Working North Korean
women, burdened with heavy workload, find it
rather easy to raise their children. Upon the
completion of a three-month childbirth leave,
mothers place their babies under the care of
day-care centers. If unemployed, they raise their
babies at home, but workingwomen rarely ask their
mothers or mothers-in-law to look after their
babies.
Since its foundation in 1948
North Korea has devoted itself to the successful
operation of day nurseries, and have been
established even in remote mountainous areas, let
alone cities. Over 60,000 nurseries and
kindergartens exist across the country, most of
the former being affiliated with the latter.
Medium-sized work places, not to
mention large ones, have nursery schools. As
medical doctors and nutritionists are assigned
there, mothers don't have to care about
vaccinating their kids or feeding them nutritious
food. They are furnished rather well, typically of
which are, Kang Ban Sok and Kim Jong Suk Nurseries
in Pyongyang, which are often visited by
foreigners. Under the slogan of "The Best Goods
for Children," the North used to supply quality
goods and food to day nurseries.
Nursery schools have four levels:
babies, toddlers, young children and
pre-kindergarten children. To breast-feed babies,
mothers come to nursery schools four times a day
at a specified time.
What's important
for children at nursery schools is "to become just
like others." It fits the principle of
collectivism and the value of turning out
"communist type people." The degree of uniformity
is one of the important criteria for assessing day
nurseries. Children are basically required to act
on the same timetable and eat the same food. An
important goal calls for having children sing and
dance making identical facial expressions and
movements. Hence nurses take great care through
repetition to guide kids "to become more alike
than others."
"Nursemaids tell
children the same thing again and again so that
they act alike through repetition," reminisces Ri
Ok Kum, 53, who directed a day-care center at
Hamhung City Management Office in South Hamgyong
Province before coming to the South.
"Thank you, Grand Marshall Kim Il
Sung!" was a must when something to eat was given.
The addressee now may well have been changed into
"Dear General Kim Jong Il." They recite the phrase
whenever they are given something to eat in a form
of reflex conditioning.
Nursing young
children is by no means an easy job, as a nurse
has to look after 20 kids or more. Nonetheless,
the job is not unpopular. To begin with, work at a
day-care center requires a prescribed training
course. And nursing jobs are described as
"substantive," because mothers tend to ingratiate
themselves with nursemaids. Parents tend to supply
goods needed by nursery schools.
In
addition to day-care centers, some nurseries
operate on a weekly, monthly or even seasonal
basis. Many working mothers place their children
under the care of nurseries operating on a weekly
basis. They take them to nursery schools on Monday
and bring them home on Saturday. As no visits are
permitted during weekdays, both young children and
their parents are said to anxiously look forward
to the weekend. If mothers are too busy to collect
them on Saturday, children stay at nurseries for
another week. Fathers rarely visit nursery schools
to collect their children on the weekend.
Entertainers who travel abroad for performances
make use of nurseries running on a monthly or
seasonal basis.
But gone are the days
when parents could entrust their young children
with nursing schools with complete ease of mind.
Since 1993 milk was replaced by soymilk under the
"Bean Milk of Love" campaign, and the state's
all-out support has long ceased. It's a well-known
fact that children are the harshest victims of the
food shortages in the North and today’s reality of
nursery schools, once the symbol of socialism in
the North, appears to be going the way of the rest
of the country.
By Kim Mi Young
miyoung@chosun.com
2001- 6-24 |
Post
Opinion