호법). The law first defines three “languages”: the Pyongyang Cultural Language, the puppet language, and abnormal language. The Pyongyang Cultural Language, to begin with, is the nation’s native national language and the “most pure and excellent language which has been developed in the current era”. In addition, the puppet language is a “jumbled together language” that has completely lost the essentials of the Korean language due to its vocabulary, grammar and intonation becoming Westernized, Japanized and Sinicized – according to Article 2 of the law, it is a “lowly and disgusting garbage language that exists nowhere else in the world”. Lastly, abnormal language refers to language containing elements of foreign loan words and words of Japanese and Chinese origins.
The law also bans a list of behaviors related to the use of language other than the Pyongyang Cultural Language, such as use of the puppet language style in written documents, use of goods marked with the puppet language or the writing style of the puppet language, and imitating expressions in the puppet style. In short, the state banned any South Korean pronunciation, spelling, grammar, slang, and texting styles, to suppress foreign linguistic influence in every possible source.
Conclusion
The recent endeavors to expand anti-American messaging throughout North Korea’s education system are only one small component of a much broader strategy to reinforce ideological conformity. Together with a series of restrictive laws targeting foreign media, language, and youth culture, the educational reforms reflect the regime's determination to shape how future generations perceive both the outside world and their own state. At the same time, each educational reform signals a more challenging position the schools, teachers, and parents are being put in, as they are all expected to monitor compliance of students according to the law.
The boundary between education and political control continues to blur in North Korea, with classrooms becoming institutions for “safeguarding” the regime's authority and cultivating ideological loyalty.