North Korea and conversational English

Inside North Korea

Last night I caught this story on the NewsHour. It was all-around fascinating, but what struck me was the part filmed in the schools. It showed four students talking in English. The reporter says:

since they are barred from outside television, the Internet and unauthorized contact with the outside world, their English is literal, not conversational.

Then the students' discussion is heard. They stand around and smile at each other, talking about picnicking in Italy. It was just so ridiculous.

The hospital scenes were pretty awful. Instead of eye patches, the doctors had to improvise and use pieces of film and fabric. It was incredible.

Modern equipment taken for granted in western hospitals are nonexistent. In the Ophthalmology Department, there is no digital technology, few, if any, computerized instruments. Resident doctors like Tang Chol So are always improvising. There are no spare parts for the old examining tools. They often fix the instruments themselves, trying to make them perform beyond their original design. Dr. Tang treated eye injuries during the recent rail explosion that claimed more than 100 lives.

Such a view inside North Korea is extremely rare, so I was lucky to catch the report. Mother Jones did a story about North Korea about three months ago, but it's not the same.