Top 5 universities in North Korea
The 5 leading universities and higher education institutions in North Korea, ordered by the citations their research has received. Part of the WAC University Directory.
5 institutions listed · data October 2026
- 1
Kim Il-sung University
- 1,909 research works
- 45 thousand citations
- h-index 72
- 2
Kim Chaek University of Technology
- 1,114 research works
- 22 thousand citations
- h-index 56
- 3
Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST)
- 212 research works
- 4,219 citations
- h-index 30
- 4
Pyongyang Medical University
- 202 research works
- 908 citations
- h-index 14
- 5
Institute of Natural Science
- 121 research works
- 697 citations
- h-index 11
Ordered by total research citations recorded in OpenAlex (October 2026). Works, citations and h-index are OpenAlex figures for the institution. How the list is made.
Is your university a WAC member?
Member institutions get a featured listing with a profile and contacts, a member badge, announcements in WAC News, framework toolkits from the four centres and member places in WAC sessions.
Add or correct a listing
Universities, colleges and higher education institutions can ask to be added to the directory, or send a correction to their listing. We check every request against the institution’s own website.
Institutions that join WAC get a featured listing with a profile, programmes and contacts, a member badge, news announcements in WAC News and access to the four centres. See membership.
Thank you, request received
We will check the institution’s website and reply to you by email.
How institutions are chosen and ordered
The directory lists 1436 universities, colleges and higher education institutions in 199 countries and territories. In countries with 200 or more higher education institutions recorded in OpenAlex it lists the top 25; everywhere else, the top 5.
Institutions are ordered by the total number of citations their research has received, as recorded in OpenAlex, the open catalogue of the world’s research, with data taken in October 2026. This is a transparent, research-based order: it favours large research institutions and does not measure teaching quality, student experience or graduate outcomes. University systems are left out in favour of their campuses, and faculties or institutes are left out when their parent university is already listed. Names, cities and websites come from OpenAlex and the Research Organization Registry (ROR).
Being listed is not an endorsement, and listings are not paid for. Spotted a mistake? Send a correction.