“Ask a North Korean” is an NK News series featuring interviews with and columns by North Korean defectors, most of whom left the DPRK within the last few years.

Readers may submit their questions for defectors by emailing [email protected] and including their first name and city of residence.

Today’s question is about the study of literature in North Korea.

Nano — a pseudonym for a North Korean defector who lived there until 2010 — writes about reading Shakespeare in university, the narrow ideological lens through which the DPRK teaches literature and discovering the freedom of interpreting poems in unapproved ways.