Pyongyang U. Brings Western Ed to N. Korea's Elite

North Korea is the world's top persecutor of Christians, yet in the heart of the capital city of Pyongyang lays a Christian-backed university. The school is working to bring Western education to the country's elite.

In a first-time event for the hermit kingdom, 44 students -- all males -- received their diplomas from Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
 
Never before have science and technology students graduated from a foreign-funded, foreign-staffed university in their country.

In 2011, university president and founder James Chin-Kyung Kim appeared on "The 700 Club" shortly after the university opened.

"We are training the top elite," he said in the 2011 Club interview. "Now over 300 students we are teaching. Pyongyang University of Science and Technology is very different than any other university."

The school is different because North Koreans live in a closed, militaristic, authoritarian society. Rarely are they given access and exposure to foreigners and Western ideas.

But at the university, they learn computer engineering, agriculture and life science, and international finance and management.

Students are also given Internet access, and their housing and meals far exceed the quality of other North Korean universities.

Their professors are foreigners, like one instructor who likened his homework experience to teacher's heaven.

"When we tell them only do five, but they usually do 10," the instructor said. "And then on the weekend, maybe sometimes we say, 'You have too much homework in the other class, so no homework.' But they do homework anyway."

While the school is backed by evangelical Christians in South Korea and the United States, the university does not promote Christianity.

Kim says he's not a communist or a capitalists; he's a "lovist" who is building bridges of peace on the Korean Peninsula.

He says before he started the university he was arrested and accused of being a CIA spy.  His North Korean captors forced him to write a will, but he responded with love because he wanted to build bridges of peace on the peninsula.

"Peace comes with a price," Kim said. "Everyone would like to have peace. But who must pay the price? Who going to pay? We are Christian. God's people can pay the price."

Most of the 2014 class of graduates say they'll either continue with advanced studies in Europe or immediately begin work.