SEOUL - ISOLATED North Korea will inaugurate its first foreign-funded university this week, some two years behind schedule due to tensions over its nuclear programme, a South Korean foundation said on Monday.
THE campus, on which construction began in 2002, includes video-conferencing classrooms installed for the first time in North Korea. More research equipment and facilities are on the way.
US support for the university is essential if it is to be fully equipped.
The Northeast Asia Foundation for Education and Culture (Nafec) said the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology would officially open on Wednesday.
The foundation injected more than 40 billion won (S$45.6 million), mostly raised by churches and individual donors in South Korea and abroad, to build the university, for which Pyongyang provided the land.
It wants to give the impoverished hardline communist state the skills to function in the international community.
'We are so pleased to see this finally done in spite of many twists and turns,' Nafec secretary-general Choi Chung Pyung told AFP.
'Our aim is to educate and train North Koreans to become capable industrial workers available to the international community.' Mr Choi said the science university would provide the skills and knowledge which are essential to competing internationally but still new in the North.
He said the faculty will consist of South Koreans, North Koreans and ethnic Koreans from the United States or other countries, according to an outline agreement with Pyongyang.
Classes are due to begin next year for some 200-300 students after a trial run for courses this year. -- AFP
