North Korea orders campaign to erase South Korea from youth consciousness

A source in North Hamgyong province said that on March 22, authorities issued instructions to intensify efforts to sever all mental and cultural ties with South Korea in line with the regime’s declaration of South Korea as a permanently hostile state. “The government instructed that in accordance with the two-state declaration designating South Korea as an immutably hostile country, a campaign to completely wipe South Korea from people’s minds be actively pursued as a strong measure to permanently sever relations,” the source said.

Under the directive, the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, the ruling party’s mass organization for young people aged 14 to 30, was ordered to run a nationwide campaign throughout April and May using youth-tailored ideological education materials. The goal, the source said, is to bind young people to the system as a vanguard force. The campaign’s stated aim is to treat South Korea as a “ghost-like existence” and to eradicate the very idea of a South Korean identity from the consciousness of North Koreans under 30.

Specifically, the youth league was instructed to organize weekly lectures at workplaces and schools across the country with the message that “South Korean ideology and culture are a toxin that eats away at the soul.” Young people who had previously encountered South Korean dramas or music were to be encouraged to come forward voluntarily, confess their exposure, and undergo an ideological “cleansing” process.

The youth league also advised officials not to simply berate young people whose thinking had been influenced by South Korean culture, but instead to group peers of similar ages together to discuss their experiences, share reflections, and collectively arrive at the “correct” understanding. The peer-based approach appears designed to generate social pressure and self-policing within youth cohorts.

Officials’ children abroad placed under closer watch

Despite the campaign’s framing as voluntary self-reflection, North Korean youth are said to be privately resentful. Those already familiar with South Korean culture told the source that “the world has become one where even listening to a single South Korean song means risking your life.” Growing mutual surveillance among peers was fueling anxiety, with young people watching each other closely rather than speaking openly.

Authorities also directed heightened ideological monitoring of children accompanying Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials stationed abroad, where exposure to South Korean content is harder to control. The source said the government instructed that particularly gifted children of foreign ministry officials already overseas be sent back to North Korea, and that officials be prohibited from keeping children abroad for extended periods going forward.

The moves follow statements issued in connection with the Ninth Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Congress in February 2026, in which Pyongyang declared that it has “absolutely nothing to discuss” with South Korea, that it would “permanently exclude South Korea from the category of compatriots,” and that its resolve to treat South Korea as “a thorough hostile state and permanent enemy” was “firm and conclusive.”

Kim Jong Un reinforced that position during his policy address to the first session of the 15th Supreme People’s Assembly on March 23, saying North Korea would “officially recognize South Korea as the most hostile state” and “thoroughly reject and ignore it with the clearest words and actions.”

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