(Reuters) Like many other Americans who came to teach at the foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), Kim Hak Song was a Christian missionary who raised money from a church to come to North Korea.
Kim had been running PUST’s experimental farm before he was detained on Saturday, traveling by train from Pyongyang to China’s border town of Dandong, PUST’s chancellor and co-founder Chan-mo Park told Reuters.
The university, which is open about its Christian affiliation, says its sole mission is to help North Korea’s future elite learn the skills to modernize the isolated country and engage with the outside world. Former teachers say the faculty is careful to avoid anything that looks like missionary work.
