A framed poster on the wall of a kindergarten classroom shows bright-eyed children brandishing rifles and bayonets as they attack a hapless US soldier, his face bandaged and blood spurting from his mouth.
“We love playing military games knocking down the American bastards,” reads the slogan printed across the top.
Another poster depicting an American with a noose around his neck reads: “Let’s wipe out the US imperialists.”
For North Koreans, the systematic indoctrination of anti-US sentiment starts as early as kindergarten and is as much a part of the curriculum as learning to count.
Toy pistols, rifles and tanks sit lined up in neat rows on shelves. The school principal, Yun Song-sil, pulls out a dummy of a US soldier with a beaked nose and straw-colored hair and explains that the students beat him with batons or pelt him with stones — a favorite schoolyard game, she says.
For a moment, Yun is sheepish as she takes three journalists from The Associated Press, including an American, past the anti-US posters, but she is not shy about the message.
‘AMERICAN BASTARDS’
“Our children learn from an early age about the American bastards,” she says, tossing off a phrase so common here that it is considered an acceptable way to refer to Americans.
North Korean students learn that their country has had two main enemies: the Japanese, who colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945, and the US, which fought against North Korea during the 1950 to 1953 Korean War.
They are told that North Korea’s defense against outside forces — particularly the US, which has more than 28,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea — remains the backbone of the country’s foreign policy.
And they are bred to seek revenge, even as their government professes to want peace with the US.
“They tell their people there can be no reconciliation with the United States,” says US academic Brian Myers, who dissected North Korean propaganda in his 2010 book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters.
“They make it very clear to the masses that this hate will last forever,” he says.
In recent years, state propaganda has shifted away from the virulent anti-US slogans of the past and has instead emphasized building up the economy. On the streets of Pyongyang, anti-US posters have largely given way to images of soldiers in helmets and workers in factories.
However, the posters and curricula at kindergartens across North Korea remain unchanged. One glimpse inside a school, and it is clear that despite US-North Korean diplomacy behind closed doors, four-year-olds are still being taught that the “Yankee imperialists” are North Korea’s worst enemy.
At the Kaeson Kindergarten in central Pyongyang, one of several schools visited by the AP, US soldiers are depicted as cruel, ghoulish barbarians with big noses and fiendish eyes. Teeth bared, they brand prisoners with hot irons, set wild dogs on women and wrench out a girl’s teeth with pliers. One drawing shows a US soldier crushing a girl with his boot, blood pouring from her mouth, her eyes wild with fear and pain.
“The American imperialists and Japanese militarism are the sworn enemies of the North Korean people,” reads a quote from late leader Kim Jong-il affixed to the top of one wall in a large room devoted to anti-US education.
“The main theme of anti-American propaganda is not ‘We must be ready for an attack,’ but ‘We must be ready for revenge,’” Myers says. “People are being whipped up to hate the United States on the basis of past actions.”
The Americans also are portrayed with nuclear symbols on their helmets and uniforms, a reference to the North Korean insistence that the US poses an atomic threat to the region. An undated poster in French is dotted with places in South Korea where missiles and fighter jets purportedly were kept.
The US denies having nuclear weapons in South Korea.
The North cites the presence of US soldiers in South Korea, as well as the alleged nuclear threat, as key reasons behind its drive to build atomic weapons in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions designed to hobble its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
As disarmament discussions continue in fits and starts, the message in classrooms across the country remains the same: North Korea needs its rockets, bombs and missiles and is proud of its atomic arsenal.
Kaeson Kindergarten is a model school. In the mornings, the children line up for calisthenics and to sing patriotic songs, and at lunchtime they are fed rice, fish and tofu, the principal said. They learn to sing, dance and ride unicycles, and at 4pm they get a snack and soy milk.
History lessons include tales about Kim Jong-il’s childhood, life under Japanese occupation and the Korean War.
“First, we start by teaching that the American imperialists started the war,” soft-spoken schoolteacher Jon Chun-yong said, citing the North Korean version of how the war began.
“From that time on, the tragedy emerged by which our nation was divided in two,” said Jon, who has taught at the kindergarten for 15 years. “Since then, our people had to endure the pain of living divided for a long half-century.”
US PUPPETS
The North Korean hate campaign generally does not include South Koreans, who are portrayed as puppets of the US.
However, in recent months, it has come to encompass South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whose tough policies toward the North have enraged its leaders, as well as the South’s conservative media.
The best of the children’s work is pinned up on a board: One kindergartner used color pencils to draw a boy in a blue cap attacking a midget US soldier with a studded club. Another drawing depicts North Korean fighter jets dropping bombs on US soldiers trapped in flames. In a third, a man wearing a helmet marked “US” in English is on his knees begging for mercy as he is pummeled on the head with a stick.
The children run around beating up mock US soldiers and planes, Jon said. The worst schoolyard taunt is to call someone miguk nom, or “American bastard.”
The games culminate every year on International Children’s Day on June 1. Across the nation, students convene en masse, dressed in military uniforms and armed with toy rifles and bayonets. At one such celebration in Pyongyang this month, students took turns charging dummies of US soldiers with their weapons.
BASEBALL
Still, like children everywhere, the littlest North Koreans show more fascination than fear when they encounter the rare American in Pyongyang, invariably waving and calling out “Hello!” in English.
And spotted among the mourners following Kim Jong-il’s death in December was a boy who clearly had no problem with a Yankee of a different kind. Perched on his head was a blue knit cap with the New York Yankees logo from a distinctly US sport: baseball.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in