August 27, 2002	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Saani 17,1423

SEOUL: The teachers had been warned that their summer school students might have strange ideas, but science instructor Park Myong-suk was flabbergasted when several approached her with a particular concern.

Was it true that the Earth could be split in two, the students asked. When Park demanded to know where they got such a preposterous idea, they quoted a saying of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that his people, if united, could be strong enough to do anything — even to divide the planet.

Of course, these were no ordinary students and this no regular summer school. The youths, ages 14 to 18, were North Koreans who recently had defected from their homeland.

During a three-week intensive programme, 26 teachers and 32 volunteers coach a far smaller number of students — the latest class graduated just 22. It might seem like too much attention to lavish on the students, but their success or failure is of importance here: The school is, in effect, a laboratory for seeing whether Northerners can be integrated into South Korean society after more than half a century of enmity between the two nations.

On Wednesday, the school held a graduation ceremony for the latest class at a secluded conference centre in northeastern Seoul. Normally very secretive because of concerns about security for defectors, the school made a rare exception to a “no media” policy and permitted a reporter to attend on the condition that the students not be interviewed.

In their baggy jeans and sneakers, the youths looked like any other students exchanging gifts and saying their goodbyes at the end of a semester. But teachers and others said the teens are worlds apart from their Westernized counterparts in South Korea and face an extraordinary struggle to close the gap.

“They have a lot of problems studying in regular (South Korean) schools. They find it difficult to catch up with classmates and difficult to make friends,” said Benjamin Yoon, head of the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, a nonprofit group in Seoul that runs the school.

The programme was started three years ago after South Korea began experiencing an influx of defectors with children in tow — mostly families who had fled the famine in the North by first crossing into China. Before the mid-1990s, most defectors were unaccompanied men, often soldiers or diplomats.

It wasn’t long before educators noticed that the North Korean children not only were smaller than their counterparts here — the result of poor nutrition — but lagged in school in virtually every subject.

The educators had anticipated difficulties with subjects such as political science and history because, as Yoon noted, “Their interpretation of history is different from South Korea’s.” But more surprising was how far apart the language had drifted in the 50 years since the Korean peninsula was divided by politics and war. The Northerners couldn’t understand most of the borrowed English words that now pepper speech in the South.

“They have a very hard time with the language,” Yoon said, ”and even in the sciences and math, there is a lot of terminology they do not understand.”

Hwa Jeong-bum, a 26-year-old graduate student of Korean literature who had volunteered at the summer school, added: “It’s not just that they don’t understand us. I was surprised how difficult it is for us to understand what they’re saying. They use different words.”

Although North Korea boasts of free schooling and nearly universal literacy, educators here discovered that many children had skipped school during periods of severe famine to forage for food. They had lost more years of schooling later after escaping to China, where many lived clandestinely before coming to South Korea.

As a result, the North Koreans attending schools in the South usually are placed in classes with students several years younger than they. But Yoon, the programme’s chief, said many of the students are extremely bright. He recalled one boy who completed four years of high school in 18 months and now attends one of South Korea’s top universities.

“The ideology of North Korean is still deeply rooted in their minds,” said science teacher Park, recalling her befuddlement with her students’ questions about the Earth. “They lack the imagination of the South Korean students. I blame that on the totalitarian way of teaching.”—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times