Inside North Korea hell schools where teachers BEAT kids forced to worship Kim Jong-un

A woman who fled has revealed what life is like inside the secretive country's hellish schools, explaining how children at school are forced to do hard labour, beaten and made to worship leader.

Bella Seo, who fled the country when she was a teenager, said kids faced up to three classes a day studying the Kim family - the most important subject for their grades. And when finished, the real work began, with pupils forced to spend three to four hours on "extremely strenuous" physical labour before going home. Beatings by teachers were routine, and the "free" education was so expensive that starving parents skipped meals to afford the contributions.

It's a long way from the schools seen in North Korean propaganda, where beaming students are nurtured by doting teachers. Bella said: "Out of seven daily periods, two to three are dedicated to studying topics related to the Kim family.

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"The most critical subjects are the 'Childhood and Revolutionary History' of the Kim family. Even if a student excels in Korean, English, maths, history, science, PE, or art, their overall evaluation depends on their performance in these ideological subjects."

Each day also started with cleaning portraits of the ruling Kims and singing loyalty songs. And there was an additional self-criticism session on Saturdays, where pupils admitted their ideological failings. But the curriculum wasn't the worst part.

Bella said: "Students were responsible for levelling the rocky schoolyard by covering it with sand - a long-term labour-intensive task. This often took three to four hours after school daily. I had to carry 25kg sacks filled with sand and rocks, which was extremely strenuous."

She continued: "After working for about three hours after school, I would often be too exhausted to eat and would go straight to sleep. Since everything had to be done manually, the work took about a week, and it made me dread going to school. On top of that, students had to cover the costs of the project, which I found deeply unfair."

When it snowed, the workload increased further. And Bella faced an average of 63 snowy days per year in her hometown of Hyesan, in the frozen north of the country, close to the Chinese border. She said: "Hyesan often experienced heavy snowfall, at least ankle-deep, which students had to clear before classes began.

"As a result, lessons usually started from the second or third period on snowy days." The financial burden was as real as the physical one. North Korea boasts of a universal and free education system, but Bella said the reality was very different.

She said: "While there are no official tuition fees, students must contribute significantly through 'youth projects' and other financial demands. Students had to cover expenses for school events - even teachers' birthdays, weddings, and family occasions required contributions, with class leaders often paying the most.

"It was a severe burden for families surviving on daily earnings; some parents had to skip meals to afford these school expenses. In my hometown, it was impossible to survive on the state salary - monthly wages were barely enough to buy a bottle of alcohol. "Students who couldn't pay often faced social exclusion from classmates or physical punishment from teachers, depending on the teacher's mood and personality."

The defector further revealed the shocking level of violence faced by schoolkids. She said: "Beatings by teachers were an everyday occurrence, to the point that it seemed normal. Only a few students ever dared to challenge their abusive teachers."

Girls, who were also tasked with cleaning the classrooms, got the worst of it. Bella said: "When mistakes were made, female students typically received harsher punishments. One of my friends was beaten by our homeroom teacher for making a loud noise while cleaning.

"The teacher grabbed her hair, slapped her, and threw her against the teacher's desk. She had to cry and beg for forgiveness. Her parents later visited the school and got an apology from the teacher, but the incident was not treated as a serious issue. This was just one of many common cases of school violence."

In North Korea, five years of primary school and six years of secondary school are compulsory, the defector added. But she said some kids spent their days foraging for food instead. In terms of the outside , she recalled that kids were taught that the US is as "an eternal enemy we cannot coexist with".

South Korea, meanwhile, was portrayed as a "poor and starving" country under the American boot. Bella, who adopted her first name after it was bestowed on her by American friends, is now 23 years old and living in the South Korean capital, Seoul.

She fled her homeland after Kim Jong-un came to power. She said: "Many families, including mine, relied on smuggling goods from
to survive. However, after Kim Jong-il's death, Kim Jong-un took power and shut down smuggling routes. "With no means to sustain ourselves, we took all our savings and fled. I crossed the mountains into China, then travelled across China, Laos, and Thailand before flying to South Korea."