How many DPRK students study in China and other countries? { North Korean students studying in China rarely make headlines, but their bursting potential may augur profound consequences for the future of what is known as the Hermit Kingdom. At Tsinghua, I taught and interacted with a number of North Korean students over the years. What I found most intriguing was how typical of international students they were. Contrary to the popular narrative of rabid xenophobia and virulent anti-Americanism, most of them were insatiably curious about other cultures, America’s most of all. ... Once a week, Tsinghua’s North Korean students are recalled to their nation’s city-block-sized embassy for evaluations and debriefing. Their classes and outside activities are reviewed, and they are expected to undergo a bizarre ritual of self-criticism in which they discuss how they have failed to live up to the spirit of their leader’s ideals. ... I am under no illusion about who these students are. A famine killed an estimated one million of their countrymen in the 1990s, but Tsinghua’s North Koreans seem accustomed to a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. They would not be out of place in New York or Paris. Most wore stylish clothes and eschewed pedal bikes in favor of motor scooters. ... Their families are the cream of North Korean society. Many students said their fathers were “businessmen,” an increasingly common profession in the hive of quasi-legal private industry that has developed along the porous Chinese-North Korean border. }
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 03:48:48 +0000
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