Children represent the future of every country. To treasure, love and properly raise them is an important undertaking to guarantee the development and future of mankind.

But their growth and destiny are different by countries and regions.

Large numbers of children suffer from toilsome labour and even lose their lives in accidents during work in the United States, the only country that refused to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

According to a survey of over a hundred immigrant juvenile workers in 20 states of the US, the exploitation of child labour is very serious. For example, a 12-year-old boy works as a roof repairer in Florida and a 13-year-old girl washes bedclothes in a hotel of Virginia. Many other children work at construction sites and are forced into rough work such as cleaning of slaughterhouse, and most of them work over dangerous machines until late at night.

Accidents often occur during work due to poor working environment and conditions. A child fell from a height of 15 metres while working at a house repair company and another was caught under timber at a construction site. Like this, many children lose their lives. Such accidents are not reportedly summed up even elementarily.

Such exploitation of immigrant juvenile labour in the US is an open secret, and businesses and schools in the regions where children live intentionally remain dumb on the child labour situation and conspire with one another.

In a reply to a journalist’s question related to the report on the protection of children’s rights released by the International Labour Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund at a regular news briefing, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the phenomena of illegal juvenile labour have recently sprung up explosively in the US and called on it to ratify the CRC quickly and protect all rights of children through practical actions.

A saying goes that if you want to know about the future of a country, you should see its children.

Last year there took place the eighth Asian children’s picture exhibition and the 31st international children’s picture exhibition in Dalian of Liaoning Province in China, and Khabarovsk of Russia respectively.  In their reports about the exhibitions, mass media of China, Russia, India, Singapore, Italy, Austria, Ethiopia and Libya said that children of the DPRK fully demonstrated the wishes and talents they fulfil under the socialist education system. In particular, a Laotian news agency stressed that the Korean children’s works won high appraisal at the exhibitions as they are consistent with their love for the national traditions and nature and vividly based on their life and that the exhibitions served as another occasion for the participants to know about the DPRK, a kingdom of children, and the rosy future of its socialist system.

No task is more important than the one to healthily raise children in the DPRK, and it is the most important policy and greatest cherished desire of the Workers’ Party of Korea to provide more improved conditions for childcare even by spending a huge sum of money.

Nurseries and kindergartens across the country do the management of children’s health in a scientific way. Especially, kindergartens systemically introduce advanced teaching methods to develop their intelligence. The universal 12-year compulsory education was enforced and children’s palaces and camps were built on scenic spots. The country has medical service bases exclusively for children like the Okryu Children’s Hospital.

Seen in all parts of the country are baby homes, orphanages, primary and middle schools for orphans and nurses, teachers, doctors and many other employees of the institutions take warm care of the children.

The congress of the Korean Children’s Union is held as a major national event and even airplanes are provided for delegates to the congress who are far away from the capital city.

On her visit to the DPRK a few years ago, the head of a Russian camping group said: It is a unanimous desire of all mothers on the earth to bring up their children without envy in the world. As a mother, I also want to send my children to schools and camps provided with good educational conditions and to help them realize their hopes to suit their tastes and aptitudes. But it is a problem that cannot be solved merely with maternal affection and care. Such desire of mothers is translated into reality in the DPRK. All its children learn, develop their talents to their heart’s content at professional education bases and enjoy the greatest blessings at wonderfully built camps at state expense. Indeed, the DPRK is a paradise for children we mothers can imagine only in a dream.

As everything of the country is consistent with love for the younger generation, its children grow healthily into its future pillars.