NOT many schools have classrooms equipped with tanks, jet fighter simulators, and grenade launchers. But North Korea’s Mangyongdae Revolutionary School for boys is no ordinary establishment.

Originally set up by the North’s founder Kim Il-sung to educate the orphans of those killed in the fight against Japanese colonial rule, it has evolved to become the country’s top school, and one of the institutions that knits the ruling elite together.

A bronze statue of Kim and his son and successor Kim Jong-il – an old boy – embracing pupils overlooks the playing field, and the corridors are lined with weapons identification posters.

One room is crammed with small arms, another holds a tank with moving caterpillar tracks and shooting is a key subject, with training taking place on an electronic range.

The 1,000 shaven-headed boys wear a military-style uniform said to have been designed by the senior Kim’s wife, Kang Pan-sok, a red line down their trousers symbolising their devotion to the cause of revolution.

After graduating, they will all go into the military, a key part of the nuclear-armed North Korean state –Jong-il espoused a “military first” philosophy and current leader Kim Jong-un, the third of the dynasty to rule, regularly appears flanked by officers on one side and officials on the other.

There are six 45-minute classes a day, with half the curriculum devoted to politics and ideology, almost a quarter on military subjects, and the rest for traditional academic disciplines.

Afternoons are reserved for physical activities, with the boys screaming shouts of encouragement in the weights room of the well-equipped gym or performing impressive topless taekwondo tumbles. 

They also regularly clean and maintain the nearby estate where Il-sung was born, now a major pilgrimage site and the origin of the school’s name.

A separate girls’ school named after Kang stands in the Pyongyang suburb of Chilgol, where she was born.

The schools are a Kim family project: the North’s founder visited 118 times, his wife 62 times, their son 94 times, and Jong-un – who was educated in Switzerland himself – has been six times so far.

“The Supreme Leader comrade Kim Jong-un is the true parent of all our revolutionary schoolchildren,” said Lt Choe Su Gyong, a guide to the Mangyongdae school museum, where pictures show Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu visiting, and Benin president Mathieu Kerekou, whose sons attended for six years.

The exhibits include a rifle held up by Il-sung on one of his trips, whom Choe quoted as saying: “The sons and daughters of the revolutionaries have to grow into flowers of the revolution, following in their parents’ footsteps.”

With the Japanese colonial period now decades in the past, entry to the school has been broadened to those who have at least one parent or grandparent deemed to have been a loyal servant of the state.

“We choose the sons and daughters of the patriots who fought for the party and government and country and fatherland and people,” said senior Col Kim Yong Ho, the school’s deputy education department director.

The resulting networks of friendships and influence can last a lifetime. As well as Jong-il, its graduates include Yon Hyong Muk, the North’s prime minister in 1988-92. – AFP, July 26, 2018.