BACKGROUND: Elite school shows Kim's nuclear legacy

M&C: BACKGROUND: Elite school shows Kim's nuclear legacy
Beijing - Kim Jong Il's old high school is often visited by the few tourists and even fewer journalists allowed to visit North Korea, giving them a rare peek into elite society in the secretive, Stalinist nation.

As North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes reflect its technological and military strength, alarming its neighbours and drawing international criticism, the Pyongyang school nurtures students aspiring to be top scientists.

'The students have learned how to clone a rabbit,' Kim Jong Hyun, the vice principal of the Number One Middle School in Pyongyang, said during a tour of a biology laboratory at the school in 2009.

The school focuses mainly on mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics, with most students going on to attend science universities, Kim Jong Hyun said through a government interpreter.

On the wall of a physics classroom were drawings and diagrams explaining surface-to-air missiles, planes, rockets and a magnetic levitation train.

Another diagram showed the basic principles of splitting the atom.

Nearby was a cutaway model of a submarine while other laboratories held high-technology equipment, such as an electron microscope.

'These were donated by Kim Jong Il,' the vice principal said as he showed off new machines in a chemistry laboratory.

'This school is a model school for our country,' he said. 'General Kim Jong Il studied here in this school.'

According to an official biography, the late North Korean leader attended the school from 1954 to 1960.

Kim Jong Il is said to have set out the idea for turning the school into a centre for excellence focusing on science after an April 1984 visit there.

'He decided that the school should be for very talented students, and they should concentrate on things like physics and biology,' Kim Jong Hyun said.

Portraits of Kim and his father, Kim Il Sung, were hung above the blackboards at the front of each classroom.

Kim Jong Hyun said about 1,000 children attended the school, with another 700 enrolled at the attached primary school.

Reports from Seoul said the school and 12 similar ones in North Korea were comparable to South Korean science high schools.

A guide for the dpa correspondent, who also acted as an interpreter and minder and identified himself only as Mr O, arranged the visit as part of a trip to report on a North Korean Asian regional qualifying match in the 2010 football World Cup.

Foreign journalists covering the World Cup qualifiers in North Korea were required to sign an undertaking only to report sports-related news.

But Mr O and the other officials made no attempt to hide the military and nuclear pictures at Kim's old school.

Mr O seemed most concerned about reports taking photographs of poor people and of the small-scale stallholders selling their goods in Pyongyang's streets and public parks.

He also fretted over pictures of North Korean police scuffling with Iranian football fans, probably from Iran's official delegation, as they stood on seats, beat large drums and hoisted huge national flags.

The most revealing warning came as Mr O followed the dpa correspondent around the stadium while he zoomed in on uniformed Public Security officers patrolling the 30,000-strong crowd in Pyongyang's Yanggakdo Stadium.

'Don't shoot them,' Mr O said with a grave look on his face. 'They might shoot us.'