North Korean students in Pyongyang | Image: NK News (Oct. 2016)
The three semesters I spent as a foreign student at Kim Il Sung University were a bittersweet period in my life. Even before North Korean agents arrested me, I had mixed emotions about the country.
Foreign residents in the DPRK live under stifling surveillance and a veil of suspicion. I was unable to overcome the intense system of social control, which blocks the way at every turn to prevent real, meaningful connections between foreigners and local people.
The three semesters I spent as a foreign student at Kim Il Sung University were a bittersweet period in my life. Even before North Korean agents arrested me, I had mixed emotions about the country.
Foreign residents in the DPRK live under stifling surveillance and a veil of suspicion. I was unable to overcome the intense system of social control, which blocks the way at every turn to prevent real, meaningful connections between foreigners and local people.
Alek Sigley is a PhD student at Stanford University's Modern Thought and Literature program, where he is writing a dissertation on North Korea. From 2018-2019 he studied for a master's degree in contemporary North Korean fiction at Kim Il Sung University's College of Literature. He speaks Mandarin, Korean and Japanese. Follow him on Twitter @AlekSigley.