김정은시대 북한 교육정책 방향과 중등교육과정 개편

Abstract

This article infers the characteristics of North Korea’s education policy under Kim Jong-un by analyzing the discourse on North Korea’s education after the launch of the Kim Jong-un regime as well as implications of reforming the school system according to the ‘universal 12-year compulsory education system’ of September 2012 and the contents of the revised secondary education curriculum. The educational policies of the Kim Jong-un era have the following characteristics. First, it emphasizes ‘creative’ and ‘practitioner’ types of talents fit for the ‘information technology age’ and the ‘age of knowledge economy.’ Second, it has been actively promoting informatization of education. Third, it has been putting efforts to understand the trend of global education and has been improving educational institutions to match international standards. The characteristics of the new curriculum which has been revised according to the school system reform of September 2012 are as follows. First, as secondary education is divided into junior secondary schooling and senior secondary schooling, some subjects have been changed and the number of class hours of each grade has been adjusted accordingly. Especially integrated education curriculum was partially applied to education at junior secondary school level. Second, education on political ideology has been intensified, creating a political ideology subject regarding Kim Jong-un. Third, science and technology education has been strengthened with particular emphasis on IT education, establishing technology related subjects such as ‘basic technology’ and ‘information technology’ and increasing class hours for natural science and technology subjects.