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By Melissa Fleur Afshar
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For just a few months, Diana Karabegovich lived a life that few in the U.S. will ever experience—or desire to.
On the surface, her student exchange days sound surprisingly ordinary. The 28-year-old, then 19, took classes, completed homework, hung out in cafés, played volleyball, and went swimming. Except, Karabegovich was studying in North Korea, one of the most isolated and tightly controlled countries on Earth.
"I graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations, majoring in international economic relations, with Korean my first language at university," Karabegovich, who lives in Moscow, Russia, told Newsweek. "As part of my studies, I received two scholarships to do an exchange program, one in North Korea at Kim Il-Sung University and one in South Korea at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
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"I did both."
The College Lifestyle—but in Pyongyang
The experience offered unusual access to everyday life inside the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), far beyond what most visitors—of which there are strikingly few—encounter. Yet, Karabegovich’s memories of a fairly laid-back time consisting of warm hospitality and new friendships exist alongside a more troubling reality.
North Korea is a hereditary totalitarian dictatorship where the state exerts control over the information its citizens are allowed to consume and how they express. Human rights organizations have recorded severe abuses within the country's borders. A recent report by a Seoul-based NGO documents that some of those sentenced to death had been charged for consuming foreign cultural content, including K-pop.
Karabegovich's unconventional study abroad program took her to both countries occupying the divided peninsula. For the student, who later ran a blog about North Korea, experiencing both Koreas was integral to understanding the region.
“Studying in North Korea is an invaluable experience for anyone studying Korea, as well as a unique opportunity to see one of the most closed and mysterious countries in the world from the perspective of a student rather than a tourist,” she said. "Students in North Korea have much more freedom than tourists, who have to stick to a group and a guide, whereas students can roam on their own."
While foreign visitors are rarely granted access to North Korea, Karabegovich's entry was rather straightforward.
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Her college in Russia covered her tuition and travel fees, while Kim Il-Sung University paid for her dormitory and food. She applied for a visa through the North Korean Embassy in Moscow and, after the university supplied the required confirmations, she was able to fly to Pyongyang. Once there, student life settled into a demanding rhythm.
Living and Studying in the World’s Most Mysterious Country
“We had classes six times per week,” she said. “From Monday to Friday, we had two classes per day—reading and speaking.
"On Saturday, we had one speaking class, and Sunday was our day off.”
Outside class, she said students would typically complete homework and spend their spare time socializing. She reminisces on trips to cafés and restaurants, volleyball and table tennis games, swimming and ice-skating sessions. North Korean hosts also organized excursions that allowed students to see more of the country's mountainous terrain.
But Karabegovich's studies provided a degree of independence unavailable to conventional visitors.
North Korea operates one of the world's most restrictive systems for foreign visitors, while independent travel is, for practical purposes, largely unavailable. Access for U.S. citizens is even more restricted. American passports are not valid for travel to, in or through North Korea without a special validation, generally granted only in extremely limited circumstances including certain journalistic or humanitarian trips.
Still, the restrictions foreigners encounter are only a fraction of those imposed upon North Koreans themselves.
Reports have documented arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture and executions, while North Korea's prisons have faced sustained international scrutiny over their conditions.
Poverty is believed to be widespread, although reliable numbers are notoriously difficult to come by.
Two Koreas
North Korea's political system grew out of the division of the Korean Peninsula after World War II, when Soviet forces occupied the north and American the south.
The Kim dynasty has been in power since September 1948, with the country widely considered a pariah state. The Workers' Party of Korea is the country's sole ruling party, while the state maintains extensive control over public life. The ideology of self-reliance, or "juche," has been central to the country's political identity, while its development of nuclear weapons has repeatedly provoked international alarm.
Against the heavy geopolitical backdrop, Karabegovich said the greatest surprise of her stay was considerably more intimate.
"What surprised me the most were the people,” she said. “It genuinely surprised me that they seemed so grounded and happy.
"They always spent so much time socializing, chilling outside and in restaurants, singing, and dancing.”
She said she formed bonds with several North Koreans, calling this experience "heartwarming."
“When talking to them, I felt like a family member rather than a guest,” she said. “I have never felt so welcome when visiting other countries, and I will never forget their kindness and hospitality.”
It is a distinction that runs through Karabegovich's recollections.
Her months in North Korea could not reveal the full reality of life for its ordinary citizens, nor erase the profound repression documented beyond the boundaries of her university experience.
But they gave her something available to remarkably few outsiders; time inside Pyongyang's classrooms, on its streets and with its residents whose lives are often obscured and depicted solely by the state surrounding them.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Sirena Bergman and Paul Donnelley.
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