Do Je-hae edits news stories as part of the AI team.
Unique quest for peace
Korean-American businessman builds universities in socialist states
By Do Je-hae
By Do Je-hae
What motivated a Korean-American educator to build universities in China and North Korea?
“Loveism” chronicles the life of Kim Chin-Kyung, founding president of Yanbian University of Science & Technology (YUST) and Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (PUST).
Kim is a Christian businessman who emigrated to the United States. Born near Seoul, he fought in the Korean War (1950-1953) and moved to the U.S. in the 1970s. Now a U.S. citizen, the 76-year-old travels to North Korea frequently and is also an honorary citizen in Seoul, Pyongyang and Yanji in Northeast China.
The Christian idea of loving one’s neighbor has been driving force for Kim. A key message he likes to give out is that he is a “lovist.”
He has given interviews to the local press, but never comments on sensitive issues regarding inter-Korean relations.
“Whenever people ask me why I founded a university in North Korea, I respond I’m a lovist, not a communist nor a capitalist,” Kim said in a previous interview with YTN.
His story has been covered in the media, but this is the first time his biography has been published. His Christian faith and early studies in Europe influenced him to do what he is doing today.
The book is in four parts. The majority of the book is about how he ventured into China 20 years ago, to build a university.
The YUST sits in the in the heart of China’s ethnic Korean region of Yanbian, near the Tumen River frontier with North Korea. It has around 2,000 students.
Graduates of YUST have gone on to work with Samsung, LG and Hyundai subsidiaries in different regions of China, or to pursue masters degrees in countries such as Japan, the U.S., Switzerland and the U.K., among others.
The final chapter deals with the founding of PUST, North Korea’s first private university, four years ago. Kim’s vision — setting up a first-rate science and technical university in the capital that draws strictly on foreign scholars for its faculty — has persuaded the North Korean leadership.
Kim’s goal is to help North Korea become competitive globally and to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula. The school aims to give North Korea’s future leaders tools to develop the country’s economy.
Currently, 267 students, all male and 200 of whom are undergraduates students, are enrolled in PUST’s three departments: electronic and computer engineering; international finance and management; and agriculture and life sciences.
About 50 professors from Europe, the U.S., Australia and elsewhere give lectures in English. The students at PUST are selected from among those who have studied at least two years at the country’s top universities, including Kim Il Sung University and Kim Chaek University of Technology. Students live in a dormitory, and tuition and living expenses are free.
As a “lovist,” he said that he has a heart for helping North Korea, despite being jailed once by the country because the authorities thought he was a spy.
The university has future plans to open schools in public healthcare and construction engineering in 2013.