No cheese college places for N Korea

A PRESTIGIOUS French school has refused to help North Korean students learn how to make cheese.

The Ecole Nationale d’Industrie Laitiere told AFP that two officials from North Korea visited last month, hoping to send three food production experts to the school at Mamirolle, near Besançonon, for training.

Initial reports claimed that the school had agreed to take the students, but the school’s head, Véronique Drouet, said: “We have limited places. We were unable to take the North Koreans.

“We are a school that operates on a human scale, we can't take ourselves off to all four corners of the world.”

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un reportedly developed a penchant for Emmental while studying in Switzerland as a boy.

But he is said to be less-than impressed with the quality of cheese produced in the secretive state and sent the delegation to the school, to learn the secrets of the cheese-makers’ art.

Though it originated in Switzerland, France also produces Emmental cheese.

Photo: Zennie Abraham