The hot topic in today’s North Korean media is the theme of technical progress, intellectual geniuses, and the issue of “raising talents” who will become such geniuses in the future. For example, one recent North Korean documentary has the characteristic title “Education of the future generation and agriculture of talents” (inchae nongsa).

Foreign observers tend to connect this trend with Kim Jong Un and his revolutionary departure from his father’s “military first” policy toward qualitative development.

Actually, the policy of promoting technical progress and intelligentsia in North Korea far precedes the current leadership. As is often the case