The Current Status of Political Ideology Education in Higher Education and its Impacts on HRD in China and North Korea

Abstract: Human resource development (HRD) national policy has received substantial attention in the recent literature by considering different country's unique historical and cultural context (Garavan et al., 2018; McLean, 2006; Wang et al., 2022). Most studies have focused on developing countries from a mainstream HRD humanistic perspective to improve human development (Byrd & Demps, 2006). However, there is a lack of scholarly attention to non-mainstream HRD in China and North Korea, where HRD systems are significantly different from the mainstream (Sun & Wang, 2016). HRD policies in the two countries heavily focused on ideological characteristics and loyalty education. The purpose of such ideological education is to shape students’ mindset toward Marxism and socialist orientation to strengthen Communist Party’s ruling status.
Examining the current ideology education in the two nations will be beneficial to deepen our understanding of HRD practices in non-mainstream contexts. This study focuses on the recent political ideology education in higher education during the Xi Jinping era and the Kim Jong-Un era, respectively. The main research question for this study is, what is the current status of political ideology education in China and North Korea and its implications for HRD research and practices?
We examine each country's higher education system through historical literature review. For data about China’s higher education, we used the government's official website, the Ministry of Education (MOE) and publicly available media reports. Particularly, we compared the published annual work foci of MOE from 2000 to 2022. To collect data about North Korean higher education, we used multiple academic online databases and South Korean research institutions conducting studies on North Korea, such as the Korea Institute for National Unification (NINU). We also reviewed the titles of recent five years articles in peer-reviewed academic journals published in English, including Journal of Korean Studies, European Journal of Korean Studies, Korean Studies, North Korea Review, and Seoul Journal of Korean Studies.
The recent change in the higher education system and the ideological education in China has changed from focusing on science and innovation to the leadership of CCP. From 2000 to 2014, MOE policies were based on Deng Xiaoping Theory with a focus on scientific development, reform, and innovation to lay the foundation for China’s long-term development in the 21st century. A number of world-class high-level universities and disciplines were established to train graduate students, especially Ph.D. students, to become high-level innovative talents to integrate the development of education, science, and economy, such as the 211 project. Yet from 2014, MOE’s policies have been oriented towards Xi Jinping’s speeches in the new era. Comprehensive education reforms have been developed to reinforce the leading position of political ideology education in all educational activities in China. Thought and Political education, such as the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, is included in textbooks and classrooms. Marxist theoretical research and textbooks are developed, and popularized, and multiple Schools of Marxism were established in universities around the country in addition to the university party schools. The leaders, faculties, and students in universities are all required to learn Xi’s speeches on weekly base to promote socialist core values in mind.
The primary change in HRD of North Korea after Kim Jong-un took office can be summarized as strengthening science and technology education by reforming the structure of the higher education system and innovating education methods (Cho, 2019; Cho et al., 2020; Kim, 2021). North Korea reorganized universities by integrating and combining smaller colleges to large-scale universities and reformed graduate school systems to facilitate earning a doctoral degree at an early age. Kim Jong-un also set a nationwide educational goal of making all people well-versed in science and technology and emphasized spreading distance education to allow workers in plant universities to participate in on-site distance education provided by major universities (Lee, 2017; Kim, 2021). Compared to the 1960~70s Juche ideology forming period and 1990~2000s Seon-gun, a military-first ideology period, the emphasis on ideology education in the Kim Jong-un era seemed ostensibly less intense than in the previous periods to meet the needs for economic development (Cho, 2019).
Due to different development stages, the current ideology education in North Korea is similar to China’s ideology education during Deng’s era before 2014. China’s current ideology education during Xi’s new era has become more intense since 2014, which echoes Mao’s and Kim Il-sung’s eras. Despite the time log of ideological education in China and North Korea, the fundamental role of ideology education in HRD in both countries has never changed.