North Korea has agreed to send lecturers to the Russian Far East to teach the Korean language to local youth, Russian authorities announced Monday, in a bid to boost academic exchanges despite potential sanctions concerns.

The two countries agreed that “teachers from Pyongyang who are proficient in Russian” will participate in the initiative, Primorsky Krai’s chief of education Elvira Shamonova said in a press release, after heading a delegation of local educators to the DPRK last week.