The North Korean regime handpicks 500 students to receive an education in English from foreign lecturers.
The goal at the Western funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology is to try to equip these students for leadership, so they can help modernise the impoverished nation and communicate with the international community.
Students say they were nervous the first time they met a foreigner.
"Of course we were nervous. American people are different from us," one says.
Dr James Chin-Kyung Kim, a Korean-American entrepreneur, was asked to create the university based on another university he founded in China. He raised much of the $32 million in funding from Christian charities.
"I so am thankful, thankful to this government. They trust me," he says. "(They) give me all authority in my hand, operating this school. Can you believe it?"
British lecturer Colin McCulloch left Yorkshire to teach business studies here.
"I'm sure the leaders and government here recognise they need to connect with the outside world," he says.
"It's not possible to be a totally hermetic, closed economy in the modern age."
The teaching staff say they come here with the best intentions for these students and this country. But many human rights groups question whether it is right to teach the future elite of one of the most oppressive countries in the world.
These groups claim up to 200,000 people are in labour camps for disagreeing with the regime.
But supports of the university think in the long term, these students could create a more open North Korea.
