Since the Korean War ended in 1953, 20,000 North Koreans have defected from the North to the South.
Some of them have been hand-picked for a leadership academy.
The partly government-funded programme aims to train 1,000 so-called "intellectual troops" who, in the event of a collapse of the Pyongyang regime, would go home and help rebuild North Korea based on the South's model.
Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett reports from Seoul, the South Korean capital.
