A North Korean defector sponsored by a South Korean company received a doctoral degree in international relations from a US university. Kim Seong-ryeol, a 37-year-old from Chongjin, North Korea, made three failed attempts to flee North Korea with his family by crossing the Tumen River to China since 1997, and was subsequently jailed. Kim finally fled the North in 2004, and settled in South Korea with his family.

Having dropped out of middle school in North Korea, Kim completed the South Korean elementary, middle and high school curricula by passing qualification exams in 15 months, and was admitted to Handong Global University’s department of international studies. He then did his master’s in unification studies at Yonsei University. Kim was hoping to study abroad when he met with Hanmi Global chairman Kim Jong-hoon in 2015. The construction management company chief decided to financially sponsor Kim’s studies abroad, and Kim was admitted to Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in 2018.

Walk Together, a social welfare enterprise headed by the Hanmi Global chairman, paid for Kim’s tuition fees and living expenses in the US, and Kim earned his doctoral degree with a dissertation titled “North Korea’s Policy toward the US: Rapprochement to Confrontational Diplomacy in the 1970s and 1990s.” In the dissertation, Kim analyzed Pyongyang’s US policy and said establishing an East Asian multilateral security consultative body would help resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. Kim met with the Hanmi Global chairman at the company headquarters in Seoul on Thursday to thank him for his support, and said he will continue research to do his part for the Korean Peninsula and the international community, the company said.