Choose Your North Korean College, A Very Helpful Admission Guide

In most countries, college is marketed as a life adventure. But in North Korea, it is where the state decides what kind of human being you are allowed to become. Every year, North Korean students compete for university admission through a brutal system of exams, quotas, political screening, family background checks, and very socialist bribery. The winners may enter elite schools. The losers are sent to factories, farms, mines, or the military. Here, freedom is not in the dictionary. But your college degree does promise you a better assignment inside the machine. In this episode, we explore the strange, terrifying, and surprisingly sophisticated world of higher education in the Kimdom: prestigious Pyongyang universities, ideological exams, revolutionary history memorization, elite private tutoring, foreign study, student surveillance, and the final job assignment system. Subscribe, unless you are busy preparing for the final exams. OP Song: Socialism is Ours ED Song: Forever with you, Party Flag Chapters: 00:00 Intro 04:23 Choose Your Future 15:52 The Quota and the Exam 29:09 College Life 43:50 A Life Sentence 49:41 Final Thoughts