Students reveal bizarre propaganda fed to them on language trip to North Korea
Students on a first ever language learning trip to North Korea were fed bizarre propaganda about the secretive state's former leader.
Brit Ben Griffin, 24, helped to organise the three-week course at Pyongyang's Kim Il-Sung University, having previously volunteered as an English teacher in the country.
Students from all over the world were invited to pay nearly A$3,000 (£1760) each to study under North Korean professors in the hermit kingdom, just as leader Kim Jong-Un and US President Donald Trump began a tense stand-off over North Korean missile launches.
The 12-strong group of international students lived in residential halls and spent hours studying, playing and living alongside North Korean students.
But as well as learning Korean, they came across North Korean propaganda books to aid their learning.
Designed to help students learn English and Korean, one of the books contains bizarre sentences such as 'The United States must get out of South Korea It has no ground for remaining in South Korea,' and 'Comrade Kim Il-Sung was the most distinguished leader of our times'.
Mike Funnell, 43, is an English teacher working in Shanghai. Originally from Windsor, Canada, he was on his fifth trip to North Korea, but says he had never experienced anything like it.
He said: "I found a book to help me practice Korean in a bookshop in Wonsan. It's quite full of propaganda. Other textbooks we used were more geared towards Chinese students and so were less blatant.
"That tied in with a strange highlight of the trip – witnessing and taking part in a rally to honour the scientists responsible for North Korea's first successful intercontinental ballistic missile launch in early July 2017.
"The streets were lined with university students as far as the eye could see, all holding balloons to wave at the convoy of coach buses carrying the scientists as they passed by.
"Another odd moment was on one of our hiking excursions, we came across a group of Koreans dancing in a 'campground', except there were none of the things you would expect to find when people are camping, including vehicles, food, or even tents.
"We came back about an hour later or so and they were all gone. There wasn't even the slightest bit of evidence they had even been there. We suspected our encounter with them was staged for whatever reasons but none of us seemed to mind.
"Our daily routine was well structured and busy. We stayed at the Yanggak-do Hotel. I would usually get up around five o'clock in the morning, have coffee and watch Al Jazeera news while going over my study notes.
"We were all aware of the rising tensions and knew what was going on but everyone in our group tried not to be worried about the situation. Things have been tense on the Korean peninsula for decades, so these recent tensions were nothing new to anyone involved with the tour.
"We all spoke openly about the news we saw on Al Jazeera with our guides. They thought a lot of what we told them was crazy.
"One of our tour guides seemed much more worried about the North Korea's rapidly deteriorating relationship with China.
"We were all quite enthusiastic and happy to be there. The down side was that our professor was a little disappointed that we weren't progressing to the level she had anticipated."
Jack Carneiro, an International Studies student at Tsinghua University in Beijing, also took part on the trip.
The 20-year-old Australian said: "I was very excited at first when I crossed the border. It felt like a theme park and a throwback to the Soviet Union in the 1980's. It was hauntingly beautiful, and after a while I felt very relaxed and safe. What struck me most were the fashion styles, very clean cut and formal.
"I met quite a few local students in the corridors, they couldn't speak English, so I spoke Korean to them, we talked briefly about our daily lives and they were delighted.
"The students led lives very different from the students in the West. Students in North Korea prefer to go parks, zoos and certain sights to spend time together. In contrast many students in the West spend time at nightclubs or bars. Also students had fairly content heavy classes compared to the West.
"The tensions were always at the forefront of discussion. We often would talk about Russia, China and the US and their influences in the region. I was often asked how people viewed the nuclear tests abroad.
"It was interesting to hear the answers from the Korean point of view."
Ben Griffin, of travel company Juche Travel Services, is originally from the UK and help to run the trip having previously worked as a language teacher in North Korea.
He said: "As a non-profit humanitarian project, the Korean language summer school was hugely successful.
"It constituted a vital first step towards facilitating greater academic exchange and cooperation with local universities and helping students from all over the world to bypass mutually held stereotypes and create a positive environment for peace and reconciliation.
"I hope that current tensions will be resolved peacefully with all sides abstaining from the zero-sum game of harmful vitriol."
