Although this year’s New Year’s holiday in

North Korea was scheduled from January 1-3rd, citizens were forced to spend

their time in meetings and mobilization activities related to Kim Jong Un’s New

Year’s Address, making the vacation period just as busy as an ordinary week.

After designating the holiday, the North Korean authorities promptly ordered

everyone to participate in a series of meetings and tasks, inspiring

resentment among the general populace.

On the 5th, our Daily NK reporter spoke

with a source in North Hamgyong Province, who told us that although the Party

declared three days of vacation in alignment with the New Year’s holiday, in

reality nobody enjoyed a true day off. On the first day of the new year,

students and laborers watched the New Year’s Address (given by Kim Jong Un) and

were stuck helplessly for the rest of the day in schools and factories

participating in collective training sessions.

Sources in South Hamgyong and Yanggang

Provinces corroborated this news.

Just like last year, everyone went to work

on New Year’s at 8am. However, last year everyone spent the morning “bored to

death watching the New Year’s Address, while this year it didn’t begin until

noon,” she said. “After it finished around 1pm, everybody was mobilized to procure manure

(this includes night soil) to be used as fertilizer.”

In addition to this

unpleasant task, students, laborers, and even housewives were put to work

cleaning the sewer pipes and dredging river beds following lunch. Instead of

enjoying a much-needed 3 days off, students and other workers spent their

vacation dreaming of all the fun things they could have done while working on

the holiday. Unsurprisingly, “nobody was happy about this.”

Each individual was responsible for acquiring 1 ton of manure, a task that

took the entirety of the 3 day vacation, according to the source. Citizens were kept busy running here

and there to secure compost. On the Monday following the vacation (the 4th),

people loaded up wheelbarrows and carts with the compost collected during the

break and went to work.

An absolute majority of the nation’s

students, from elementary to university, had to prepare for a contest over how

well they knew Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s Address starting on the first day of

the vacation period. “As a result, they were also unable to rest properly,” she noted.

In

addition, laborers must also join in this study campaign, slated to last until

the end of the month, which means that work in the factories will be halted

as workers devote their attention to memorizing Kim Jong Un’s speech.

“Anyone failing

to learn it within the allotted time subject to mutual self criticism sessions

and/or forced to submit reports on periodic self and mutual criticism sessions

for all of 2016,” the source explained. “The regime initiates these types of

educational and training activities in an effort to instill a sense of loyalty

towards the leadership in the people. They hold up people who can recite the

speech perfectly as models for the rest of us.”