The North Korean party’s official newspaper on Monday called for more intense ideological education for younger generations, warning about “imperialists’ calculation” to overthrow the North Korean regime with cultural and ideological infiltration.

The Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, said “anti-socialist maneuvers of the imperialists have been implemented very subtly and viciously in all aspects, including politics, military, economy and culture” in a special article.

In the article, the newspaper claimed that the imperialists have sought to “infiltrate their rotten bourgeois ideological cultures and lifestyles by fair means or foul.”

The Rodong Sinmun notably warned that “reactionary ideology and culture are playing the leading role in (the imperialists’) aggression at present, whereas they were a guide to their invasion in the past.”

“The imperialists’ calculation is that they can easily fulfill the goal of invading (North Korea) and carry out a maneuver to overthrow the (North Korean) regime and system without direct military intervention if they corrupt people’s ideology with a large-scale reactionary ideological and cultural offensive and diffuse exotic lifestyles.”

In particular, the party organ underscored the importance of strengthening ideological education for younger generations to raise their “anti-imperialist class consciousness.”

The newspaper pointed out that the reality is that the “new generation, who only heard of (the imperialists’) exploitation and oppression without experiencing the ordeal of war, has become the main force of the revolutionary ranks.”

The reality, the newspaper said, requires the country to “turn up the intensity of anti-imperialist class education.”

“Ideological consciousness is never hereditary, and anti-imperialist class consciousness must be passed down from generation to generation as a baton of revolution,” the Rodong Sinmun said in the Korean-language dispatch.

“As time goes on and revolution advances, we should firmly prepare the new generation as vanguard fighters of a class who can mercilessly strike down those who intend to harm our ideology and system, dignity, and right to live… by deeply instilling unshakable anti-imperialist class consciousness in the hearts of the new generation.”

The Party organ repeatedly underlined the significance of anti-imperialist class education in preventing ideological degeneration and the collapse of socialist development.

“There can never be satisfaction and vanity in (anti-imperialist) class education. If we weaken class education, it could ideologically disarm us against imperialists and class enemies.”

The Rodong Sinmun said the people’s “hostility toward class enemies” is proportionate to how strong their spirits of self-reliance and self-development are.

Monday’s special article is in line with North Korea’s continuous move to step up its large-scale nationwide ideological campaign to wipe out “non-socialist and anti-socialist practices” since the eighth Party Congress in January 2021.

Prior to the party congress, Pyongyang in December 2020 adopted the “law on rejecting reactionary ideology and culture” at a plenary meeting of the Presidium of Supreme People’s Assembly.

The law stipulates the rules that all institutions, enterprises, organizations, and citizens must follow to “thoroughly prevent the inflow and spread of anti-socialist ideology and culture.”

In particular, Pyongyang has strengthened indoctrination and education of young people and toughened crackdowns on them. As part of the efforts, the 10th Youth League Congress was held for the first time in April 2021 in five years.

In addition, last April, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un conspicuously said that education of the younger generation is “a matter of life and death for the party, the revolution, the country and the people” in his concluding speech delivered during the Sixth Conference of Cell Secretaries of the Workers‘ Party of Korea.

Kim pointed out that the reality of “profound changes taking place in the ideological and mental states” of the younger generation calls for Party cells to put greater effort into the education of young people.

Pyongyang has also established a legal framework to mandate young North Koreans’ participation in countrywide ideological campaigns. It adopted a law on the “provision of education of young people” at the session of the Supreme People’s Assembly held last September.