13th World Festival of Youth and Students
| The 13th World Festival of Youth and Students | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Host country | Democratic People's Republic of Korea |
| Date | 1989 |
| Cities | Pyongyang |
| Participants | 22,000, from 177 countries |
The 13th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) was held from 1–8 July 1989 for 8 days, in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and was organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth. During the 1960s, the United States accused socialist countries, which mainly held these events, of using this event to spread communist propaganda.
The event in 1989 took four years of preparation by the North Korean government, which effectively spent a quarter of the country’s yearly budget (4.5 billion) on it. North Korea built elaborate stadiums, shipped in Mercedes-Benzes to tote around foreigners, and undertook other expensive architectural projects. Ultimately declared as the largest ever World Festival of Youth and Students, about 22,000 people from 177 countries took part in the festival, including 100 people from the United States. For eight days starting on July 1, 1989, the students participated in political discussions, sports competitions, and other activities. Many accounts described the festival as a reaction to Seoul’s hosting of the 1988 Summer Olympics, which North Korea boycotted.
North Korea went through years of planning and building in preparation for its rare moment of worldwide prominence, building massive stadiums and shipping in luxury goods. For this event, North Korea constructed monumental architectural projects such as Rungnado May Day Stadium, the world's largest stadium, which seats 150,000 people. The stadium was commissioned into service on May 1, 1989, in time for the festival.
The North Korean government also worked with a South Korean student organization, the National Council of Student Representatives (Jeondaehyeop), which was organized on August 19, 1987. The organization concentrated its efforts on getting South Korean participation in order to express its anti-US and pro-reunification commitment. The group secretly sent one of its members, Lim Su-kyung, to the festival
Also in preparation for the event, the North Korean regime prohibited all disabled and short people from the festival village. The scheme was attributed to Pyongyang's attempt to outdo the South's hosting of the 1988 Summer Olympics.
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