{"id":24712,"date":"2024-10-16T05:00:20","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T05:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=24712"},"modified":"2024-10-16T05:00:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T05:00:20","slug":"1-4-million-young-people-in-north-korea-apply-to-join-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2024\/10\/1-4-million-young-people-in-north-korea-apply-to-join-army\/","title":{"rendered":"1.4 million young people in North Korea apply to join army"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONITORING (SW) – North Korean state media said on Wednesday, around 1.4 million young people had applied to join or return to the army this week, accusing Seoul of a provocative drone incursion that had brought the “tense situation to the brink of war”.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The young people, including students and youth league officials who had signed petitions to join the army, were determined to fight in a “sacred war of destroying the enemy with the arms of the revolution,” the KCNA report said.<\/p>\n

Photographs published by KCNA showed what it said were young people signing petitions at an undisclosed location.<\/p>\n

North Korea’s claim of having more than one million young people volunteering to enlist in the country’s Korean People’s Army in just two days comes at a time when tensions on the Korean peninsula are running high.<\/p>\n

North Korea has made similar claims in the past when there have been heightened tensions in the region.<\/p>\n

Last year, state media reported on 800,000 of its citizens, opens new tab volunteering to join the North’s military to fight against the United States.<\/p>\n

In 2017, nearly 3.5 million workers, party members and soldiers volunteered to join or rejoin its army, the reclusive state’s state media said at that time.<\/p>\n

It is very difficult to verify the North’s claims.<\/p>\n

According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), North Korea has 1.28 million active soldiers and about 600,000 reservists.<\/p>\n

The IISS also said it had 5.7 million Worker\/Peasant Red Guard reservists with many units unarmed.<\/p>\n

In the latest sign of the growing tensions, North Korea blew up sections of inter-Korean roads and rail lines on its side of the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas on Tuesday, prompting South Korea’s military to fire warning shots.<\/p>\n

Pyongyang had said last week it would cut off the inter-Korean roads and railways entirely and further fortify the areas on its side of the border as part of its push for a “two-state” system, scrapping its longstanding goal of unification.<\/p>\n

ENDS<\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The young people, including students and youth league officials who had signed petitions to join the army, were determined to fight in a “sacred war of destroying the enemy with the arms of the revolution”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":24713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,194,982,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-world","category-international","category-headline"],"views":36,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24714,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24712\/revisions\/24714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}