Opening ceremonies of the new school year simultaneously took place at all educational institutions across the DPRK on April 1.

Streets throughout the country were enlivened by uniform-clad new students shouldering satchels filled with textbooks, their parents and other students as all educational institutions were bedecked with festive decorations.

Underlying the opening ceremonies held in a jubilant mood amid nationwide attention and expectations is the special care shown by the Workers’ Party of Korea and the DPRK government.

Education is an important matter to which the WPK and the government pay primary attention.

As indicated in the slogans “Let us entrust our future to education!” and “Let us make education the one which can take charge of our future!”, it is the invariable stand of the Party and the government to open up a broad avenue for prosperity by bringing about a radical turn in education.

Therefore, a series of important measures have been taken for the development of education in the new century of the Juche era.

Following the promulgation of the law on the enforcement of universal 12-year compulsory education, 2017 and 2018 were designated as years of science and education to increase nationwide and all-society interest in improving educational conditions and environment. The slogan “Let us make ours a country of education and a talent power by bringing about a radical improvement in education in the new century” was set forth at a national conference of educational workers, followed by tasks and ways for developing education.

It became the most important policy of the WPK and the state to provide children with better upbringing conditions even by spending a colossal sum of money at the Third Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK in June 2021.

To supply school uniforms and school things to the students across the country at state expense became a consistent policy of the Party and the state at the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK in December 2021.

Drastic measures were taken last year to adjust the educational structure to ensure advanced education and to improve and strengthen education in order to put the country’s education on the world’s advanced level. The law on supporting education was adopted in December 2023, making support to education a sacred duty of citizens.

The Ninth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Party Central Committee held in December in the run-up to 2024 discussed the matter of displaying a high sense of responsibility in implementing socialist policies for schoolchildren as an independent agenda item.

The plenary meeting pointed out the deviations revealed in implementing the policies for the rising generations of the country in the past and discussed measures and ways for overcoming them. Consequently, new guidelines on the body measurement for students were formulated and issued for the first time in the country’s history of garment industry, followed by demonstrations, workshops and other technical courses given by professionals in the relevant fields. The production of cloth for school uniform was finished in a short time, so that the production of uniforms, shoes and satchels for new students across the country was completed in March, and they were supplied to new students in all parts of the country, even in remote mountain villages and islets.

Thanks to the blessings of the people who have devoted themselves to the preparations of the new school year with the viewpoint that slowing down one step in the education of the younger generation means a ten-step delay in the advance of the country and true to the intention of the Party and the government that it is important to unsparingly devote more sincerity and care to the rising generations when the conditions are unfavourable, the opening ceremonies of the new school year became a matter of special concern throughout the country.