There is no money and there is no sex

18-year-old Briton studied in North Korea for four months and was surprised

18-year-old Briton Alessandro Ford spent four months at the University of North Korea, where he lived in a hostel with Koreans. Returning, he spoke about some features of life in the most closed country in the world and communicating with peers. An interview with the future student of the University of Bristol went to The Guardian and BBC .

The father, a former deputy of the European Parliament from the Labor Party, who threatened to send his son to the DPRK from childhood, if he was bad to behave badly, was attached to the university of Alessandro Ford. In the end, Ford Jr. decided that it would be interesting to go to North Korea. In August 2014, he went to the University of Kim Il Sen in Pyongyang to study Korean.

He was settled in the hostel with other students, and they specially picked up those who speak English a little, so that he had to communicate with whom to communicate. The conditions in the hostel were so -so: floor toilets were installed in the toilets, there was no soul, students went to wash in groups in the bathhouse. “Like the Romans,” says the Briton. In winter, in the hostel, hot water was turned off for two weeks, despite the fact that there were up to 20 degrees of frost on the street.

Alessandro Ford surprised that the students with whom he had to communicate had never had sex until 20-25 years old. In four months, he did not notice that someone was kissing. When they listened to Eminem together, the Koreans asked: “Why does he sing about himself, sex and drugs? He should sing about his family and his country. ”

According to Ford, in words all students support the course of the current leader of the country Kim Jong -un, but he does not know whether they lie or tell the truth. According to the Briton, he tried to avoid talking about politics, but once asked his girlfriend about concentration camps. According to Amnesty International, about 200 thousand people are in the DPRK (with a population of 25 million people). Ford girlfriend said that these are not concentration camps, but institutions for “retraining”.

“These are camps for those who do not understand the political views of the great leader. They just have to be instructed, ”the girl said . “She said that it was just someone who did not do her homework in mathematics, and he was left after lessons,” Ford says.

According to the student, in the DPRK, his peers hate the leadership of the United States, but be tolerant of citizens of this country. “We hate the American government. We think they are scum. We believe that they are evil imperialist dogs, ”the Koreans said according to Ford's memoirs. At the same time, they were vividly interested in the features of life in the West, for example, what it is - to buy an apartment. In Korea, all apartments are state.

Alessandro Ford noted that among the students with whom he talked, most were children of high -ranking officials or the military. Ordinary people from the province were a minority.