A/HRC/25/CRP.1 participants, but also a high degree of organization, discipline and collectivism in schoolchildren.132 He went on: The schoolchildren, conscious that a single slip in their action may spoil their mass gymnastic performance, make every effort to subordinate all their thoughts and actions to the collective. … Since mass gymnastics are creative works … [t]he creative workers must present in great depth and breadth throughout their mass gymnastic productions the leader’s greatness, the sagacity of his leadership, his immortal revolutionary achievements and his noble communist virtues. Their works must also show in full the greatness and brilliant achievements of the Party that effects historic changes … 174. The Mass Games have become a major source of foreign currency revenue for the DPRK. They attract large numbers of tourists, who are often unaware of the human rights violations endured by participating children, who are compelled to participate (unless their physical appearance does not meet the state-determined ideal). Training will often last an entire year, including 4-6 months during which the participants train all day at the expense of their schooling. Training practice is gruelling. Children who do not perfect their performances are subjected to physical punishment and additional evening training. • A former university sports teacher informed the Commission that he was required to train students for the Mass Games. He said students were forced to train 6-12 hours a day in very harsh conditions. Although most participants were school children and university students, some army personnel also participated. Anyone with any sort of disability was excluded. The witness recalled that many children fainted from fatigue during training. Many also suffered severe injuries.133 • In testimony before the Commission’s Tokyo Public Hearing, Ms L described how she missed an entire semester of university education because her class was required to practise for 6 months, 10 hours a day, for a short segment of a parade, to be held in the Kim Il-sung Stadium of Pyongyang in the presence of Kim Jong-il. Training was so intense that some participants fainted from exhaustion. Fainting was especially common during summer when students trained in the hot sun, on concrete floor. Practice emphasized perfection. Anyone who made repeated mistakes was made to remain on the training ground until midnight as a punishment. Ms L recalls that her teachers would invoke the example of a boy of 7 or 8 years of age who had practised through the intense pain of an acute appendicitis. He eventually died because he did not receive timely medical care. The dead child was treated as a hero because he had dedicated his entire life for an event in the presence of Kim Jongil.134 175. The strict training routine for the Mass Games over such a long period and in such conditions is dangerous to the children’s health and well-being. The Commission finds such exploitation of children to be in contravention of articles 31 and 32 of the CRC providing for a child’s right to rest and leisure and to be protected from work that interferes with the child’s education or is harmful to the child’s health. 132 133 134 48 Kim Jong-il, “On Further Developing Mass Gymnastics: Talk to Mass Gymnastics Producers”, 11 April 1987. (Pyongyang, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2006), also available from http://www.anightinpyongyang.com/pdf/02.05.01.pdf. TSH009. Tokyo Public Hearing, 29 August 2013, afternoon (with additional details provided by the witness in a confidential interview).