South Korea has hired tens of thousands of foreign English teachers to meet the increasing demand for English education. Little is known, however, about North Korea’s interest in the subject.

But news reports say that North Korea recently requested that a Canadian relief agency send English teachers. The Mennonite Central Committee will select two English teachers and send them to North Korea to teach from September this year until July 2012.

The agency said that this is the first time North Korea has requested English teachers and believes the move is meant to enhance the English-speaking ability of students.

Another agency in New Zealand has posted a notice on its website recently, saying they are raising funds to send a voluntary teacher to teach for three months in 2011 in Pyongyang, according to the Radio Free Asia report Tuesday. The NZ-DPRK Society sent the first westerner to teach English in a North Korean school in 2006. Tim Kearn, a former school teacher in Christchurch, had spent two years in North Korea, teaching English at three secondary schools in Pyongyang.

The Society estimates that the total cost to send a teacher to North Korea for three months will be about $8,000. It emphasizes that English education is essential for North Korea because the isolated country can increase exchanges with outside world and eventually become a member of the international community.

The report said that more foreign English teachers come to North Korea via cultural and academic institutes. The British Council has been running an English-teacher training program in Pyongyang since 2000. The Trinity Western University in Canada also sends a team of professors and graduates to North Korea.

An American who recently visited Pyongyang praised the English speaking level of female tour guides there.

“I would say that the English capabilities of the guides were quite good. I was pretty impressed with their English. They were very easy to understand, had a very minimal accent, and had pretty polished English considering they had never been to an English-speaking country,” DeCamp was quoted as saying in the Radio Free Asia report.

With the increase in the number of foreign English teachers in North Korea, the average TOEFL score of North Koreans jumped six points from an average of 69 in 2007 to 75 in 2009, just five points below the world average, which is 80.

South Korea achieved an average score of 81 in 2009, a four-point increase from 2007. 

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)
Edited by Rob York