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Nov 29, 2014 | KIM (SQUARED)

North Korea: Anti-AmericanismAn Education

North Korean rotund dear-leader had some strong words to say about the US during a state visit to a museum for an alleged massacre by US forces during the Korean War. He called Americans cannibals and stressed the need for additional anti-American education in schools.

 

Children in North Korea are already, from the earliest possible age, taught that the US is Satan's outpost on earth, hell-central so to speak, its principal purpose being the humiliation, subjugation and, when it had its fun, annihilation of their country. Pregnant women are required by law to read aloud to their unborn offspring, for at least an hour on a weekly basis, a government-approved anti-American manifesto. It has been reported that the first coherent words North Korean infants utter are not some Korean version of mama or papa but "Drive out the American imperialists, let's reunify our fatherland". 

 

Once in kindergarten, toddlers learn about America's belligerence by making puppets, usually with their own socks (funding for education in North Korea is not that great) and then acting out through puppeteering pivotal moments of the Korean War. They are also encouraged to aim fake rifles and bayonets against posters depicting caricatures of American soldiers, ride unicycles (where available, otherwise run in circles) and do calisthenics while chanting critical slogans about American imperialism, American kabbalism and American capitalism.

 

Education for the preschoolers is not confined to state facilities; at home they watch instructional cartoons on their TV sets (usually one per apartment building) depicting allegorical stories like the one with the cute indigenous unicorns being brutally harassed, unfairly picked upon and then eaten alive by bullying, evil American eagles.

 

Considering all the above, it's kind of perplexing to think what the additional anti-American curriculum that Kim envisions would entail. Still, we can venture to say that there is some room for propaganda improvement in North Korean secondary education. Although students are vigorously taught in history class how the US (and Japan) is to blame for pretty much all calamities that have ever befallen their country (and the world in general), from the extinction of the dinosaurs to the creation of LOLcats, they lack the insight of the anti-American viewpoint in other subjects. Some examples:

 

  • Biology: How America is concocting diseases like Ebola, Stendhal syndrome and the Miley Virus to decimate its enemies.

  • Science: How America is disobeying the laws of thermodynamics.

  • Geography: How America disrespects nature and violates natural landscapes by disfiguring mountains.

  • Art: How American pop culture has infiltrated the global art scene and thereby corrupted its values and infantilized its aesthetics  (see Jeff Koons).

  • Physical education: How American fast food is making children around the world obese (and that's why children in North Korea are fed only thrice a week and occasionally do manual labor, to keep in shape.)

  • Sociology: How America is distorting beauty norms through the likes of the Kardashians.

  • Mathematics: How America hates trigonometry.

 

The enhanced anti-American curriculum will perfectly complement the rest of the courses, namely a 81-hour course on current dear-leader Kim III, a 148-hour course on his father Kim II and a 160-hour course on his grandfather and founding president of the country, Kim the first.

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