{"id":94142,"date":"2026-07-21T21:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T21:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/94142\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T21:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T21:27:11","slug":"a-teens-vow-moves-n-koreans-to-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/94142\/","title":{"rendered":"A teen’s vow moves N. Koreans to tears"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Panoramic<\/a>A view of Hyesan city in North Korea’s Ryanggang province, with the Yalu River in the foreground, in August 2018. \/Photo: Daily NK<\/p>\n

A high school sophomore in Hyesan, Ryanggang province, recently finished mandatory military training. The training is run by the Red Youth Guard, a paramilitary youth organization<\/a> in North Korea. What happened afterward has moved people across the province to tears, a source there told Daily NK recently. <\/p>\n

According to the source, the student entered training camp earlier this month. He spent a week living at the camp for group military training.<\/p>\n

Every second-year student at senior middle school, the North Korean equivalent of high school, must complete this training. The program runs intensively each summer. By custom, students finish with a live-fire shooting exercise. Afterward, parents arrive with food to share with their children.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the final shooting exercise wraps up and parents show up with food, the training camp takes on the mood of a holiday,\u201d the source said. Not every parent comes, though. Students whose parents stay home watch their classmates eat happily with visiting family. Some instead share a lunch box with their homeroom teacher.<\/p>\n

A family\u2019s finances become impossible to hide<\/p>\n

The gathering ends up revealing which families are well-off. It shows just as clearly which ones are struggling, according to the source. For many students, the biggest source of anxiety before the big day is not the training itself. It\u2019s whether their parents will show up, and what food they might bring.<\/a><\/p>\n

Parents understand this pressure well. Many try to prepare food no matter how difficult their circumstances, so their children won\u2019t feel embarrassed in front of friends. According to the source, some parents even take on predatory loans to do it. They borrow one kilogram of rice<\/a> in the spring and promise to repay two kilograms by fall.<\/p>\n

The student at the center of this story comes from a family with little money. He assumed his mother would not be able to bring food on the day of the live-fire exercise. But his mother worried he would feel deflated in front of his friends. She borrowed rice from neighbors and prepared rice and side dishes to bring to the training camp.<\/p>\n

The moment caught the student off guard. He told his mother he had worried throughout the training. \u201cI saw there was no rice at home before I left for training,\u201d he said. \u201cI kept worrying the whole time that if you couldn\u2019t come, I\u2019d feel ashamed in front of my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he added something that brought his mother to tears. \u201cWhen I get home, I\u2019ll catch leeches, or gather firewood to sell, to help support the family,\u201d he told her. In Ryanggang province, many people catch leeches for extra income. Leeches are used in traditional medicine, and people sell them across the border in China. The remark reflected a son\u2019s devotion, an attempt to ease the burden his parents carry.<\/p>\n

The student\u2019s mother reportedly went quiet for a while. She held back tears once she realized how much her son had worried during his week at the camp. She later shared the exchange with neighbors.<\/p>\n

As the story spread by word of mouth, people in the area responded with sympathy. Some wondered aloud how much emotional strain the boy must have carried. Others reflected on how painful it must have been for his mother to witness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be a mistake to think students are simply happy eating the food their parents bring,\u201d the source said. \u201cThe sad truth is that students worry about their family\u2019s circumstances too. They worry about making ends meet, just as much as their parents do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read in Korean<\/a><\/p>\n

Reporting from inside North Korea<\/p>\n

\n Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. Unlike reporting based on state media, satellite imagery, or defector accounts from years past, our journalism comes directly from people currently living under the regime. We verify reports through multiple independent sources and cross-reference details before publication.\n <\/p>\n

\n Our sources remain anonymous because contact with foreign media is treated as a capital offense in North Korea \u2014 discovery means imprisonment or execution. This network-based approach allows Daily NK to report on developments other outlets cannot access: market trends, policy implementation, public sentiment, and daily realities that never appear in official narratives.\n <\/p>\n

\n Maintaining these secure communication channels and protecting source identities requires specialized protocols and constant vigilance. Daily NK serves as a bridge between North Koreans and the outside world, documenting what\u2019s happening inside one of the world\u2019s most closed societies.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A view of Hyesan city in North Korea’s Ryanggang province, with the Yalu River in the foreground, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5471,39844,5470,31,344,34,4607,5059,4918],"class_list":["post-94142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-children","tag-families","tag-food","tag-korea","tag-military","tag-north-korea","tag-poverty","tag-ryanggang-province","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}