North Korean students were left with frostbite after a 'patriotic' trip turned out to be a forced march up a mountain in subzero temperatures.
Youngsters are now injuring themselves and bribing officials in a bid to avoid taking the government tour of Mount Paektu.
Paektu is North Korea's national emblem and the official birthplace of Kim Jong-il, the current leader's father.
A visit is meant to instil “Paektu revolutionary spirit” in the young, but now the regime is struggling to fill places on its tours.
Many fear injury, with a tour in mid-January causing “large numbers of frostbite cases” according to South Korea-based newspaper Daily NK.
And to make matters worse, students must shoulder the cost themselves, shelling out for uniforms, food, and any medical treatment they end up needing.
Pyongyang used to cover the cost of the visit, but was strapped for cash after Covid, according to Radio Free Asia.
One youth in the eastern city of Hamhung reportedly threw themselves down the stairs after landing a place on a Paektu tour, deciding they’d rather take a trip to the hospital.
“Last year, about 60% of the people recommended by various organisations refused to participate, citing family or health issues,” a source told Daily NK.
“This year, even more people are avoiding the tours.
“It’s tough enough to make a living, so there’s no reason to use their own money to climb Mount Paektu, where the average temperature plummets to minus 40.”
Youths who make the trip complain that they’re “tortured by cold weather” but get no sympathy.
They’re reportedly told that “for young people, struggle is priceless” and that “young people grow up when their noses and feet freeze”.
North Korean propaganda has often emphasised how arduous the Paektu pilgrimage is, releasing photos of visitors struggling through the snow spurred on by patriotic fervour.
The whole trip takes about 10 days, Radio Free Asia reports.
Pyongyang has repeatedly revealed its concern about a lack of patriotism in its younger generation over recent years.
Daily NK’s source said people used to panic if they missed their Paektu tour, but they agreed that “young people think differently nowadays”.
Greg Scarlatoiu, director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said the news could point to a growing lack of faith in the regime.
He said: “Kim Jong-il's birthday is February 16, and Kim Jong-un's is January 8.
“Thus, the winter trips to Mount Paektu – the holy mountain of all Koreans, which the Kim family regime claims as its own – are critical to maintaining the Kim family cult.
“While clamping down on all religious beliefs, especially Christianity, the Kim family regime has created its own quasi-religious personality cult.
“The trip to Mount Paektu is the equivalent of Hajj in Muslim culture or a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’ for Christians.
“If young people are indeed bailing out of these trips, this may indicate that North Koreans are losing their faith in the Kim family genesis myth, and all other elements of the personality cult.”
Mount Paektu is actually a volcano, and is crowned with a large crater lake called Heaven Lake.
It’s the highest peak in North Korea, and sits on its northern border with China, but is revered in South Korea too.
The regime asserts that it is Kim Jong-il’s birthplace, and maintains a humble log cabin there where it says he was born.
According to propaganda, on the night of his birth, two rainbows appeared above the dwelling and a new star shone in the sky.
But Soviet records suggest he was really born in Russian exile in 1941, and given the name Yuri Irsenovich Kim.
