 He jokingly refers to his hometown as the "Korean capital" of the former Soviet Union.He entered Kazakh National University (now known as Al-Farabi University) in 1971 as a student of world history and German language; after his graduation in 1977, he found work as a teacher of German, which he continued until the mid-eighties.In 1985, with the onset of perestroika and glasnost, it became permitted for the first time to speak openly of the deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union and other tragedies which had afflicted the Koryo-saram.