A student at an elite provincial school in North Hamgyong province has been forcibly transferred to an ordinary school after a neighbor reported the student to local party authorities for tutoring younger students for pay during a school holiday, Daily NK has learned.
North Korea’s provincial No. 1 middle schools are selective institutions that function as the country’s top secondary schools, enrolling students identified as academically gifted and grooming them for higher education and professional careers. Admission is highly competitive, and placement is considered a major achievement for any family.
A Daily NK source in South Hamgyong province reported Thursday that the student, enrolled at the No. 1 middle school in Hamhung, was turned in to the local party committee after being found to have worked as a private tutor during the school holiday. The school’s Socialist Patriotic Youth League, a state-run youth organization that enforces ideological discipline among students, then took up the matter aggressively, and the student was transferred to an ordinary middle school on March 25.
“The youth league organization at the school does not have the authority to punish students unilaterally,” the source said. “The No. 1 middle school is under the direct oversight of the provincial party committee and the provincial people’s committee’s education bureau, so this transfer would have been decided at that level.”
Why elite school students are in demand as tutors
Private tutoring is illegal in North Korea. Families who can afford it typically hire active teachers, but a subset of parents specifically seek out No. 1 middle school students, reasoning that someone who has passed the school’s rigorous entrance process has direct, practical knowledge of exactly what it takes to gain admission. That demand creates an incentive for elite school students to take on tutoring work during holidays as a source of income.
“Families with financial means hire one-on-one tutors for their children,” the source said. “Usually active teachers fill that role, but some parents specifically prefer No. 1 middle school students.”
The offense was compounded by the student’s institutional standing. Private tutoring by teachers, while illegal, is treated as a lesser violation than the same activity carried out by a student, which is considered a breach of basic student conduct on top of the underlying illegality.
Community reaction: sympathy and anger at the informant
The response among local people has been largely sympathetic toward the student and hostile toward whoever filed the report.
“Most people are saying they understand why the student did tutoring during a break, and that it’s a shame to be expelled from a school they worked so hard to enter,” the source said. “There are also voices criticizing the person who reported them, saying that a single report has completely destroyed a child’s future.”
The student’s family has been left devastated. “The household that worked so hard to get their child into a No. 1 middle school has overnight become like a house in mourning,” the source said.
People in the community have been invoking a Korean proverb — roughly equivalent to the English saying “misery loves company” — suggesting the report was motivated by envy rather than principle. The transferred student now carries what the source described as a mark of disgrace that will be difficult to shed, with the forced transfer likely to follow the student’s academic record and affect future prospects.
Reporting from inside North Korea
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.
Our sources remain anonymous because contact with foreign media is treated as a capital offense in North Korea — 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.
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