chapotraphouse

I'll ask someone from the USSR to answer your question, I don't think this requires asking a DPRK diplomat. I'll update this when I get an answer.

Reply (my notes in square brackets):
How did you choose your profession/career in the USSR? I recall you mentioned why you chose to be a teacher, but I also recall that it wasn't entirely up to you.
Well, the way you chose, that's how we chose in the USSR: whoever liked something did it. No, I did want to be a teacher. Though my mother pushed me to it, she told me that I would not be able to study - I went to a pedagogical school after the 8th grade - but she told I could not pass chemistry, physics, pass state exams etc. in the 10th grade, and so she pushed me there. In principle, I always wanted it, and I enjoy it. So, just as you chose what you liked, so did we.
[It seems that their mother, who I think is an engineer, held the same brainworms that most Asian parents did (and still do), and a parents' encouragement in matters of career choice had sway, just as they do now]

Follow up: If you did not work, was that considered social parasitism [pronounced too-neh-YAD-stvo], or was it not so strict? Did they push people to take specific work?
Yes, in the Soviet Union it was strict, but in my time it was not so strict. But before, in my mother's time, it was not possible to not work. For example, you are a wife, and your husband is doing well, and you want to sit at home with a child and raise him. You couldn't do that, because it was social parasitism, and people - in all kinds of different ways - would swindle the state so as not to go to work.
Well, certain jobs, of course, were encouraged. For example, drivers were required to work in the North. Nobody wants to work in the North, the conditions there are terrible, it's cold. There were very good salaries there, always. That's how they were pushed.
Then, young specialists... For example, someone graduated from university, and they were distributed to different cities, villages. People didn't want to go to the village to work as a teacher, let's say, or as an engineer, and you had to work there for 2-3 years... say, you graduated from Moscow, some kind of technical school, and you were sent somewhere to the North, to Urengoy. So you had to work there. These were the rules we had. [Seems to be similar to residency for medical students]