Distance Education Pays off

The DPRK is directing efforts to developing distance education.

The distance education faculty of Kim Chaek University started giving lectures for 40 workers of the Hwanghae Iron and Steel Complex from October 2010. Today, about 30 000 persons from over 5 000 units are enrolled at the faculty.

Through the online education network, students receive lectures given by high-profile teachers in their majors at any time.

The faculty, through its homepage, grasps students’ attendance at lectures and the state of their understanding of lectures, fulfillment of assignments, participation in self-exams and execution of curricula to evaluate their academic performance.

Candidate academician, Prof. and Dr. Kim Il Nam, head of the faculty, said that the distance education proves its vitality in practice as an education which closely combine scientific research with production and brings education closer to the workplace.

Ku Yong Nam, worker of the Pyongyang General Printing Plant, and many other graduates and students of the faculty are developing themselves to be inventors by playing a leading role in solving scientific and technical problems in their institutions.

Among the students are not only university graduates and leading officials of factories and enterprises but persons with disabilities.

Jang Su Yong, 25, staff of the Chongjin City Yoram IT Exchange Centre in North Hamgyong Province, said as follows: From my childhood I could not walk due to idiopathic leg disorders. My dream of studying at a university came true thanks to the distance education. From 2014 to 2018, I studied information processing engineering at the online faculty of Kim Chaek University of Technology. I thought I would have to live with the help of others throughout my life, but I am now in a position to do something worthwhile for the society.

The faculty makes endeavours to further improve its education system as the number of applicants for distance education is one the increase.

The DPRK instituted a law on distance education.