I couldn’t have survived the rocky journey I’ve been through in life without the education I received in North Korea. Attending a military boarding school as I did, we were taught discipline, which I liked – it made me strong, and in every situation I’m ready to survive.

Many of the things I learned in North Korea are the sorts of things schoolchildren across the world learn. We studied Western literature, for example, reading Tolstoy and Shakespeare and, my favorite, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. We even read science fiction, and Victor Hugo – I loved Les Misérables!