A panorama photo of the North Korean city of Hyesan taken in 2013. (Wikimedia Commons)

A technical senior middle school* in Hyesan, Ryanggang province, is drawing parent complaints over a new requirement. Students in its hotel cuisine class had to supply their own ingredients for a final exam in July 2026. It is the latest sign that North Korean vocational schools are shifting basic educational costs onto families, a source in the province told Daily NK.

The source said the school ordered hotel cuisine students to bring ingredients for the exam on July 11. Students worked in groups of seven or eight, each preparing a dish assigned by their instructor. They then cooked the meals themselves in the school’s kitchen facility as part of the test.

Each group collected an average of about 10,000 North Korean won for ingredients, the source said. Groups assigned meat-heavy or oil-heavy dishes paid more.

Parents said paying for ordinary side dishes would not have been a major issue. But they argued the hotel cuisine exam calls for relatively expensive, upscale dishes rather than everyday fare, making the cost harder to bear.

Wealthier families shrug off costs, poorer households push back

Wealthier parents were largely unbothered by the requirement. They saw it as a chance for their children to try an unusual and special dish, the source said. Parents with less money reacted with irritation instead, questioning what practical use the training would have.

Those parents also noted that graduates rarely go on to work in related fields. That, they said, casts doubt on the program’s practical value. The source described this as part of a broader resignation among North Korean people: job assignments are decided by the state, not by individual interest or ability.

The school had already struggled to run cooking classes during the semester because of supply problems, according to the source. Workers renovated the kitchen last year and installed a wood-burning stove and electric rice cookers. But the school still could not secure a stable ingredient supply for practice sessions.

As a result, students who did not arrange their own ingredients often could not take part in cooking practice at all, the source said. The curriculum calls for cooking practice two or three times a semester. Most of those sessions were skipped. Students got hands-on cooking experience mainly during the final exam.

The source summed up the dynamics driving the arrangement. “Practical training is actually determined by the school’s financial situation and the ability of students’ families to bear the burden,” the source said. “Schools know they’re supposed to hold cooking practice two or three times a semester. But they can’t keep telling students to prepare ingredients, so they skip regular practice and make up for it with a single session during the final exam.”

*A technical senior middle school is a vocational-track institution in North Korea’s secondary education system that trains students in specific occupational skills, roughly equivalent to a vocational high school.

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