“Class education centers” continue to be built or remodeled across North Korea, the country’s ruling party newspaper reported on Tuesday, deploying a euphemism for museums often containing violent anti-U.S. and anti-South Korea propaganda.

The claim comes as explicit references to the ideological stance on Washington remain censored elsewhere in state media — a continuation of a 2018 campaign to hide the content amid improving relations with the U.S.

But with the country still under strict COVID-19 prevention measures, it appears that organized visits to some class education centers may still be on hold, according to NK News analysis of satellite imagery.

Various Party organizations are “pushing class education in the primary direction of the Party’s ideological work and are achieving results,” an article on the front page of the Rodong Sinmun said on July 14.

According to the article, remodeling or improvement work is ongoing at the two most significant “anti-imperialist” education centers outside Pyongyang: the Sinchon Museum (informally known as the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities) and the Susan-ri Class Education Center. 

Both focus primarily on alleged atrocities of U.S. and allied South Korean soldiers in the southwest of the country during the 1950-53 Korean War.

Local authorities are displaying “deep interest in their work for the regular management of the brilliant Sinchon Museum built as a model,” the Rodong article said.

“Provincial Party committee cadres are sent down to the museum every month to inspect issues arising in its regular operation, as well as the needs of the instructors and their living conditions,” it added.

At the much smaller Susan-ri Class Education Center, it said Nampho city officials are “working hard for improving the conditions” and relevant units are solving problems in the “normal administration … and supply of necessary materials for construction of a parking lot and visitors path.”

But according to analysis of daily medium-resolution satellite imagery from Planet Labs, such construction was not visible at Susan-ri.

And while both locations in the first half of 2019 saw daily bus movements in their parking lots suggesting organized visits were still in place, the latest imagery shows there has been virtually no such bus traffic so far this year, likely due to COVID-19 lockdown measures.

The Tuesday Rodong article also said that the Kangwon provincial Party committee is working to “rebuild” their class education center, all while students and scholars undertake excavation work to find new materials.

In Jagang province, it added, officials are currently working on remodeling their “base for class education” according to the “demands of the present era.”

Such standard class education centers at the provincial, city, or town level are known to house materials detailing alleged crimes committed by the Japanese during the colonial period, in addition to materials on the U.S. and South Korea.

They are also known to contain exhibits warning of the dangers of religion and foreign culture.

Tuesday’s report follows unusually heightened attention on the centers throughout a 20-day period in June, when North Korea began a coordinated propaganda campaign against the South Korean government and North Korean defectors sending leaflets into the country.

Just a few days into the campaign, state media reported that women’s union members protesting at the Sinchon Museum had vowed “to mercilessly wipe out the enemies” responsible for alleged atrocities during the Korean War.

Another protest was reportedly held at the Susan-ri Class Education Center, with agricultural workers vowing to “mercilessly retaliate against all enemies hell-bent on hurting the DPRK, taking to heart once again the bitter lesson from massacres in Sinchon Country and Susan-ri committed during the Fatherland Liberation War.”

An article in the Rodong Sinmun last month then said around 20 city and county “anti-imperialist class education” centers had been built in North Phyongan province, containing “wax replicas and semi-panoramic pictures which lay bare the brutality and viciousness of imperialists and class enemies.”

“The new data let the Party members and working people in the province keep deep in mind the monstrous atrocities committed by the enemies in their homeland,” it added.

But only South Korea was named in these reports in June, while other frequent reports on the subject have maintained coded language, leaving out country names and simply referring to them as “class enemies” or “hostile forces.”

The reports have appeared in state media frequently in recent months and occasionally since overt anti-U.S. propaganda disappeared from North Korean streets in 2018.

Propaganda either specifically depicting U.S. soldiers or “enemies” in general, however, remain on display in front of the class education centers, NK News has found.

In the above example aired on Korean Central Television (KCTV) on July 6, U.S. soldiers still appear in a hand-painted propaganda poster at the Jaeryung County Class Education Center — blurred by the censors over an apparent ongoing sensitivity.

Even Kim Jong Un’s own recent statements on the U.S. were deemed sensitive by the censors at KCTV in a recent program on the Hyesan Youth Mine, where a part of his New Year plenum speech naming the U.S. as a “hostile force” appeared to have been blurred.

Such reports and visual evidence reveal that official North Korean ideological education behind the scenes continues to focus on instilling anti-U.S. attitudes, even as Pyongyang outwardly attempts to hide obvious examples of the work.

Continued censorship of anti-U.S. material in state media, however, may also reveal that the concealment strategy is being maintained to keep the door open to future negotiations, as top officials such as the DPRK leader’s sister Kim Yo Jong continue to spend energy on the subject of another summit between Kim Jong Un and President Trump.

Edited by Oliver Hotham