Politics

At the Third Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea held in June 2021, General Secretary Kim Jong Un said that there is no more important revolutionary work than bringing up children, the future of the country, to be strong and sound and that it is the most important policy and supreme desire of the Party and state to provide more improved conditions for bringing them up even by investing a huge sum of money.

Recollecting the day when the supply of nourishing foods including dairy products for all the children throughout the country was formulated as a Party policy, the director of the Law Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences said: “Laws in our country reflect intact the WPK’s policies for realizing the people’s intentions and demands. The Law of the DPRK on Childcare adopted at the Sixth Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly also reflects the childcare policy put forward at the Third Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Party Central Committee.”

A paragraph of Article 2 of the childcare law stipulates that the state shall make sure that the system of production and supply of nourishing foods for children is established in a well-organized way, dairy products and other nourishing foods are supplied to all the children free on a regular basis and the best conditions are provided for bringing them up.

At the time, every penny counted in socialist construction as the economic development of the country faced a huge obstacle due to the worldwide spread of Covid-19.

However, the DPRK adopted the childcare law with an outlook on younger generation that the deficit suffered by the state for rising generation is not a loss and the more the fund is disbursed for children, the brighter the future of the country will become.

In retrospect, the history of law in the country is the one of communist policies associated with the love for the people and younger generation.

The childcare law is a subsidiary to the Law on the Nursing and Upbringing of Children adopted in 1976 and stipulates the order relating to the production and supply of nourishing foods for children and the provision of conditions for bringing them up.

The Law on the Nursing and Upbringing of Children, the first law for children, was adopted before the Socialist Labour Law (1978) and the Law on Public Health (1980). 

After the adoption of the law, the number of nurseries increased by 4.6 times and that of children attending nurseries by 3.6 times in the DPRK in the 1970s as compared to the 1960s, which meant that the country led the world in the absolute number of nurseries.

Afterwards, laws containing people-oriented policies for the good of children increased with their contents being amended and supplemented. Socialistic policies for children became greater in number by dint of such statutes as the laws on safeguarding women’s rights, labour protection and education.

The newly-adopted childcare law stipulates that regional people’s committees and institutions and enterprises concerned shall set the sites for nurseries and kindergartens in places with favourable natural and geographical conditions and hygienic safety, which are sunny and airy, free from dust and noise and relatively distant from roads, reservoirs and rivers, so that they will not have negative effects on the health, growth and development of children, and that art and literary institutions and relevant agencies shall contribute to the education of children by producing many works of art and literature for children that are significant in the education of the younger generation, such as cartoons, children’s songs, poems and dances, fairytales and picture-card shows that suit the psychology of children.

Such parental love runs through every provision of the childcare law consisting of four chapters and 61 articles.