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The DPRK pays close attention to enabling disabled persons to exercise with dignity their rights as members of society.

In particular, they are provided with the right to learning.

In 1951, during the Fatherland Liberation War, President Kim Il Sung said that to protect honoured disabled soldiers and the persons who had become disabled by the enemies’ atrocities and stabilize their life was an important undertaking that the Workers’ Party of Korea and the DPRK government should carry out in a responsible manner, and took steps for establishing a school for honoured disabled soldiers to teach them useful knowledge and techniques and skills. After the war, he saw to it that educational institutions for the disabled were built across the country.

The Law of the DPRK on the Protection of the Disabled was adopted in 2003, which made it possible to conduct the work to protect them in a more extensive way, based on the legal guarantee.

The Ninth Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly held in September 2023 adopted the Law of the DPRK on Ensuring the Rights of the Disabled to put forward the disabled as genuine masters of the state and society and enable them to enjoy genuine freedom and a happy life as human beings.

The law stipulates that those of school age are registered without omission to be provided with the right to attend school and can enter schools of higher grade at all levels, including universities, as they wish and that educational and relevant institutions shall neither limit their recommendation to and entry into schools of higher grade nor expel them from school for the reason of disabilities.

In the DPRK, children with disabilities receive 12-year compulsory education like normal children after getting special education including finger reading and sign language, and go to university or learn various special techniques at vocational training schools for persons with disabilities as they wish.

The vocational training schools for persons with disabilities steadily improve educational contents and methods so that they can make an active contribution to social development with their techniques.

The Eleventh Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea stressed the need to establish an education support system for disabled persons on a nationwide scale.

Accordingly, the education sector is striving to establish a new education support system for disabled persons and a class of disabled children was newly established at Hwawon Kindergarten No. 2 in Hwasong District, Pyongyang, in April last year on the occasion of the new school year.

Experts say that this measure for disabled children to receive kindergarten education together with normal children constitutes another step forward in the education for disabled persons.