By Kim Se-jeong
The South Korean-NGO run Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) begins its operation today.
Kim Jin-kyung, a South Korean national and the university president, told Yonhap Friday that “All facilities are ready to run, and so is the faculty” to teach students. An initial group of 23 professors from the United States and Europe have arrived in Pyongyang last weekend, and 200 students – in under-graduate, graduate and post-graduate programs – are on campus waiting for the semester to start.
Four professors are known to have been there since June, assisting 40 students in research.
The official opening was long overdue.
The construction for the school was completed in September last year, but, due to sudden interventions from the North Korean authorities in school management, the opening kept getting delayed.
Unlike the initial agreement, North Korea abruptly requested the president accept its recommendations in recruiting faculty members.
The Kim Il-sung statue was also erected in April, violating an initial agreement that any political message would be absent on campus.
Earlier this month, Yoon Sang-hyun from the ruling Grand National Party said that a research center for the North’s “juche” or theory of self-reliance opened on campus, and urged all the public and private money for the PUST should be stopped. The idea of PUST was conceived in 2001, and the former Roh Moo-hyun administration donated 1 billion won to construction.
Encouraged by the success of the Yanbian University of Science and Technology (YUST) in Yanji, Northeast China, North Korea requested Kim, the president of the YUST, to open a similar institute in Pyongyang.
Authorization from the North came immediately and construction began. Finance came mainly from non-profit organizations in South Korea and other countries, including the Northeast Asia Foundation for Education and Culture.
According to its website (https://pust.kr), the university has a capacity to facilitate 2,000 undergraduate students and 600 graduate.
And it aspires to recruit 250 faculty members over the next 10 years.
The university offers programs on information and communication technology, industry and management, agriculture, food and life science, architecture, engineering and construction, and public healthcare. More than 10 South Korean universities have signed an agreement on collaboration.