North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects a bag factory in Pyongyang in this 2017 file photo. Yonhap

By Jung Da-min

With North Korean leader Kim Jong-un spending more time on "spot guidance" in recent months, North Korean factories are often being highlighted in propaganda media.

Videos on North Korean websites often show workers wearing headsets to "remote lectures" in front of monitors in a computer room. All staff, from junior workers to managers, learn "modern technologies" for better production, according to reports.

These "remote" lectures are part of the curriculum of so-called factory universities, which many workers attend after finishing 12 years of compulsory education.

As explained in the Thursday edition of North Korea's party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun, these factory universities were introduced during the Korean War (1950-53). The basic idea is to work during the day and study at night. This system aims to foster technicians while not stopping production needed to recover from the ravages of war.

It also aims to realize the socialist idea of combining production and reproduction for an integrated community, an expert says.

Park Young-ja.

"The role of North Korean factories stretches beyond manufacturing; they serve as administrative units while also providing ideological education," says Park Young-ja, director of the Korea Institute for National Unification's (KINU) North Korean Research Division. "They have daycare centers, kindergartens, hospitals and cultural centers for workers along with the production lines."

Overall, the factories provide educational courses for pre-school children before they go to primary school and for high school graduates who have completed 12 years of compulsory education.

Although the factory universities are second-tier universities, not like first-class ones such as Kim Il Sung University, some leaders are graduates of these workplace-cum-colleges.

"North Korea's current Premier Pak Pong-ju was a symbolic figure of "hero of socialist labor" who works hard on the site," the KINU researcher said. "He graduated from Tokchon University of Technology and worked as a factory manager before joining the Workers' Party Central Committee in 1980 as an alternate member."

North Korea's premier Pak Pong-ju, second from left, inspects factories in Tanchon and Komdok districts in South Hamgyong province in this July photo from North Korea's state media Korean Central News Agency. Yonhap

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's on-the-spot guidance to factories in the border city of Sinuiju in North Pyongan Province had recently received attention in foreign media being a preparatory step for economic cooperation with China, but there was more, she said.

"Kim Jong-un's visit to the 'education room' of a factory is not a mere display of how much the leader cares for his people, but it shows that reinforcing ideology is still at the heart of guidance tours."