Seoul trains ‘intellectual troops’

South Korea hopes trained defectors will help reshape North in its image if regime collapses.

North Korea defectors

Since the Korean War ended in 1953, 20,000 North Koreans have defected from the North to the South.

Some of them have been hand-picked for a leadership academy.

The partly government-funded programme aims to train 1,000 so-called “intellectual troops” who, in the event of a collapse of the Pyongyang regime, would go home and help rebuild North Korea based on the South’s model.

Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett reports from Seoul, the South Korean capital.

Source: Al Jazeera