South Korea addressing North Korean defectors’ school problems

The South Korea government has established a number of alternative schools as a new policy project to help North Korean teenagers who have difficulty in adapting to school.

The most well-known of these is the Hankyoreh High School, a high school specializing in helping North Korean adolescents, founded in 2006 by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development. The Hankyoreh School teaches the national common curriculum, but individual classes are conducted according to the level of each student.

One North Korean settler whom we spoke with is now in college in Seoul. He escaped from North Korea in his mid-teens, was caught by Chinese police and sent back to North Korea, lived in a detention camp, and escaped again in five years. It then took him about three years to make it to South Korea through China and Central Asia. When he arrived, it was difficult to start regular school.

He studied for two years at the GED Academy and later entered one of the well-known colleges in Korea and studies Political Science.

For North Korean refugee students, the GED route is sometimes a more efficient approach in preparation for college admission than public school.

[NK News]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid and Relief, North Korean refugee by Grant Montgomery.