UBC’s Little Known Exchange with the DPRK
Two weeks ago, six professors packed up their dorm rooms at the quiet, Vancouver campus of the University of British Columbia, boarded aircraft at the city’s international airport and began the Jacob’s ladder of flights that would eventually return them home to North Korea.
Just as quietly as it began, the second phase of the Knowledge Partnership Program (KPP), North Korea’s only academic exchange program with North America, had come to a close.
It is the product of a little-known relationship forged even before Canada had opened relations with the Stalinist country, and the University of British Columbia is the only academic institution in North America — and possibly the West — to host regular delegations of North Koreans. Little is known of the program and details are carefully guarded from public scrutiny, but just as a U.S. ping pong team helped open Maoist China to the West, proponents contend that one of UBC’s most obscure international programs may hold the key to opening the borders of one of the world’s most closed countries.
This program just started, so it’s good to keep it low-profile. “Particularly when we do not have active interactions between Canada and North Korea, I think academic exchange is really needed,” said Kyung-Ae Park, a UBC political scientist and founder of the KPP.
She called the KPP an early step toward “bilateral relations” with the nation known officially as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
From June to December, professors from three North Korean institutions underwent a study program of English, international trade, finance and economics at UBC, enrolling in standard undergraduate and graduate-level courses.
The group was following in the lead of another sextet of professors who arrived in June 2011, and returned home just in time for the country-wide mourning kicked off by the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Both times, the professors lived in dorms, attended regular classes and were slotted into work groups with other members of the student body. “They’re just like any other students on campus … there’s no special treatment or special space for them,” said Ms. Park.
During downtimes, the group even headed out on field trips to Toronto and Vancouver to sit down with bank managers, corporate directors and the other actors of Canada’s free market economy. “We just asked them to explain how they do business in Canada,” said Ms. Park.
In short, the KPP students are given a surprising amount of flexibility. At both the Beijing and London Olympics, by contrast, members of the North Korean Olympic team were barred from socializing with other athletes or even leaving the Olympic Village to go sightseeing.
– National Post