平壤科技大学招生

    去年，朝鲜官方宣布，统领全世界最封闭的国家17年之久的金正日去世。消息公布的当天早上，一位76岁的韩裔美国教育家金镇庆正坐在他位于朝鲜首都平壤的办公室里。在1998年，金镇庆还曾是金正日囚下的一名政治犯。而如今，他在朝鲜的首都一手创办了平壤科技大学，这不得不说是一个小小的奇迹。

    2009年9月，我们曾报道过金镇庆先生的故事（点击查看）。现在的平壤科技大学所在地当时还只是平壤正南的一片荒地，学校尚在紧张施工。在闭关锁国的朝鲜，平壤科技大学是唯一的一所私立大学，而这都是金镇庆坚持不懈的成果。金镇庆出生在首尔附近，曾参加过朝鲜战争，上世纪70年代移居美国。经过不懈努力，他终于说服朝鲜领导层接受了他的理念：在首都成立一所一流的科技大学，以吸引外国学者来校任教。

    平壤科技大学于2010年秋正式对外开放。笔者曾有幸在金正日去世前几天参观了这所大学。目前，学校共有267名学生。学生全部为男生，其中200人为本科生。学校以英文授课为主。虽然朝鲜仍在不遗余力地妖魔化美国，但是学校的外国教职人员中却有一半来自美国。

    这所学校的学生均来自朝鲜精英阶层，以高级官员或军队领导人的后代居多。平壤科技大学的运营经费全部来自于捐助。学生无需缴纳学费，教职员工也全部为志愿者。几乎所有的教职员工，包括金镇庆本人在内，都是福音派基督徒。目前，朝鲜政府禁止有组织的宗教，但他们仍坚守自己的信仰。金镇庆和他的同事们相信，帮助朝鲜年轻人是上帝赋予他们的使命。

    当然，金镇庆也有一些眼前的担忧。学校最初建设的大部分资金来自韩国的福音派基督徒，而他们中的大多数人都强烈反对共产主义——平壤方面一度对此视而不见。不过，平壤科技大学成立一年后，朝鲜炮轰韩国最北部的岛屿，导致韩朝关系急剧恶化。此后，金镇庆便失去了资金来源，致使学生只有少量的科研设备可供学习使用。

    可以想见，金正日的去世可能会改变平壤与世界各国的关系，也会给金镇庆的融资计划带来福音。如果说有谁可以成为连接朝鲜与外部世界的桥梁，也许非金镇庆莫属。他参加了金正日的葬礼，也是葬礼上为数不多的几位美国人之一。在葬礼结束后，他还与金正日之子，朝鲜现任最高领导人——现年29岁的金正恩握手。之后不久，金镇庆便飞往华盛顿，私下会见了美国国务卿希拉里•克林顿。朝美关系会不会“解冻”？对于笔者的这个问题，金镇庆的回答：“我不知道。现在说什么都还为时尚早。”

    On the morning late last year that North Korea announced the death of Kim Jong Il, who for 17 years had presided over the world's most isolated regime, James (Chin-Kyung) Kim, a 76-year-old Korean-American educator, was in an interesting place: his office in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. That alone is remarkable for a man who had in 1998 been a political prisoner of Kim Jong Il. But the fact that the institution James Kim created -- the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) -- is up and running in the heart of North Korea is a minor miracle.

    We wrote about Kim in September 2009. Construction was then under way on the barren spit of land due south of central Pyongyang where the university now sits. PUST is the only private university in that isolated country -- a tribute to Kim's doggedness. Born near Seoul, he fought in the Korean War and moved to the U.S. in the 1970s. Kim managed to persuade the North Korean leadership to buy into his vision: setting up a first-rate science and technical university in the capital that draws strictly on foreign scholars for its faculty.

    PUST -- which I visited for a few days just before Kim Jong Il died -- opened its doors in the fall of 2010. It now has 267 students, all male and 200 of whom are undergraduates. Classes are taught in English, and half the foreign faculty comes from the U.S., a country North Korea still relentlessly demonizes.

    The students are drawn from the country's elite, many the sons of senior officials in the ruling party or military officers. PUST depends on donations to survive. Students pay no tuition, and the faculty are all volunteers. Almost all, like James Kim himself, are evangelical Christians, living a spartan existence in a country where organized religion is banned. Nonetheless, Kim and his staff believe they are serving a higher calling by helping North Korean youth.

    Kim has more fundamental concerns at the moment. Much of the original funding to construct the school came from evangelical Christians in South Korea, the majority of whom are fervently anti-Communist -- something Pyongyang ignored. In the year after PUST opened, North Korea shelled one of the South's northernmost islands, and inter-Korean relations deteriorated. Not surprisingly, Kim's fundraising shriveled, leaving the students with very little scientific equipment to use.

    It's conceivable that Kim Jong Il's death could reset relations between Pyongyang and the world -- and improve Kim's fundraising. And if anyone could serve as a bridge between North Korea and the outside world, it's James Kim. He attended Kim Jong Il's funeral -- one of the few Americans present, if not the only one -- shaking hands afterward with Kim Jong Un, the 29-year-old son who is now the North's supreme leader. Not long after, James flew off to Washington for a private meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Is a thaw possible? I asked him recently. "I don't know yet," he said. "Too soon to tell."