The North Korean government upholds the violent and hateful education policy in order to maintain its dictatorship and inspire integral unity. Such efforts are apparent in various conditions. The school curriculum, a militaristic way of education, public executions, visits to the historic museum, rallies, Saeng-hwal-chong-hwa (criticism/self-evaluation sessions), games and comic books, and revolutionary education are only some of the examples. Through these practices, North Korea intends to make enemies outside the society, unify the nation, and try to avoid political insurrection by having the citizens monitor each other. In the same context as historical distortion, North Korea criticizes capitalism and uses anti-U.S. and anti-Japanese sentiment in order to encourage communist ideology and the social system. For this reason, North Koreans learn the revolutionary history and activities of their leaders in school, which then fosters feelings of hatred toward the U.S. and its allies. For example, there are questions on math exams such as, “How many are left after destroying some of the American tanks?” and lyrics in music classes, such as “Kick the Japanese out of the country”.

Hateful propaganda is found in various activities outside of the regular educational curriculum. Almost every field day at school has a competition called, “Smash the foreign-nosed Americans to death”. Most students are required to participate, and they’ve done so since a very young age, as elementary school students. Moreover, they casually play violent games on special occasions, and try to lead whoever is on the American team to lose. The purpose of these kinds of violent games is to indoctrinate the children into believing that North Korea is the best country in the world, and to instill anti-American, anti-imperialist sentiment.

Apart from these curriculums, the Saeng-hwal-chong-hwa or group criticism sessions should be mentioned as it is a form of damaging and fear instilling education, that has been handed down since Kim Il-Sung Government, to make the people obey the dictatorship through public self-criticisms and mutual criticisms at schools or working groups so, it makes people monitor and distrust each other and contribute greatly to preventing members of the society from cooperating with each other. This practice has become so ingrained in their society that citizens view each other with a critical eye even when not in these sessions. Through this environment of constant societal scrutiny, the regime causes its people to experience mistrust, anxiety, and fear while still suffering pressure to promulgate the very behavior monitoring and censorship which keeps them so subjugated. Moreover, there are considerable cases in which weaker students are bullied because of what happens in Saeng-hwal-chong-hwa.

Additionally, group criticism sessions are used to encourage people’s hatred toward the foreign countries. For example, if the first secretary of the Socialist Youth Alliance says, “Now I will begin a discussion. Submit your agendas about your rage against the class enemy and your resolutions for the future,” the students answer by saying something like, “They have to pay for what they did. I will exact revenge for generations. The United States and Japan are countries that should be extinguished and should not exist.”