For North Koreans, the systematic indoctrination of anti-Americanism starts as early as kindergarten and is as much a part of the curriculum as learning to count. Toy pistols, rifles and tanks sit lined up in neat rows on shelves. The school principal pulls out a dummy of an American soldier with a beaked nose and straw-coloured hair and explains that the students beat him with batons or pelt him with stones – a favourite schoolyard game, she says.
“Our children learn from an early age about the American bastards,” Yun Song-sil says, tossing off a phrase so common here it is considered an acceptable way to refer to Americans.