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Date : June 17, 2016
Disparate workloads plague rice farming mobilization
   http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=13930 [788]
University students mobilized for rice farming duties in North Koreas farmlands are toiling for 14 hours each day under strict surveillance and control. Selected students have been designated as "group cadres" to monitor their fellow students, sowing discontent arising from the vastly disproportionate workloads.

Students have been mobilized for farm support work for more than 14 hours each day beginning at 6 am and ending at 8 pm, a source from North Hwanghae Province recently reported to Daily NK. Some are complaining that theyre being treated as if theyve committed a crime and have been sent to a labor-training camp.

Additional sources in the same province and South Hwanghae Province verified this news.

For the most part, the farm workers on site are too weak from malnourishment, so they mainly act as guides, the source said. Also, students have to take on the workload of the student cadres who only monitor people and dont help with the farming, so they wrap up their day after the sun goes down.

North Korean universities have multiple organizations and disciplinary bodies tasked with monitoring students. Children of Party cadres or donju [newly affluent middle class] are typically the only ones able to get into these organizations.

Around 25% of the entire student population is in charge of watching others, 35% escape mobilization using bribes or connections, and the remaining 40% are the students with no influence that are working on the farms.

Most of the students in the worker contingent are children of laborers and farmers in the North, and this often leads to complaints about having to slave away while others relax, the source added.

The state is ultimately the cause of such class divisions even among fellow students. The categorization of its residents into core, wavering, and hostile groups as well as oppressive monitoring is reflected directly in the student demographic as much as it is in the broader population.

In the midst of this, the recently launched 200-Day Battle has triggered greater animosity among students, leading to criticisms of the regime for issuing year-round successive mobilization orders. Concerns are mounting over the human cost of such extended and strenuous mandatory labor requirements.  

[Source: DailyNK]

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