North Korea has ordered all its students abroad to return home for ideological training – to reverse the outside influence the students have been exposed to while overseas, a North Korean escapee who resettled in South Korea told Radio Free Asia.
The escapee, who requested to be identified only by the pseudonym Kim for personal safety, told RFA Korean that he learned of the order from another escapee who recently arrived in South Korea.
“He said that he had been studying abroad in Russia. Then the authorities ordered him to return,” Kim said. The order came from supreme leader Kim Jong Un in July, his friend said.
That prompted Kim’s friend to flee Russia for South Korea, he said.
It isn’t known exactly how many North Korean students are studying in China and Russia, but probably several hundred, according to South Korean media outlet KBS. Many were there since before the pandemic hit in 2020.
Apparently officials in Pyongyang are afraid that because they’ve been out of the country for so long, they may have been influenced by the outside world – that is, they have become used to living in situations where their government is not in complete control of their lives.
It had been common practice for students to be ordered to periodically return in small numbers for loyalty classes, but these did not occur during the pandemic, so Pyongyang now wants to send them all for intensive ideological inspections en masse, according to South Korean media.
0 Comments