Ask a North Korean: what's life like in the army?

In North Korea, men serve in the military for 10 years and women for seven. The special unit working as Kim Jong-un’s personal bodyguards serve for 13.

Military service is compulsory in the DPRK and most people enlist after high school. Those who are accepted into universities do their military service after they graduate.

Usually if you have a bachelor’s degree service lasts for five years, but if you studied engineering or science you serve three because the former leader Kim Jong-il wanted to encourage people to study science.

Training on an empty stomach

The main difficulty conscripts must endure is constant hunger. Soldiers in the special units are well taken care of but those stationed outside the capital Pyongyang are only given two or three potatoes a meal, or are fed solely on raw corn kernels or corn rice.

Thanks to these diets, North Korean soldiers are said to be several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts – a sensitive subject for the North, wrote Adam Cathcart, as tensions flared on the peninsula last month.

On meagre rations the soldiers not only have to train but are given physical tasks such as helping farmers on their rice paddy fields. Many become very thin and hungry, and desperate to escape.

The military police are always on the look out forsoldiers who’ve escaped to look for food. Sometimes these soldiers steal from civilians and farming stockrooms because they’re so hungry. If it’s edible, they’ll steal it.

I’ve heard that some senior officers will even order soldiers to go out and steal. If they fail they may be punished.

In my high school class there were 25 boys. Five went to college and the remaining 20 went into the military. Half of those were returned home suffering from the effects of malnutrition.Soldiers are given home leave to recover. Most are too weak to even walk by themselves, so their parents pick them up and feed them back to health. When they improve they go back to the army.

The lucky ones serve in the special unit, or serve under good officers who take care of them. The unlucky ones die of hunger before their parents have a chance to help them. The only thing these parents pray for is the safe return of their sons.

North Korea may be the worst place in the world to do military service.

This article was previously published at NK News, an independent North Korea News service. Editing and translation by Elizabeth Jae