North Korean college students are deprived of much time and energy due to farm work, semi-military training in camps and mobilization for social and political events. But they study no less intensively, and harder than their South Korean counterparts.

College students are mobilized for aid-farmer labor for 50 to 60 days every spring. Early in spring when rice planting starts, they suspend all studies and go to farming villages to help farmers plant rice and pick weeds out of rice paddies. Soon after they resume studies in earnest, the summer vacation comes, that lasts only about 10 days. The new term begins in September and the so-called farm-harvesting front awaits them late in autumn. They are obligated to take part in 30-day-long harvesting activities.

North Korean college students undergo 6-months of semi-military training courses in camps, and have to do physical labor at construction sites for another six months. In addition, they are occasionally mobilized for social activities and political events. As a consequence, their study hours add up to only about two and a half years out of a five-year college course. Furthermore, one third of their curricula is devoted to subjects designed to idolize Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il including their revolutionary history and "laborious works." They also have to take military training courses at school, running four hours a week.

College students staying in dormitories get up at 5.30am. Morning lessons start at 8am and end at 1:00pm. Afternoon lessons last from 2:00pm to 7:00pm, each lesson lasting 90 minutes. Excepting 10-minute physical exercises following 90-minute lessons, the college students undergo intensive studies like junior and senior high school students in the South.

Some colleges provide free hours in the afternoon, during which most students do homework or study subjects they fall behind in, at libraries. Though the situation has changed in recent years due to the power shortages, few darkened dormitory rooms are to be seen late in the night.

"We all studied very hard at college, " says Choi Dong-chol, a North Korean defector who graduated from Kim Il Sung University. "As some students studied well beyond midnight, leaders of the Kim IL Sung Socialist Youth League had to visit rooms at around 1:00am to tell studying students to turn off the lights and go to bed." Another North Korean defector Lee Chung Kuk who attended the University of Science, the North's most prestigious institute of higher education in natural sciences, reminisces, "Most students standing in the queue at the campus cafeteria studied holding small notebooks in their hands."

North Korean college students can hardly afford to be lazy because of the tightly knit school system. Also contributing to their hard work at school is the strict administration of academic affairs, which calls for the dismissal of a student who fails a subject twice. Neither is the school atmosphere conducive to laziness due to a lack in recreational facilities. One can hardly mess around alone in a dormitory room, accommodating six to eight students, when everyone else is studying.

(Kim Kwang In, kki@chosun.com )