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There's a school called the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (https://pust.co https://pust.co) that invites foreigners to come teach North Korean

There's a school called the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (https://pust.co https://pust.co) that invites foreigners to come teach North Korean citizens. I spent 2 semesters teaching computer science at PUST and it was a wonderful experience. You really get to know the locals (both students and staff) much better than on a short tourist trip. Some highlights include teaching Dijkstra's algorithm by showing them google maps images of Pyongyang (which they hadn't seen from space before), talking about Snowden and how he used encryption to hide from the NSA, and having North Korean citizens contribute to open source machine learning projects (vowpal wabbit and mlpack). All the students I met with were also surprisingly well informed about both events in the US and American history. You also get to do as much touristy stuff as you'd like. Two highlights for me were, visiting the Pueblo and the subway system. As a former naval nuclear officer, it was quite surreal to visit these places. The subway system is one of the few places in the world that US nuclear weapons cannot effectively target because it is buried so far underground (>100m). You have to spend about 5 minutes riding the longest escalator I've ever seen to get from the surface to the trains. It's a daily reminder to North Korean citizens that they've been targeted by US nuclear weapons for decades. Educational exchanges have a long history of improving relations between countries, and so I'm a huge advocate for the PUST exchanges. Unfortunately, I had to stop going because President Trump no longer allows Americans to visit North Korea. If any non-Americans are interested in going, however, shoot me an email (mike@izbicki.me) and I'm happy to chat more with you about the experience.

devicetray0 7y ago
> All the students I met with were surprisingly well informed about both events in the US and American history. This is surprising to me. I imagine they read some news/propaganda about the events, rather than reading the NYTimes, WAPO, or BBC news directly. Can you comment on that? > As a former naval nuclear officer Did you have to get special approval?
- jackpirate 7y ago
  > This is surprising to me. I imagine they read some news/propaganda about the events, rather than reading the NYTimes, WAPO, or BBC news directly. Can you comment on that? Their history lessons certainly have a different emphasis than American history lessons. They emphasize things like slavery in the US and the CIA's interventions in Latin America in service of US businesses, but from all my conversations with students none of them had learned anything that was actually incorrect. They get their news mainly from government run newspapers, but also word of mouth spreads news pretty quickly. > Did you have to get special approval? It had been long enough since my time in service that non of my clearances were still valid, and so there was no special risk of me disclosing anything. I just contacted the American embassy in China and informed them of my plans.
alongwittheflow 7y ago
Could you give us more information about the internet access? Do some people in NK have internet access? Did you? If so, what kind of restrictions were there? Any firewall like great firewall of China?
- jackpirate 7y ago
  I would frequently have to download linux distributions for my work, and they would download in seconds. I was maxing out my gigabit lan connection. At the time, they throttled individual connections, but not total bandwidth useage, so you had to use something like a bittorent client that creates many simultaneous connections to get the high speeds. Latency was a big problem though. Skype calls were often very poor. And power is pretty spotty in Pyongyang, so all of this is assuming that there's electricity. Graduate students at PUST (and other local universities) have unfiltered internet. Undergrads have a more limited access where they would have to request that I download a webpage for them, and then I'd go download it and stick it on a usb drive. One of the main limitations is that students are not supposed to create accounts on websites because this would lead to tracking of them, which would allow NSA/CIA to target them.
Accujack 7y ago
Considering the students were allowed contact with an American and allowed the free access to the Internet and software you describe, I conclude they were children of the elites of the country. Probably they were given this education so they could learn to deal with westerners and potentially to improve their training for cyber warfare and intelligence gathering in the west. I'd bet within a few miles of the experience you enjoyed that there were families starving in substandard housing.
- jackpirate 7y ago
  > Considering the students were allowed contact with an American and allowed the free access to the Internet and software you describe, I conclude they were children of the elites of the country. My assessment is different. I currently teach at an "elite" US college (liberal arts college ranked top-5 nationally with more than 20% of students having parents in the top 1% income bracket) and previously taught at a mid-ranked UC school. My impression is that the student demographics at PUST more closely resemble the mid-ranked UC school than the elite liberal arts school. The elite students in the DPRK tend to prefer their version of elite colleges like Kim Il Sung and Kim Chaek universities. For example, students from these other universities are regularly lauded in national newspapers for their achievements (which exceed those of PUST students), but PUST students have never been mentioned in a national newspaper as far as I am aware. My understanding is that students at these other universities have similar levels of internet access as students at PUST, but they do not have regular in person contact with westerners. > Probably they were given this education so they could learn to deal with westerners and potentially to improve their training for cyber warfare and intelligence gathering in the west. As someone who has professional experience running/developing cyberwarfare and nuclear military operations with the US military, I can unequivocally state that the work I did at PUST was not developing these capabilities for North Korea. Western experts who study the DPRK largely agree with me that educational exchanges are a great way to improve relations between the US and DPRK building on the model of how educational exchanges improved relations between the US and USSR. See for example https://www.38north.org/2010/11/pyongyang-university-and-nk-just-do-it/ https://www.38north.org/2010/11/pyongyang-university-and-nk-... > I'd bet within a few miles of the experience you enjoyed that there were families starving in substandard housing. One of the major goals of the PUST project is to help improve and internationalize the North Korean economy. The longterm effect will be to improve the standard of living of all North Koreans.
cycrutchfield 7y ago
> Unfortunately, I had to stop going because President Trump no longer allows Americans to visit North Korea. Not that I am particularly fond of taking Trump’s side on anything, but I think this is a fairly reasonable policy given North Korea’s tendency to kidnap Americans and use them as leverage in negotiations.
x220 7y ago
>I spent 2 semesters teaching computer science at PUST How do you feel about educating the future hackers in the North Korean military? You almost certainly contributed to their ability to wage cyberwarfare.
- jackpirate 7y ago
  As someone who has professional experience running/developing cyberwarfare and nuclear military operations with the US military, I can unequivocally state that the work I did at PUST was not developing these capabilities for North Korea. Western experts who study the DPRK largely agree with me that educational exchanges are a great way to improve relations between the US and DPRK, building on the model of how educational exchanges improved relations between the US and USSR. See for example https://www.38north.org/2010/11/pyongyang-university-and-nk-just-do-it/ https://www.38north.org/2010/11/pyongyang-university-and-nk-...
  - x220 7y ago
    But you taught computer science, yes? Would you say that it's difficult to teach someone hacking if they don't already have a working understanding of core computer science principles? If hackers in NK don't have access to digital infrastructure set up by other engineers, their work would be much more difficult if not impossible. >Western experts who study the DPRK largely agree with me that educational exchanges are a great way to improve relations Would you make a distinction between disciplines of agricultural engineering and more dangerous ones, such as nuclear science or aeronautical engineering?
    - jackpirate 7y ago
      Computing is a fundamental skill that forms the basis for all of modern life. We here at hacker news are constantly advocating that everyone (in the US) should learn some amount of programming, and I believe the same holds true in North Korea. As a concrete example of the things I taught, look at the official KCNA webpage http://www.kcna.kp http://www.kcna.kp (North Korea's main state run newspaper). This webpage is very poorly designed, and cannot even be indexed by Google due to poorly implemented AJAX queries. In my classes, we would talk about why this is bad design and how to improve it. The DPRK would benefit from producing better webpages, but so would the rest of the world. These webpages are one of the few sources we have for understanding life in North Korea, and I personally want to encourage the North Koreans to fill them with high quality and easy to access content. Currently, they simply don't have enough skilled programmers capable of performing these tasks. IMHO, this is a clear example of how teaching computer science benefits both the North Koreans and Americans without improving North Korean hacking skills.

devicetray0 7y ago

> All the students I met with were surprisingly well informed about both events in the US and American history. This is surprising to me. I imagine they read some news/propaganda about the events, rather than reading the NYTimes, WAPO, or BBC news directly. Can you comment on that? > As a former naval nuclear officer Did you have to get special approval?

jackpirate 7y ago
> This is surprising to me. I imagine they read some news/propaganda about the events, rather than reading the NYTimes, WAPO, or BBC news directly. Can you comment on that? Their history lessons certainly have a different emphasis than American history lessons. They emphasize things like slavery in the US and the CIA's interventions in Latin America in service of US businesses, but from all my conversations with students none of them had learned anything that was actually incorrect. They get their news mainly from government run newspapers, but also word of mouth spreads news pretty quickly. > Did you have to get special approval? It had been long enough since my time in service that non of my clearances were still valid, and so there was no special risk of me disclosing anything. I just contacted the American embassy in China and informed them of my plans.

alongwittheflow 7y ago

Could you give us more information about the internet access? Do some people in NK have internet access? Did you? If so, what kind of restrictions were there? Any firewall like great firewall of China?

jackpirate 7y ago
I would frequently have to download linux distributions for my work, and they would download in seconds. I was maxing out my gigabit lan connection. At the time, they throttled individual connections, but not total bandwidth useage, so you had to use something like a bittorent client that creates many simultaneous connections to get the high speeds. Latency was a big problem though. Skype calls were often very poor. And power is pretty spotty in Pyongyang, so all of this is assuming that there's electricity. Graduate students at PUST (and other local universities) have unfiltered internet. Undergrads have a more limited access where they would have to request that I download a webpage for them, and then I'd go download it and stick it on a usb drive. One of the main limitations is that students are not supposed to create accounts on websites because this would lead to tracking of them, which would allow NSA/CIA to target them.

Accujack 7y ago

Considering the students were allowed contact with an American and allowed the free access to the Internet and software you describe, I conclude they were children of the elites of the country. Probably they were given this education so they could learn to deal with westerners and potentially to improve their training for cyber warfare and intelligence gathering in the west. I'd bet within a few miles of the experience you enjoyed that there were families starving in substandard housing.

jackpirate 7y ago
> Considering the students were allowed contact with an American and allowed the free access to the Internet and software you describe, I conclude they were children of the elites of the country. My assessment is different. I currently teach at an "elite" US college (liberal arts college ranked top-5 nationally with more than 20% of students having parents in the top 1% income bracket) and previously taught at a mid-ranked UC school. My impression is that the student demographics at PUST more closely resemble the mid-ranked UC school than the elite liberal arts school. The elite students in the DPRK tend to prefer their version of elite colleges like Kim Il Sung and Kim Chaek universities. For example, students from these other universities are regularly lauded in national newspapers for their achievements (which exceed those of PUST students), but PUST students have never been mentioned in a national newspaper as far as I am aware. My understanding is that students at these other universities have similar levels of internet access as students at PUST, but they do not have regular in person contact with westerners. > Probably they were given this education so they could learn to deal with westerners and potentially to improve their training for cyber warfare and intelligence gathering in the west. As someone who has professional experience running/developing cyberwarfare and nuclear military operations with the US military, I can unequivocally state that the work I did at PUST was not developing these capabilities for North Korea. Western experts who study the DPRK largely agree with me that educational exchanges are a great way to improve relations between the US and DPRK building on the model of how educational exchanges improved relations between the US and USSR. See for example https://www.38north.org/2010/11/pyongyang-university-and-nk-just-do-it/ https://www.38north.org/2010/11/pyongyang-university-and-nk-... > I'd bet within a few miles of the experience you enjoyed that there were families starving in substandard housing. One of the major goals of the PUST project is to help improve and internationalize the North Korean economy. The longterm effect will be to improve the standard of living of all North Koreans.

cycrutchfield 7y ago

> Unfortunately, I had to stop going because President Trump no longer allows Americans to visit North Korea. Not that I am particularly fond of taking Trump’s side on anything, but I think this is a fairly reasonable policy given North Korea’s tendency to kidnap Americans and use them as leverage in negotiations.

x220 7y ago

>I spent 2 semesters teaching computer science at PUST How do you feel about educating the future hackers in the North Korean military? You almost certainly contributed to their ability to wage cyberwarfare.

jackpirate 7y ago
As someone who has professional experience running/developing cyberwarfare and nuclear military operations with the US military, I can unequivocally state that the work I did at PUST was not developing these capabilities for North Korea. Western experts who study the DPRK largely agree with me that educational exchanges are a great way to improve relations between the US and DPRK, building on the model of how educational exchanges improved relations between the US and USSR. See for example https://www.38north.org/2010/11/pyongyang-university-and-nk-just-do-it/ https://www.38north.org/2010/11/pyongyang-university-and-nk-...
- x220 7y ago
  But you taught computer science, yes? Would you say that it's difficult to teach someone hacking if they don't already have a working understanding of core computer science principles? If hackers in NK don't have access to digital infrastructure set up by other engineers, their work would be much more difficult if not impossible. >Western experts who study the DPRK largely agree with me that educational exchanges are a great way to improve relations Would you make a distinction between disciplines of agricultural engineering and more dangerous ones, such as nuclear science or aeronautical engineering?
  - jackpirate 7y ago
    Computing is a fundamental skill that forms the basis for all of modern life. We here at hacker news are constantly advocating that everyone (in the US) should learn some amount of programming, and I believe the same holds true in North Korea. As a concrete example of the things I taught, look at the official KCNA webpage http://www.kcna.kp http://www.kcna.kp (North Korea's main state run newspaper). This webpage is very poorly designed, and cannot even be indexed by Google due to poorly implemented AJAX queries. In my classes, we would talk about why this is bad design and how to improve it. The DPRK would benefit from producing better webpages, but so would the rest of the world. These webpages are one of the few sources we have for understanding life in North Korea, and I personally want to encourage the North Koreans to fill them with high quality and easy to access content. Currently, they simply don't have enough skilled programmers capable of performing these tasks. IMHO, this is a clear example of how teaching computer science benefits both the North Koreans and Americans without improving North Korean hacking skills.