Speaking to NK News in a conference room at Seoul’s foreign press center over coffee and sandwiches, the Chancellor of the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, Park Chan-mo, is remarkably chipper for a man with two colleagues in a North Korean jail cell.

Then again, running an openly Christian university in one of the world’s most anti-Christian countries requires a positive outlook on life – especially given the circumstances.

On April 22, as Kim Sang-duk, a U.S. citizen also known as Tony Kim, was detained as he made his way to take a plane back to China from Pyongyang.