March 6-12, 2014, Current Events Lesson Plan
Current Event:
North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, was recently elected to the nation’s highest legislative body, the Supreme People’s Assembly. He received 100 percent of the votes in his district, where 100 percent of registered voters turned out for the polling. The election was the first since Kim inherited power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011. Political experts on the situation in North Korea suggested that the elections were intended to further consolidate Kim Jong-un’s power. All of the candidates were hand-picked by him; thus, older deputies were replaced with younger officials, whose loyalty to Kim is absolute. Since assuming power, Kim has engineered a number of political purges to eliminate potential challenges to his rule. In the most dramatic of these, Kim’s uncle–Jang Song-thaek, once the second-most powerful man in the country–was charged with corruption, found guilty, and summarily executed. Experts on North Korea believe that the older deputies rooted out in the election included people whom Kim feared may have harbored lingering loyalties to Jang.
Objective:
North Korea is a country in East Asia. The country has a Communist government, and its Communist Party holds political power. North Korea’s people have little freedom. The Communists maintain strict control over all aspects of life to ensure their dominance of the country. North Korea’s legislature, called the Supreme People’s Assembly, has 687 members, elected by the people to five-year terms. The Constitution says the legislature is North Korea’s highest government authority. But it actually has little power. The Communist Party selects all legislative candidates, who run without opposition in each of the 687 districts. The legislature meets only one or two weeks a year and functions according to the wishes of the Communist Party. The Behind the Headlines news story and related World Book articles explore Kim Jong-un, North Korea, and related topics.
Words to know:
Discussion Topics:
Ask your students what they know about North Korea. (Students might say that Pyongyang is its capital and largest city; it is a Communist country; from 1950-1953, North and South Korea fought one another in the Korean War.)
Ask your students to debate, “The United Nations should intervene when a government is mistreating its citizens.”
Ask your students to use World Book’s Timelines feature to create a timeline of the history of North Korea. (Students may want to use the “History” section of World Book’s North Korea article for help.)