Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

by Suki Kim

*This book is a literary nonfiction based on investigative reporting. It contains emotions & personal perspectives & personal history -- devices that make a book literary. The book is not based on memories to explain the author's life, but based on undercover investigative reporting to convey the psychology of North Korea's future leaders and their very complex and human and inhumane world. Neither a straightforward reporter's nonfiction nor a memoir about a woman's self-discovery, Without You, There Is No Us is a tour de force journalistic feat mixed with a narrative literary voice from within the world's most brutal gulag nation.

Here is the publisher's original jacket copy:

A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign
 
Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields—except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has accepted a job teaching English. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them to write, all under the watchful eye of the regime.

Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues—evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves—their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own—at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged.

Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Politics, Asia, Biography, Book Club

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Suki Kim is the author of the award-winning novel The Interpreter and the recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Open Society fellowships. She has been traveling to North Korea as a journalist since 2002, and her essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, and the New York Review of Books. Born and raised in Seoul, she lives in New York.

Her debut novel The Interpreter is a murder mystery about a young Korean American woman, Suzy Park, living in New York City and searching for answers as to why her shopkeeper parents were murdered. Kim took a short term job as an interpreter in New York City when working on the novel to look into the life of an interpreter. The book received positive critic reviews and was named a runner up for the PEN Hemingway Prize, as well as winning the PEN Beyond Margins Award and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. The Interpreter was translated into Dutch, French, Korean, and Japanese.

Reviews

[La Petite Américaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

3/20/16

So I went to the Suki Kim Q&A last weekend.

I was hard on Kim in my review, but I stand by what I wrote, even more so after having attended the Q&A: she said that her book is investigative journalism and not a memoir, and that it was only labeled a memoir because her publisher insisted on it.

The book is nowhere near investigative journalism, and is one of the weakest North Korea memoirs I've ever read.

So, like I said. I stand by this one.

Thx.
LPA

2/20/16
Okay, what's going on around here?

First this happened, then I find out this is happening, and now I've learned that Suki Kim is coming to town.

Should I go to see Suki Kim's thing? I don't want to....but am starting to wonder if I should....

******

I would have liked this book a lot more had the author not annoyed the sh!t out of me.

Suki Kim is like one of those college girls who goes to study abroad in some exotic place, only to spend the semester pouting in her dorm room because she misses her boyfriend.

Seriously.

When Kim heads to North Korea to teach English with a missionary group at a Pyongyang university, she has the opportunity to observe the lives of American fundamentalist Christians and ordinary North Koreans -- two fascinating groups that should provide plenty of fodder for a decent memoir. Yet, the author fails us. The result is not a memoir about North Korea. It's just a couple hundred pages of whining by a chick who can't deal with not getting laid for a few months.

I'm not kidding.

Look.

It's clear that Kim is trying to draw parallels between her love for a man, Christians' love for God, and North Koreans' love of their leader -- but it doesn't work. Anything about North Korea, Kim's experiences there, or the lives of Kim's students are completely overshadowed by the author's self-centeredness, and her obsessive longing for a guy we never even get to meet. Kim spills a little bit about the non-existent sex lives (um, who cares?) of the unwed Christian faculty at the university, but promptly brushes them aside to give readers a healthy overdose of her own life...and it's weird, distracting, and ever present throughout the book.

A couple of examples?

Within a nanosecond of meeting the all-male student body at the university in Pyongyang, Kim decides that she's "fall[en] in love" with all of her students. Um, okay.

Later, for whatever reason, she'll have her all-male class write essays about "How to Successfully Get a Girl." What a great topic for a college-level English course: not only is it irrelevant to her students' lives, it's also culturally insensitive as fuck. North Koreans don't "get girls." Due to mandatory military service, North Korean men don't date for the first decade after high school. After their military service, a majority of North Koreans' marriages are arranged by their parents. Kim will of course tell us she's trying to open students' minds with these types of topics. Uh-huh...one American woman successfully deprogramming brainwashed North Korean men, one clever ESL lesson at a time? Yeah, right. The lone female in the room asking young men to write about how to win over a woman, when winning over a woman isn't a part of their culture? Gee. That sounds a lot like attention-seeking...as if Kim chose the "How to Successfully Get a Girl" topic to heighten the sexual tension in the room and solidify her position as Pyongyang's most talented cock tease. Um. Awesome?

She goes on to toss in some self-flattering dialogue spoken by others, such as: "Comrade Suki, I hear you and Comrade Katie are the most popular teachers, and the boys are just wild about you," and "When I see Comrade Kim Suki casting her feminine glace over her students in the cafeteria, I wonder if the students are all captivated by her feminine charm. They must lose sleep at night thinking about their teacher. They are virile young boys, after all."

Ok, we get it. Kim wants to get some, her students are all hot for teacher, and no one is getting any. It's frustrating. But do we need an entire book about it?

When she isn't being flattered by minders or flirting with students, Kim is usually shut away somewhere on campus, missing her "lover" (God, that word is so pretentious, just say "boyfriend") back in Brooklyn, who is content to ignore her emails. Kim writes so much about this lover, yet reveals almost nothing about him -- not even why she's so enamored with him. One begins to question if he exists at all. But then Kim hammers out some gems that only true longing can bring about: "A feeling of hopelessness saturated me and could not be washed away," and "In that world, I needed a lover...and that need drove me crazy some nights." Sigh...Suki, God gave you 10 fingers for a reason. Deal with it. Or at least pack a Jack Rabbit on your next trip to Pyongyang and spare us the drivel.

Anyway.

I got so overloaded with the talk of the absent lover that I began to question the title of the book itself: "Without you, there is no us" is a verse from a North Korean anthem, but I got the sense that Kim was directing it towards the Brooklynite who couldn't be bothered to reply to her emails.

But I digress.

Some real things do happen in the story. Kim and a Christian colleague get in a screaming fight over whether they can show a Harry Potter film to their 20 year-old pupils. Kim gets bored and homesick and insists that her life in Pyongyang is dull. Kim also develops a strange, maternal affection for students who aren't much younger than she is, and then she misses the lover some more.

Sigh.

By the end of the book, I was almost fascinated by sheer depths of Suki's self-centered wallowing, which not only prevented her from accomplishing anything meaningful in Pyongyang, but kept her from noticing the the bigger picture...Like, you know, the fact that she's fortunate as fuck to be a bored American in North Korea...and that luxury is afforded to her simply because she was born on the right part of the planet....and that most of the 25 million people currently locked inside the prison-nation of North Korea would probably give anything to trade places with her.

I just couldn't take it. This isn't a memoir about North Korea. It's a boring book about the weird relationships and situations that develop out of a 30-something's dry spell abroad. North Korea and Kim's fundamentalist Christian colleagues are the selling point, but they merely function as the backdrop for the tale of Kim's shitty love life. Kim should thank her publisher's marketing team for repackaging this nonsense and spinning it as a North Korean memoir.

There really is no excuse for this, especially when books like Comrades and Strangers: Behind the Closed Doors of North Korea or Only Beautiful, Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea prove that foreigners living in Pyongyang can come away with decent stories to tell.

This book was just like being told a boring story by someone I don't like. I didn't care, and I just wanted it to end.

UGH.

[J.L. Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sometimes the longer you are inside a prison, the harder it is to fathom what is possible beyond its walls.”



I appreciated the insights in Suki Kim’s Without You, There is No Us; however, it is her relationship with her students which resonates most strongly. The way she views them and their potential is inextricably linked to their circumstance as citizens of North Korea. It is clear that she cares deeply for them, but there are things she can’t share with them. An interesting aspect of their behavior is how quickly they resort to lying to cover the vast gaps in their knowledge and experience of the world. By the end of the book, you end up understanding why that is their go-to response. Backing up assertions of North Korean superiority with wild and patently false evidence shows how far removed they are from any fact-based reality. This is not so different than their ideas about dating which Kim explores. Their inexperience and naivety about dating seems almost childlike, but it is rooted in that same mindset which cedes control of their decisions to someone else.

As an emotional gauge on her students, Suki’s loneliness while teaching in North Korea establishes a link to students who have been ripped from family and friends to attend school (and who have virtually no contact with those loved ones during their studies). While this is primarily more of an investigative journalist piece (with Kim undercover as a missionary teaching English), there are elements of memoir as well and I think they complement each other here. A fact-based approach wouldn’t have offered the same depth of feeling which Kim provides. There will always be questions about what Kim chose to discuss (and why, for instance, the North Korean government allows foreign missionaries to teach their students in the first place), but I will be thinking more about how North Koreans view their world. Very interesting read!



Great to spend some time with Suki Kim after her wonderful presentation at the University of Wyoming! I made introductions for her event and got to ask a few questions.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personal Review .......and Audiobook Review of “Without You There Is No Us”

Personal first: News about my surgery yesterday

I’m in bed recovering - can’t see well out of my right eye from swelling - but no major pain - from Mohs surgery. The cancer cells are gone - but because there was a lot of those cancer suckers - I’ll be having a minimum of 3 more surgeries.

I had caught the skin cancer early- but it was growing fast — it had spread substantially from the day I was diagnosed to the day I had surgery. It took 4 rounds of cutting — and my doctor was known for usually getting all the cancer in one or two cuts. There was a lot more than any of us expected.... however she was kind - and overall terrific in every way .... making me as comfortable as possible. Her assistant Ron was just as helpful and great.

I was then sent to see a plastic surgeon, Dr. Follmar. I had not wanted to see my face and nose when Dr. Ho, of Dermatology, asked if I wanted to see it before the bandages went on. NO .... clearly no!
However, Dr. Follmar, who I saw at 5pm after an already long day with Dr. Ho, said I ‘had’ to see the photos of my face on the computer screen in order to discuss my options. My nose looks like the Grand Canyon— one very big bloody hole..... down to cartilage.
After getting the run down plan - while in complete shock - not depressed - just shocked - as all this is very surreal - the doctor tells me that in November- he would not suggest I even enter a coffee shop... ( in other words I’ll be hiding out at home for a month until the second surgery).....but the second surgery ... first week in Dec. will have me looking better ‘enough’.
Paul and I will still be able to leave for our 39th wedding anniversary vacation- Paul will be taking the stitches out in Hawaii instead of the doctor doing it in his office.
I’ll see the doctor when we return....

Think “WONDER”. *Augie*.....The movie WONDER opens in November.... the child actor is my inspiration! My face won’t ever look the same, but I’m grateful ‘not’ to have cancer cells having a picnic in my nose.
And as the little boy says in the movie trailer.... “it takes a lot of work to look this good”.

I’ll be having a 3rd surgery later, too, .... possibly more.... but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m looking at at least a year process of trying to put my face & nose back to normal - scars will be permanent.....but hopefully fad nice. If they are still bad after three needed surgeries- there are possible other options: cosmetic surgery and or medical tattoo work (have you heard of such a thing?) Our hospital has a doctor who specializes in it I’m told. ( different than the type of tattoo work that our daughter does)

So.... THANK YOU FOR READING THE ABOVE ..... I know I said I was going to retire from writing reviews- or write short abbreviated ones - that didn’t pan out so well. Still working towards cutting back on ‘sitting-online-time’.

I’m still dealing with bone loss and medication for that. The skin cancer puts a wrench into my serious workout plan with the newly hired physical trainer.... which was to help with bone building....which may have been too intense anyway: back to old farts senior slower weight resistance bone density building. Rome wasn’t built in a day - I can’t be expected to build my hollow nose and hollow bones all at the same time....one brick at a time!

ABOUT THIS BOOK — “Without You, There is No Me”, by Suki Kim - narrated by Janet Song —�- Janet Song has a perfect believable speaking voice.
THE AUDIOBOOK IS FASCINATING & FRIGHTENING.....thank you Connie for reading this before me. Your review inspire me to read it..
..... Esil... I’m sure you’d like this one!

Suki Kim taught English in North Korea .... she spent a year teaching in a private school to privileged *elite* men ages 19 to 21. The school, run by the missionaries was in the mountains, on the fringes of P’yŏngyang— the capital of North Korea.

Suki Kim took a dangerous risk - taking her own private notes, when she was teaching English. Had her journals been found- I hate to imagine what might have happened to her.
Suki - herself was born in North Korea. She escaped to South Korea before the war broke out when she was just a child. Soon after she and her family immigrated to the United States. As a journalist and writer Suki said - “you’d think I’d be most interested in packing books” when preparing to leave America for North Korea— but that was last on her mind because she needed essentials: sanitary napkins, ibuprofen, vitamins, and as many protein bars she could stuff in her suitcase.

Suki Kim gives us an eye view into North Korea through the relationships she had with her students. The young men were not only learning English — they were teaching Suki - in an indirect way - the truth about their lives. These boys had no exposure to the outside world yet their belief was that their country is THE BEST in the world. These boys not only knew nothing about dating girls - they new nothing of the internet.
Some of the students asked questions about America—but Suki had to be very careful. She wasn’t sure if she was being tested and if she answered incorrectly she could’ve been turned over to the faculty.

Suki Kim’s compassion and empathy towards her students ‘seemed’ like it was enough to open up the young men’s thinking - without getting punished herself —
She was brave. This story is incredible yet it’s still very devastating to realize the lack of freedom people and North Korea really have.

A very interesting book - thought provoking- compelling - even some humor!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

[Roxane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book about a woman who spends a few months teaching in North Korea. The challenge I had is that it’s not quite a memoir and it’s not quite investigative journalism. Given this book’s backstory of the publisher trying to bill this as memoir I don’t envy the writer’s task in trying to make this Book something it wasn’t intended to be. At times the prose feels too literal. This happened and that happened and this is how I was feeling. I wish there has been either more analysis or more of the personal story developed. I did enjoy learning more about North Korea. Glad I read this.

[BlackOxford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eastern Gossip

Here are my questions, none of which are answered by the author: Why on earth would North Korea allow Christian missionaries to teach at a military college? Indeed why let them into the country at all since their avowed mission in life (the clue is in the name) is to proselytise the natives? What's the real motive?

Further, why would said missionaries seek or accept such an assignment knowing that they would be stopped on in one way or another the moment they engaged in any talk of the Lord? What did they hope to gain? Are they playing the long game?

Finally, knowing that whatever latitude they were given by the North Koreans was dependent on compliant behaviour and discretion, what possessed the missionaries to allow an undercover journalist to slip through their vetting? The task was teaching English after all. Surely one or two bona fide members of the tribe had acceptable qualifications. Why not use trusted members of the team?

Answers to these would have been at least as interesting as her rapportage, even if demanding a bit more investigativeness on her part. Or perhaps I'm wrong. Who knows, could be wheels within eccentric wheels to consider here.

However, presuming there is no larger picture and given the circumstances of her arrival and job in North Korea, Suki Kim's apparent intention and status hardly put her in a dangerous position. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut, which she generally did, and teach young men some grammar. There's no John le Carre sub-plot of secrets sought or officials traduced. For six months she walked from Point A to Point B on the campus, with the occasional guided tour to some nondescript 'sights' (mostly just sites it seems).

And there is certainly nothing new in what she has to report. On the scale of North Korean horror stories, hers might rate 1 out of a magnitude 10. Mostly she gossips about the social discipline exhibited by her pupils. That and their lack of trivial cultural knowledge, for example about the latest Harry Potter film. Who on the planet with the least interest in North Korea doesn't know that the Internet is highly restricted and censored? Any existential detail she provides is based almost solely on her classroom interactions, which are probably not that different from the highly regimented educational regimes in South Korea or Japan.

So the only real consequences of Suki Kim's publicised 'investigation' are likely to be the reduced credibility of the missionaries and the increased political vulnerability of her former students. North Korean undoubtedly will remain as dismal and as mad as it has been. Having said that, I like gossip as much as anyone. So I hard a hard time putting it down. I feel shame.

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Until then I had hoped that perhaps I could change one student, open up one path of understanding. But what kind of a future did I envision for the one student I reached? Opening up this country would mean sacrificing these lives. Opening up this country would mean the blood of my beautiful students. I recalled Ji-hoon's face and tried not to think of the terrible consequences, and that night, and many nights afterward, passed like this in Pyongyang. This particular night there was an endless, mournful rain. Fear can creep up on you anywhere, but when it does in North Korea it is a lonely feeling. pg. 98

This is a stunning, riveting, powerful book by Suki Kim. A heart-pounding book of stellar investigative journalism.

Let's cover the main points I want to make first. Obviously, it's harder for me to review non-fiction books since any criticism is criticism of the author. It's more direct. In fiction you are criticizing characters, and there is a barrier between you and the author, but in non-fiction that is not the case. I also receive most of my author comments on my reviews in non-fiction. Positive and negative. So. It's hard to review non-fiction, but it has to be done, of course.

POINT NUMBER ONE: INTELLIGENCE:

Suki Kim is a very intelligent person. Her way of dealing with North Korea, North Koreans and the Christian missionaries she's embedded with is smart. I can't really convey to you how fiercely intelligent she is. You are always on edge and worried because she is in hostile enemy territory, and if the North Koreans found out what she was doing - writing a book, an exposé written from a unique perspective on a hidden world, as only SHE can write it - she could be thrown in a gulag or executed or held hostage by North Korea. Her intelligence shines from every page and I'm sorry to say not many (if any!) others in the book can match it.


POINT NUMBER TWO: STRENGTH:

Suki Kim is a strong and powerful person. I honestly have no idea how she was able to do this job. TWICE. How she held it together. How she kept going. The conditions in North Korea are awful. The food is terrible. Living in a place where you are constantly watched, monitored, and recorded is soul-crushing.

He had been to villages in China where as many as ten people slept in one room, where three brothers only owned two pairs of pants and took turns wearing them, yet this was the worst place he had ever experienced. I asked him why.

"There's no freedom," he sighed. "They are watching us constantly. I know they are recording everything we say and keeping files on us, and I feel really bad all the time. I just don't feel comfortable here. It's not about the terrible food and the material lack of everything. It's the basic humanity. It's missing here." pg. 224

But more than that, more stunning than that, is her strength in dealing with these students. She loves them. She loves them. On some level she longs to teach them about the world outside of North Korea. About everything in life they have been denied. She wants to teach them that life doesn't have to be like this. But she can't. It's heart-wrenchingly painful. And if she DID teach them that, if they actually ever really grasped what the truth was, they would be killed. So she's walking a fine line here. She loves her students and wants what is best for them, and that includes not telling them anything that will get them murdered later. It's INSANE. I don't know how she got through this twice. Two semesters. It's absolutely some of the most painful stuff I've ever read about.

I'm in awe of Suki Kim's strength.


POINT NUMBER THREE: EMOTIONS

This book tore my heart out and stomped on it. I'm not someone who gets easily moved by books. I think a lot of people (normal people) would cry while reading this. It's absolutely devastating.

NOT because Suki Kim writes in an emotional, maudlin, overwrought way. She does not. She is an excellent writer. She is very fierce, as well. She never gets sappy or unnecessarily dramatic.

She doesn't need to. The reality is dramatic enough.

There was no mercy here. I knew that, and yet each time it was confirmed I found myself surprised all over again.

On the last evening, the students were for the first time given permission to join us after dinner in the cafeteria, where we sang and performed skits. It lasted about half an hour, and after the first twenty minutes, a few of the counterparts showed up. Their presence meant time was running out, and the students became visibly tense. Some of the boys made eye contact with me and did not look away; that was all they could do. When nothing can be expressed openly, you become quite good at interpreting silence. And I read theirs as they read mine.

For days, they had been teaching me a song. It was the least nationalistic song I had heard there, and when I told them I loved it, they were delighted and offered to teach it to me. Together, we translated the lyrics:

Dandelions blooming in the hills of my hometown,
Those times when I played flying a white kite,
Ah, that blue sky I saw as a child,
Why didn't I know then that was the pride of my motherland?

That evening I sang it with them, in English, then in Korean. It was the only way I could show them that I loved them and would miss them dearly. When I began crying, which I could no longer help, some of them whispered, Teacher, smile please. I kept hearing those words: Teacher, smile please. I wondered what they would say if they could speak freely, and this wondering made me cry more, and I worried that the counterparts would notice and would not like it.

The last thing we were allowed to do together was pose for group photos. For the sake of efficiency, the teachers were seated in a single row, and each class of students took turns standing behind them, forming three rows. After a class had been photographed, the students in that group were to shake hands with the teachers and make room for the next group, then return to their dorm immediately. I heard my class calling out "Sophomores first!" because they knew that the students who had their photos taken last would get to be with the teachers the longest. One very tall student stood behind me during the photo session, and no matter how much the teacher taking the photo demanded that he move to the back row, he would not budge. When I turned around to meet his eyes, he mumbled, "Thank you and goodbye, Teacher," and I realized he had stuck to his spot just to tell me that. When the photographer told him yet again to move, I nodded, my eyes on his, hoping he knew I understood him, and it was only then that he moved. Later the teacher who took the photos told me that all the students wanted to stand close to their teachers. Being physically near them was the most they could do to show their love.

I was as speechless as my students. I could not say, as I shook hands with each of them, Leave this wretched place. Leave your wretched Great Leader. Leave it, or shake it all up. Please do something. Instead I cried and cried, and I smiled. And each student met my eyes and smiled in return. And that was our goodbye. Some still said, "We see you off tomorrow, Teacher." I wanted them to claim their own actions by saying "I" instead of "we," but here there was no "I." Even "we" did not exist without the permission of their Great Leader. As they stood in their units and marched back to their dormitories that evening, they bellowed out the song I had come to know best, as if to remind us and themselves to whom they really belonged:

Without you, there is no us.

That night, I looked out my window at the student dormitory, but it was completely dark, as though they had all instantly fallen asleep at the same time. But we had been together for a month by then, so even buried in that darkness, behind those opaque windows, each one was special and known to me.

pg. 153.

It will be hard to read this book and not tear up. And not because Kim is jerking you around.

At one point she is looking at her students and she's wishing they could simply have fresh milk. That they could have heat, and not wearing heavy winter coats in the classroom. Beyond trying to free their minds, she has basic wishes for her students like "being well-nourished" and "having access to good medical care" that are impossible under this regime. AND THESE ARE THE ELITE. It's shocking. This is the most prestigious "university" in the country and she can't hold the chalk because her hands are numb from the freezing cold. Everyone is wearing heavy coats in her class (there's a picture in the book).

Another stunning, heartrending scene is when she and one of her Christian missionary colleagues are traveling by bus to a tourist site, and they pass "normal" North Koreans, those who are not in the 1% elite that Suki Kim has been teaching. The differences are shocking. The gaunt, hunched, short figures who are a horrible color (due to constant sun exposure and years and decades of hard labor and malnutrition) stun her and Katie into silence. As horrific as her school is, what lies outside is infinitely worse. But she only catches glimpses of this world when she is taken by her "minders" on school-approved field trips. They do their best to hide this from Suki Kim.

Suki Kim's love for her students is powerful and a huge boon to this book. Instead of seeing North Korea as some cold, unfeeling regime, Suki Kim is able to show us the more human face beyond that border. These men are going to be the new leaders of the regime, a regime which teaches its citizens hatred and a desire to murder South Koreans and Americans from birth. A regime which teaches its citizens to constantly monitor and tattletale on everyone around them from birth, with no loyalty to anyone - even your own family - only loyalty to The Great Leader. It's a very disturbing, fucked-up, 1984 country. But Suki Kim is doing the world a humongous favor by showing this human face. Her students are not yet fully formed. She can still connect to them. They are still young enough and innocent enough to love and admire her.


POINT FOUR: SOUTH KOREAN

Suki Kim also has a huge advantage of being South Korean. This shapes and influences her experiences in North Korea greatly. Her colleagues with a "white face" are treated a lot differently, and although sometimes Suki Kim's South Korean heritage leads to problems, it actually opens a lot of doors and conversations to her that would be closed if she were white. The students relate to her in a different and more personal way because she is from South Korea. She gets into a lot of places her white colleagues cannot because she is Korean. We are very lucky and should be thankful that Suki Kim was able to make this journey and travel back with her experiences and write about them. Especially from such a hugely intelligent and strong writer.


POINT FIVE: HUMOR

There's not a lot to laugh about in this book. It is not a funny book. The topics Suki Kim is covering here are not humorous.

HOWEVER. Along with Suki Kim's formidable intelligence comes a subtle, dry, black, cynical sense of humor. This peeks out rarely. But when it did peek out sometimes I laughed out loud. THAT'S NOT TO SAY THIS IS A FUNNY BOOK. It's not. But if you share Suki Kim's extremely black and cynical dry sense of humor, she might make you laugh once or twice. Even when you think there is nothing you could possibly be laughing about.


ANYTHING NEGATIVE TO SAY, CARMEN?

As you can tell, I think this book is AMAZING. But I do have one criticism: it's about Suki Kim's heaping scorn and disdain on the Christian missionaries she is embedded in North Korea with.

On one hand, I sympathize with her. She is an atheist. She doesn't believe in anything Christianity preaches on a theological level. Some of the missionaries she's on the trip with are not the brightest. One Googles every single person in the group from North Korea while in North Korea, even though he's been told all activity is monitored and watched. One is unaware North Korea has gulags. o.O Suki Kim also fights them sometimes. She gets into two big knock-down fights. One is with Ruth about heaven. Remember, Suki Kim is posing as a Christian.

"Because, Suki, this life here is temporary. They will be received by Him in heaven."

I knew that I should keep quiet and leave before she went any further, but in that moment I felt an incredible wave of anger. I felt she was delegitimizing the suffering of the people of North Korea. Weeks of keeping silent had finally become too much for me, and I lost control.

"So you are saying that it's okay for North Koreans to rot in gulags because in your estimation it isn't real?" Ruth seemed taken aback, but I continued. "I think this 'temporary' life of yours being a schoolteacher in a nice dormitory for a semester before you get back home to New Zealand is a different kind of 'temporary' life than the lives of these people, who are basically slaves to their regime. If the eternal life waiting for them in heaven is so amazing, should the millions who are suffering here just commit mass suicide? Why don't you check out a gulag and then dare to tell me that it's temporary?"

Almost as soon as I spoke the words, I regretted them. I knew that I had been unnecessarily harsh, but the chasm between us felt like an abyss. pg. 228

She gets in her second drag-out fight when she wants to show the class Harry Potter and the Christians fight tooth and nail because they think Harry Potter is from the devil. I understand her pain and frustration. You could say, "Who cares?" but they are only allowed to show the students ONE FILM A YEAR. And it has to be approved. The Christians are insistent about showing Chronicles of Narnia. What would be a dumb fight about a movie in the U.S. of A. becomes a hugely tearful and emotional battle for Suki Kim given her students and their investment in what rumors they've heard about Harry Potter.

Other than that, she tries to keep her mouth shut and keep out of the Christians way. They don't know she's an atheist. They think she's there to spread the word of Jesus. There were times I was SURE she was going to be busted. One is when she doesn't recognize 1 Corinthians 13:4-13, which honestly I had thought everyone - even non-Christians - were familiar with since it is SO pervasive.

The other time I thought she was going to be busted is when a missionary makes some comment to her about taking communion.

I thought her battles with them that I mentioned above were justified and I shared her anger and frustration. It also really bothered me when they go on a field trip to a Buddhist temple and the Christians refuse to even enter it. This kind of fear of being "tainted" by non-Christian religions is something that deeply disturbs me. Someone I know and love who is an evangelical Christian refused to take a World Religions Class. REFUSED. As if learning about other religions was an act offensive to Jesus, or - perhaps even more scary - something tempting and appealing that might lure him away from Jesus's arms. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. So I know how baffling and frustrating evangelical Christians can be. It can reach insane levels of ridiculousness.

But my main point here is how Suki Kim views the Christians: as fucking idiots that she lumps in with the North Koreans CONSTANTLY. She sees both Christians and North Koreans as morons who believe lies. Both worship an unseen entity who is said to be all-powerful. Both are gullible idiots who believe the most outrageous things because someone told them to. Suki Kim doesn't use the term "idiots," but that's basically what she's getting at and she does it ALL THE TIME.

I'm not criticizing her because I'm like "PRAISE JESUS" or because I'm like "HOW DARE YOU INSULT CHRISTIANS!" I can understand her frustrations with evangelical Christianity. However, I think she was being dismissive and disrespectful here. I do not think people who follow Christ are akin to people who follow Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, or Kim Il-sung. It's insulting and reductionist to imply this. It just is: I don't care whether you are a Christian or an atheist reading this book. The comparisons are not just and her palpable disgust with Christians really disturbed me. These people are risking their lives for something they believe in. And I personally don't believe in missionary work. But for fuck's sake, you are embedded in hostile enemy territory with these people. They are risking their lives with you. I wish she had shown more compassion and respect.

I'm the kind of person who thinks just because you are an atheist does not mean you have to be snide and cruel to Christians, but I know some atheists are very full of anger and hatred. It's just the truth. I thought it was uncalled for here, even though obviously the people she were with were not only Christian, but dumber than Suki Kim. A bad combination. Still. Given the circumstances, her likening Christian sheep with North Korean sheep at every opportunity bugged me a lot.


TL;DR SURPRISINGLY AMAZING BOOK. I have to give Suki Kim major respect and applause for this stunning non-fiction book and stellar, heartrending piece of investigative journalism. Well done.

I didn't expect to like this that much because I had already read Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea which was so amazing. "Nothing can top this," I thought to myself. But Suki Kim comes at North Korean from a totally different angle from Demick, and she shines. Her work shines. Her biting commentary and fierce intelligence beams from every single page.

Smart, sharp, insightful, edge-of-your-seat writing from a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will never be replicated.

Do yourself a favor: pick this book up. You won't regret it.

[EMMA · Rating 4 out of 5]

در اینجا ما با یه کتاب کاملا متفاوت درباره کره شمالی روبرو هستیم. همیشه ما در کتابهای کره شمالی داریم میخونیم که یه عده فرار کردن بخاطر فقر و مشکلات سیاسی و کتاب به روایت مشکلاتشون به هنگام رسیدن مقصد میپردازه و یکم هم درباره زندگی که در کره شمالی داشتن میپردازه. اکثر کتابها هم قدیمیه مثلا واسه دهه نود میلادی اینا هستش یعنی داره اتفاقات اون موقع روایات میکنه. تنها کتابایی که درباره زندگی یکی از افراد الیت حکومت خوندم "رهبر عزیز" بود که اونم بیشتر کتاب در مورد این بود که فرد چطوری به کره جنوبی میرسه و کتاب "روح گریان من" که در مورد یه جاسوس بود که اونم شرح اتفاقاتاش به خیلی سال پیش برمیگرده.
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این کتاب با این موضوع شروع میشه که یه عده مبلغ مسیحی تصمیم میگیرن که یه دانشگاه در کره شمالی،پیونگ یانگ، بزنن و کلیسا تمامی هزینه های دانشگاه رو میده و مبلغین مذهبی تصمیم میگیرن که برن اینجا تدریس کنند. نویسنده با اینکه مبلغ مسیحی نبوده خودشو مبلغ مسیحی جا میزنه و به این دانشگاه میره برای تدریس زبان انگلیسی. نویسنده خودش متولد کره جنوبی و بزرگ شده آمریکاست. که در این کتاب به این میپردازه که چه چیزایی دیده.
ما در اینجا با قشر الیت یا ترجمه شده آقازاده روبرو هستیم که در بهترین دانشگاه کره شمالی مشغول تحصیل هستند. در اینجا شایان به ذکر است که آقازاده های اینا به اندازه آقازاده های کشور اسمشو نبر لاشخور نیستند و واقعا کشورشونو دوست دارند البته خب طبق تعلیمات شستشوی مغزی حکومت بودند و خیلی دور از انتظار نیست. سوال اینجاست چرا آقازاده های کشور اسمشو نبر تحت چنین تعلیماتی نبودند و فقط از خون مردم تغذیه کردند؟
در کتاب ما به یه سری شباهت میان افراد مسیحی و کره شمالی برمیخوریم. اینکه چطور هر دو گروه شستشوی مغزی شدند. مردم کره شمالی توسط حکومت شستشوی مغزی شدند و همین باعث شده رهبر خودشونو به عنوان خدا قبول کنن و افراد مسیحی هم توسط کلیسا که تونستن به خدا و مسیح اعتقاد پیدا کنن. در کتاب ما میخونیم که مبلغین مسیحی اجازه پخش فیلم هری پاتر نمیدن چون از نظرشون این فیلم شیطانیه!!! یعنی چیزی که به دانشجویان تدریس میشه از دو فیلتر رد میشه یکی ناظرین کره شمالی و دومی مسیحیها!! خب در ادامه به مشکلات آموزش میپردازه اینکه همش برق قطع میشه یا دانشجویان چیزی از تکنولوژی نمیدونن یا اینکه دسترسیشون به اینترنت چقدر محدوده و از این موارد.
شما ببین این برگزیدگان جامعه هستند داره اینطور باهاشون رفتار میشه دیگه ببین مردم عادی چه زندگی دارن :|
اشاره های کوچکی به اردوگاه های اجبار و مشکلات کشور میشه.
درسته این کتاب به روایات پناهجوها نمیپردازه ولی مثل اون مردک ماله کش نویسنده کتاب "نیم دانگ پیونگ یانگ" نمیاد بگه وای تقصیر امریکاست مردم این همه بدبختن و حکومت سگ پدرشون هیچ تقصیری نداره.
ستاره دادن به ابن کتاب خیلی سخته،چرا؟
روایاتهای زیادی و جدیدی از کره شمالی نقل میکنه و نحوه روایاتشو هم دوست داشتم چون به اندازه کافی به مسائل پرداخته بود. ولی مشکل اینجا بود دانشجوهای الیت اون دانشگاه دوست داشت، شاید بخاطر این بود خودش هم کره ایی بود؟؟ یعنی فکر کن شما بری دانشگاه امام صادق بعد دانشجوهاشو دوست داشته باشی!!! خب نمیشه واقعا!!!! این سانتی مال بازیها بنظرم باعث نمیشه چیزی عوض بشه!
البته یه مسئله ایی هم هست طرف فقط چند ماه اونجا زندگی کرده بود و مزه زندگی واقعی در اون کشور نچشیده بود شاید اگه اونجا همه عمرش زندگی میکرد خشمش باعث میشد که دیگه به اون دانشجوها به چشم یه موجود بیگناه نگاه نکنه، البته خب یه نکته دیگه هم هست دسترسی به اطلاعات در اونجا خیلی سخته ولی در کشور اسمشو نبر اینترنت داریم درسته پرسرعت نیست و فیلتره ولی میشه استفاده کرد ازش. پس بنظرم دارم قیاس مع الفارق انجام میدم.
مسئله بعدی که اشاره میشه بهش بحث مرد سالاری هستش، قسمت جالبش اینجاست در کره شمالی و کشور اسمشو نبر بالاترین مقامی که زن میتونه بهش برسه مادر بودنه!!! یعنی زن باید بشینه خونه و فقط بچه بزاد. در هر دو کشور ما شاهد این هستیم که به زنها چه ظلمی میشه و اینکه چقدر در جامعه حضور کمی دارند.
مسئله بعدی، محدود بودن روابط دختر و پسر هست. سوال، کره شمالی که دین اسلام ندارد پس چرا حکومت مانع روابط دختر و پسر میشه؟!! در کشور اسمشو نبر این روابط تحت روایات قرآن گناه نامیده میشه، ولی در کشور کره شمالی که به هیچ خدایی اعتقاد ندارند. چرا در حکومتهای توتالتیر این محدودیتها اعمال میشه؟
چرا در این کشورها همه سعی بر این است که باید کاملا بر خود متکا بود و باید از تولیدات داخل حمایت کرد؟ و بازار آزاد در این کشورها جایگاهی نداره؟ و همه چی تحت نظارت حکومت مرکزی است؟
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کتاب خوبی بود اما نویسنده یکم احساساتیش کرده بود و همونطور که میدونید هیچ کروم از کتابهای کره شمالی تمام واقعیت را نمیگن پس دنبال دنبال تمام واقعیت نباشید. در کل اگه به داستانهای کره شمالی علاقه دارید خوندنش خالی از لطف نیست.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was some incredible and dangerous reporting. Suki Kim pretended to be a Christian missionary so she could teach English at a prestigious university in North Korea. Yeah, that's right — she went undercover in the country that hates Westerners and puts political prisoners in a gulag.

North Korea is such a fascinating place. Every book I read about that regime only feeds my curiosity. This memoir was a nice addition to the field because of Kim's reporting. She took extensive notes during her stay, but she had to do it secretly because her evangelical colleagues thought she was just a novelist who wanted to teach.

Kim taught at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) for two semesters in 2011. The school was funded by missionaries, even though the teachers were not allowed to discuss religion or Christianity with the locals. Many of Kim's students came from elite families and spoke good English, but they were suspicious of foreigners. Kim was born in South Korea, and she wrote that her ability to speak Korean helped her win the trust of some of her college students.

Kim and her fellow teachers were constantly monitored and followed wherever they went, and they were only allowed to leave the campus when given special permission. Even visits to historical sites were tightly controlled outings, with no freedom of movement or speech. Kim said the college was like a prison, and she felt very isolated and lonely during her time there.

"Time there seemed to pass differently. When you are shut off from the world, every day is exactly the same as the one before. This sameness has a way of wearing down your soul until you become nothing but a breathing, toiling, consuming thing that awakens to the sun and sleeps at the dawning of the dark. The emptiness runs deep, deeper with each slowing day, and you become increasingly invisible and inconsequential. That's how I felt at times, a tiny insect circling itself, only to continue, and continue. There, in that relentless vacuum, nothing moved. No news came in or out. No phone calls to or from anyone. No emails, no letters, no ideas not prescribed by the regime ... Locked in that prison disguised as a campus in an empty Pyongyang suburb, heavily guarded around the clock, all we had was one another."

The book is told in mostly chronological order of Kim's time at the school, with some personal flashbacks and historical details of Korea. The teachers were given a long list of rules to follow while in North Korea. Things like: Don't discuss politics. Don't brag about your own culture. Don't say anything negative about Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il. Don't wear jeans or flip-flops. Don't pray at meals. Don't start conversations with the locals. Don't ask questions about the government. Also, bring lots of flashlights and batteries because the electricity is frequently out.

Suki Kim was nervous when she met her students, and was always anxious that she would slip up and say something she shouldn't. Each assignment she created had to be approved by the local administration, which caused more anxiety.

It turned out that Kim was in North Korea at an interesting time. The other universities were all shut down and the students were sent to do construction work. However, the elite students at PUST were exempt from this manual labor, for some reason. And then, at the very end of the author's stay in Pyongyang, Kim Jong-il died, which caused much grief for her students. At the time, she hoped that things would improve for the citizens of North Korea, but she was also pessimistic about the fierce control of the regime.

"Being in North Korea was profoundly depressing. There was no other way of putting it. The sealed border was not just at the 38th parallel, but everywhere, in each person's heart, blocking the past and chocking off the future. As much as I loved those boys, or because of it, I was becoming convinced that the wall between us was impossible to break down, and not only that, it was permanent."

This memoir is not perfect; Kim's comments about her boyfriend were distracting, and she would constantly waver between trying to teach her students about the outside world, and then fearing that anything she told them would put them in danger. The back-and-forth about sharing Western ideas and then worrying for the kids happened a few too many times.

But overall, this was a fascinating read. I appreciated that she shared her own family's story and what her mother experienced when the Korean war started. Kim also included good details about Korean culture and history, which provided context for what she experienced there.

In the end, she knew her book would anger the regime and the people who worked at PUST. In her author's note, she wrote that she felt an obligation to tell the "stark truth" about North Korea, and she hopes that the lives of its people will one day improve. I would highly recommend this memoir.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have previously read other books on North Korea, one that centered on the horrible conditions in the gulags, but this book centers on the schooling of the sons of the elite. The author, whose family had come from South Korea, enters the country of North Korea as a teacher, part of the Christian group that was allowed to build and fully support this school. They were allowed to build this school because it cost the government absolutely nothing and the teachers were given strict mandates. Everything they taught had to be vetted by their minders, they were only allowed off the campus on fully supervised and planned trips.

This book did a good job holding my interest and I felt I received a very thorough grasp of how this country is raising their children. Even those considered elite, had little freedom of thought or action. There is no I in North Korea only we, individuality is thoroughly stamped out, and the little they receive is all due to their wonderful leader. They have little knowledge of the rest of the world and what they do receive is of course biased in their countries favor. What was chilling was how they are taught to hate the Imperialistic West and South Korea. Of course they already hate Japan from the time of the occupation. They are taught to be ever ready for war, that they can be attacked at any time.

There is quite alot of information in this book, but it was hard to dislike these boys especially after one gets to learn about other sides of their personalities. Easy to feel sorry for them and others less well off in this country, but they are oh so dangerous in their absolute obedience and absolute devotion to their leader.

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why should you read this even if you have read other books about the horrific situation in North Korea?

This book focuses upon what living in this country does to the psyche of its inhabitants. Other books look at the material deprivations of its people. Other books look at those attempting to defect. Here we look at one woman who lived with the sons of the top elite. She was to be their teacher. She tried to reach out to them, first to understand them. Trust and friendship had to be allowed to grow if she could ever make a difference in their lives. Her aim in taking this job was two-fold. She sought to better understand her own Korean heritage and she endeavored to kindle in them a radically new way of looking at life. What the book so amazingly well drives home is the extent to which life in North Korea warps how people think. The book’s prime focus is less about things that are lacking than about the psychological climate there. I thought I understood this before I picked up the book, but the author shows you that our western mindset is so different we can scarcely understand their way of thinking.

The author is a talented writer. Many authors have important messages to convey but they lack the ability to get the message across both coherently and engagingly. She does. She makes the reader care. Her empathy for her students and her intelligent analysis of why they think and behave as they do make this a remarkable book. The book becomes personal. She is willing to reveal the mistakes she made as the students’ teacher.

These are the reasons you should pick up this book.

Suki Kim taught English for two terms, July through December 2011 at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). I admire what this woman has done. She took great risks. What she focuses upon is important. While reading, I never wanted to put it down. I highly recommend it.

Janet Song narrates the audiobook excellently. She speaks clearly and engagingly and at a perfect speed. I could not distinguish the Korean names, but this never became a problem. I have given the narration five stars.



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*Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim 5 stars
*War Trash by Ha Jin 5 stars
*A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa 4 stars
*Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick 4 stars
*The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom by Blaine Harden 4 stars
*Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden 3 stars

[Jessica]

I scored this from a Goodreads Giveaway, which is basically the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me in my life, and I'm pretty depressed that I can't write a rave review since I assume this means no publishers will ever send me a free ARC again.

Oh well.

All the other readers on here loved this and I don't think it's a bad book by any means, but it just wasn't for me. I was excited to read it since I know nothing about North Korea, but I failed to notice the clear and accurate label on the book's cover: "A Memoir."

I, unlike the other 99% of the literate American public, do not, for the most part, enjoy memoirs at all. I wanted this book to be much more of a journalist's account than an introspective, soul-baring, subjective story interweaving the author's family history, love life, and personal emotions into a narrative of her time teaching English to boys in North Korea. In fact, writing this as a memoir makes a lot of sense, since Kim's access to North Korea is necessarily very limited and if it were just the hard facts of what she saw there it really wouldn't be enough for a book. There were all these basic things that weren't well explained -- like why these kids are learning English if they're not allowed to leave the country, and how the missionaries got this gig teaching at the school in the first place -- but I guess that makes sense since Kim was prohibited from finding out much about what was going on. Obviously, she wasn't allowed to leave the compound and wander unsupervised around the country, so her view of what it's like there was extremely circumscribed.

So I do understand the decision to focus on her personal feelings about the students, her homesickness, her Korean family's experience during and after the war, and -- to a lesser extent -- her romantic situation, and I see that most readers would find this engaging, but I personally didn't. Kim is likable enough and the memoiry parts are perfectly reasonable to include, and would no doubt appeal to many readers. But simply put, I am an asshole and I'm just not that interested in the details of other people's lives, unless there's some special reason to be -- like they live in North Korea? -- which is why I can't stand most memoirs. I was interested in hearing more about Kim's students and in details of what daily life in North Korea is like, and when she was writing about this I was engaged in the book. However, during the portions where she described specific missionaries she worked with, or emailing her boyfriend, I got bored and frustrated and had a hard time going on. I put it down awhile ago, about halfway through, and have been unable to bully myself into into picking it back up.

In sum, I'd recommend this book if you are not some kind of huge jerk who hates memoirs.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Investigative reporter Suki Kim volunteered to teach English writing skills at the all male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in 2011. A group of evangelical Christian missionaries taught English (but not religion) to the sons of the elite North Koreans. The school was surrounded by guards at all times, and no one was allowed to leave campus except for authorized outings. Lesson plans had to be approved in advance, and the teachers were carefully watched by the North Korean minders. Her students were healthy, but she passed many malnourished people during the outings.

The author immigrated from South Korea to the United States as a young teen. Her parents had family members who were lost to them in the North when they fled to the South during the Korean War. Kim has always had a fascination with North Korea, the missing half. Her fluent Korean was useful in listening to gather information, but she was only allowed to talk English to the boys.

The title of the book comes from a song that the boys sang three times daily as they marched. It honored Kim Jong-il when they sang the refrain: "Without you, there is no us, without you, there is no motherland." The boys were subjected to daily propaganda extolling the feats of the leaders of North Korea. Kim found that they had no exposure to the outside world while constantly being fed messages about the great totalitarian regime.

It was a fascinating look at how a dictatorship isolates their subjects from the outside world and totally controls their lives. Kim taught the boys how to write a cover letter for an employment application, and they were totally confused because they do not have a choice of jobs--the North Korean government tells them where they are going to work. Kim also taught a lesson about writing an essay where they supported their opinions. That also was a new experience in a world where the words of the Great Leader are just parroted back.

Kim secretly wrote notes nightly on her laptop, transferred her work to a USB drive that she carried at all times, and then erased her work on her laptop. She changed names and characteristics of the students and teachers. The administrators and teachers at the school were very upset when the book was about to be published, and we have to hope that they are all safe. Kim would have probably been imprisoned if her notes had been found. It gives me shivers to imagine spending six months in such a claustrophobic environment where all your moves are monitored. It's an interesting and upsetting book.

[Phil · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible! Terrible! Terrible! Do not waste the time or money on this one!. Ms. Suki Kim deceives a group of missionaries in accepting her as a Christian English teacher, willing to go to North Korea and teach English to North Korea's affluent's children. Suki deceives the PUST (Pyongyang University of Science and Technology)staff and leadership, PUST staff deceive the North Koreans into believing they are there to teach, and North Korean leadership deceive the kids being taught, that they are educating themselves to a freer life. From midway through the book to the end of the book, all we get is page upon page of Kim's moaning and complaining about "her" circumstances in North Korea. She's depressed, she has no friends, her lover in NYC doesn't really love her, she can't find any good food to eat and on and on it goes for more than 100 pages.

I have read 2 other books on life in North Korea, and . Each of them are much much better than this story.

[Daniel Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

I spent ten days touring North Korea in September 2013, and I feel like I spent much of that ten-day period inside my own head. This is to say that because NK is the kind of place where you can't talk to other people without fear of (at best) constant monitoring or (at worst) violent reprisals, you end up talking to yourself, waging war with your instincts, reining in your questions, locking down your facial expressions, recording everything around you with a polite smile as your spirit wails away in an extended silent scream. For describing this feeling so well, Suki Kim earned my respect. No other book I've read about North Korea has captured so well that sense of psychological isolation and self-censorship -- she completely nails it. She nails, too, the sense of surreal theater that pervades the North Korean landscape, at least for its Western visitors; so much seems rehearsed and staged that one's paranoia about what is real and what is not becomes almost omnipresent. Many readers may find off-putting the author's writing about her private internal struggles with her fellow teachers, her far-off lover, her family history, etc., but I found this personal material a necessary foil for her descriptions of the impersonal environment into which she was thrust. Highly recommended.

[April (Aprilius Maximus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fascinating, well-written and gripping, although the ending was slightly underwhelming.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suki Kim is brave. She went doubly undercover by posing as a Christian teacher so she would be hired by missionaries who were founding the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in North Korea. She knew what she was getting into, her family had been torn apart in the war and grieved of a relative trapped in the North. She had visited there before.

The Missionaries who fund this school are not attempting to proselytize right now. They are playing a longer game. Their vision is that the country cannot last as it is, and when it falls, they will be there to save the people. North Korea, strapped for funds, gets a school, most likely a fee from the mission and money from the teachers who pay for supplies and field trips and whatever else can be nickel and dimed.

The narrative begins with the several pages of rules. While some define water precautions, most show the extreme surveillance she will live with. The wealth and achievements of the world outside run counter to the “Leader” mythology and are not to be spoken of. Students, too, are permitted a narrow range of conversation but random comments reveal that even the elite are not very well off and know little of the world outside.

Trips outside the school (a mountain, an apple farm, a shop, a museum of gifts) are a relief but stressful. Kim sees the pathetic lives of the rural people and notes things that have been staged for their benefit (to the extreme of a church and its service). This heightened her awareness of what might be behind a “surprise” field trip for her students to a zoo.

Since nothing can be directly asked, Kim learns in passing that all other universities in North Korea are closed. The reason is never discovered, but it may be that the young men are needed for a construction project. If it is the only university open in the country it can be surmised that this sad group of the sons of the elite are future leaders.

While the missionaries have a different goal, their project is one advocated by Andrei Lankov in The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. His view is that the fall of the regime will end badly for the country since all the elites have all been compromised. The best soviet satellite’s conversions to the new freedom were those where there were untainted members of the elite or the sub-elite professional class to provide leadership. While this project has a long way to go, it may create some needed perspective for the country when an opening up finally occurs.

This is a short but highly personal page turner. The author has a talk on TEDs that may whet your appetite to read it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/suki_kim_thi...

[KL · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to rate this book.

As a memoir, I'd give it two stars. First off, no one is reading this book to hear about how she misses her non-boyfriend who lives in Brooklyn. We're reading it because we're interested in the DPRK. Additionally, it doesn't come together as a narrative and none of the characters are fleshed out. While she tells some anecdotes about individual students, they are discrete one-offs, and not part of any coherent characterization. The Christian missionaries that she lived with for months are similarly one-dimensional, as are the North Korean monitors. When she tries to be "fancy" with her writing, it comes across as forced. She will use overblown figurative language from time to time, and then abandon it. When she tries to make comparisons or include symbolism to communicate her Deep Thoughts about Christianity, Juche, etc. it similarly feels forced and underdeveloped. Finally, her condescending attitude toward her Christian colleagues and lack of understanding of Christianity was a bit of a turn off. Since her social commentary about American Christianity seemed so superficial and "off," it made be skeptical of her ability to write a book on North Korean Culture. Her description of what it was like to live under constant surveillance, and the way it impacted interpersonal relationships did ring true to me. As a former high school English teacher, I found the passages about teaching essay writing to oddly parallel my experiences teaching those concepts to students who were new to them.

As a first hand account of life in Pyongyang, it is unique. She wasn't able to travel much in the city, or around the country, and when she did it was planned and monitored, but by getting her students to open up, and living there herself, she got a pretty good idea of a slice of it at least. Since most accounts are from defectors who were not part of the elite, this is a good book if you want to know about the sort of education/indoctrination that the future elite of North Korea are receiving, and what sort of youth culture exists in North Korea.

Kim is open about the fact that she went there intending to write a memoir. I tacked on an extra star to my rating because she had the gonads/insanity to go live in North Korea so that the reading public get this book, and because it's got interesting information.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suki Kim spent about seven months teaching English at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) built in an empty suburb of Pyongyang in 2011. She left Pyongyang the day after the news broke of the death of Kim Jong-Il in the Juche Year 100, which counts time on the calendar beginning with the birth of the original Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung.

Kim’s memoir of that time teaching is full of her fears—fears that she will be kicked out of North Korea, fears that she or her friends or family or students will be retaliated against, fears that she will be poisoned by the food, or that she will suffer nutritional deficiencies. All these fears have their basis in the conditions she faced there. She put her life as an American reporter and novelist on hold to teach in North Korea and she needed enough information to make a book or the effort was wasted. What she didn’t count on was the very real impact she was able to have on her students, and they on her.

Kim’s students at PUST were talented college-aged sons of high-level government cadres, hand-picked to attend intensive English-language training. Kim taught Level 1 and Level 4, so she could see the range of skills. Many of the students had excellent English language ability and comprehension, but it was concepts like “internet,” “hip-hop,” “women’s studies,” and “Social Security” that threw them. Gather together all your experience of the culture of Koreans or Korean-Americans that you know and multiply it by a million. The culture is so intensified and distilled in its isolation that college-aged boys sleep with pictures of their mothers and claim their only interest is to serve the Great Leader.

While we begin to imagine what they would think were they ever confronted with the true diversity of American artistic life, Kim brings us back to the harsh reality that these young men have been taught since childhood to abhor and detest the filth of America’s cultural richness. She was startled to discover that the boys sang songs every day both praising their leader but also promising a bloody vengeance on his enemies. When she would point out that she could technically be considered one of those enemies, the boys would look away.

Just before Kim left her post at PUST a student wrote to her a letter expressing his anger at a grade she had given him. When they met to discuss his feelings about her explanation, he thoughtfully remarked that he’d actually cared both about her opinion and about the grade. And he believed she would listen to him. He’d never had a conflict with a teacher before. This may seem a small thing, perhaps, but for seven months work, it is Kim’s great achievement.

We in the United States have grown used to students who actually challenge teachers and who care about their grades. It is true this student was one of the top performers and wanted to keep his class ranking. But he also thought he’d be listened to which is something he may not have expected in his normal schooling and which is why he’d never protested before.

We get used to Suki Kim saying she was afraid to ask questions or speak freely to provoke reactions but in fact she did figure out something about what ordinary North Korean lives were like from her protected and restricted perch. She saw the folks who picnicked on the tarmac of a highway, having travelled halfway from their villages to meet up in a convenient place; she met older folks in Pyongyang suburbs who were friendly and inquisitive until the minders barked at them to “get inside”; she heard the bus drivers for a school outing playing a counterfeit Simon & Garfunkel tape until the minders came back from the hike; she passed on the gossip that rabid dogs fed rat poison were subsequently eaten by the school staff (that really could have/should have been confirmed—it would have made a far better anecdote).

Has it occurred to anyone else that countries divided by foreign powers often don’t work in the way they were intended? I wonder if arbitrary division by uninvolved parties is a good choice. I am thinking now of Korea, but also of the Middle East. It seems to me we should just force them to the bargaining table and insist on some kind of negotiated settlement. The outcomes of divided lands are always so prolonged and damaging. Let the ones doing the negotiating take responsibility for their choices.

What Kim tells us about the knowledge base of North Korean students, even the elite ones at a university for science and technology is truly frightening. They are terrifyingly ignorant of the latest advances in science and technology, and are nationalistic to the point of mania. One cannot see this ending well. That there exists among the old a remembrance of things past is a relief. Hopefully restrictions can be eased before they pass so that some remembered joy can be passed on.

I used to think China ridiculously restrictive and the government overbearing, but now I see China as the wild and uncontrollable environment it really was. North Korea is small enough to manage the control—it is surely a test case for how dictatorial control works and how it doesn’t. It should be pointed out that PUST was a school set up by Christian ministries and although they were not allowed to overtly preach a Christian message, they still worshipped among themselves while they were there. Kim makes the point more than once that the kind of worship of the Great Leader paralleled in unattractive ways the worship of these loyal followers for their version of Christianity. Both groups were equally close-minded about other choices, other paths.

Thanks to Suki Kim for doing what we couldn’t or wouldn’t. Her notes from the other side add to growing evidence and shore up earlier reports that we found hard to believe.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suki Kim’s long interest in and personal connection to North Korea make this memoir of the time she spent there teaching English to college students especially poignant and riveting. She writes with the skill of an investigative journalist and the heart of someone recounting a heartbreaking story about relatives. Though she moved to America as a child, Kim was born in South Korea and both her mother and father lost close family members to the North when Korea was partitioned, people they were never able to see or even hear from again.

The North Korean government places rigid controls on the internal travels of its few foreign visitors--even the movements of its own citizens are highly restricted--so Kim spent most of her time on campus, jogging between buildings when she wanted some exercise. There were occasional arranged outings when she did sometimes catch glimpses of roadside workers so emaciated and malnourished it horrified her, but the subjugation of her elite and privileged college students was in its own way just as shocking because it showed that no one is exempt from government control.

These young men weren’t allowed to call, email, or visit their families, though most of them lived just a short distance from the school, and the students never knew when they might be whisked away from their studies to spend weeks or months working at a construction site or laboring on a government run farm. Even when allowed to stay at school there were chores like all night guard duty to perform, and constant surveillance meant the students had to always guard their speech and curtail their activities to avoid punishment.

As far as Kim could tell her students took great pride in their country and believed what they had been told--that North Korea is superior to and the envy of all nations and that their leaders are virtually infallible--but the students would get quiet and thoughtful when she gave them illicit sneak glimpses of the outside world and its relative freedoms by casually pulling out her Kindle or laptop, or mentioning her use of the internet or her global travel experiences.

All of Kim’s fellow teachers felt the strain of constantly censoring their speech and being careful about their actions, but for Kim this was especially difficult and if you have an interest in the range and potency of human worldviews you’ll find this book doubly thought-provoking because Kim had to navigate her way between two powerful belief systems both with moral teachings, behavioral dictates, and a divine or as if divine leader since her co-workers were all Christian missionaries and she had to hide from them that she didn’t share their faith.

The missionaries Kim taught with weren’t allowed to mention anything about their religion, but they hoped their presence and charitable actions would eventually win converts among the North Koreans. Kim had different reasons and personal goals for working at the school. Along with wanting some connection to the country where even now she might have living relatives, she hoped that by giving her students small peeks into life outside North Korea that she’d plant seeds of doubt in her their minds, so that as future leaders they might be able to help change things and open up their society. Her worry was that her words would just confuse and upset them or possibly lead them to actions that would bring on severe punishments. It’s a fascinating, heartbreaking, eye-opening story.

I read an eBook Advanced Review Copy of this book provided at no cost to me by the publisher through NetGalley. Review opinions are mine.

[Taryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without You, There is No Us had been on my radar for a while thanks to my interest in the secretive, seemingly dystopian culture of North Korea, but what prodded me to move it up my burgeoning to-read list was a recent NPR interview with its author, Suki Kim, in which she claimed that her publisher disingenuously marketed it as a memoir instead of investigative journalism.

Some people might shrug at that—how big a difference can it be, really? But Kim argues that, while she respects the art of memoir, classifying her book as such degrades its value, and by extension minimizes the risk and sacrifice she personally undertook to get the story. And after reading her book, I have to agree with her.

It’s not like Kim was on an exotic extended vacation or participating in a study abroad program. She posed as a Christian missionary in order to secure a position as an English teacher at an elite university for young men. The missionaries themselves at the school were posing as well, as Christianity isn’t openly practiced in North Korea and they weren’t allowed to proselytize to students. So Kim was not only undercover among her students, but also among her colleagues. There was literally no one she could trust with her real agenda—getting a rare inside look at North Korea’s privileged class, and taking as many notes as she could so that she could one day write a book about this most opaque of countries. Imagine her dismay upon discovering on the eve of the book’s release that it was to be marketed as a memoir, a book of her feelings and reflections, and not the journalistic expose she thought she had written.

Kim does frequently mention a “lover” back in Brooklyn, who becomes something of an embodiment of everything she missed about the US during her time away. I have to admit, I found it a strange choice to feature him so prominently, especially when she doesn’t give enough detail about the man for him to have much impact on the narrative (and she freely admits they weren’t very serious about each other). Take out those asides (and the cringey term “lover”) and Kim would have an airtight case for reclassifying her book on store shelves.

Lover or no lover, Kim’s book is a good companion to Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, which is sourced mainly from interviews with North Korean defectors. Kim was definitely “managed” while she was in the country, and what she was allowed to see was always carefully curated by her minders, but she was still “inside” in a way that other writers haven’t been. And because she is a native Korean speaker, she was viewed differently by her students than the white American teachers were. Her book and Demick’s provide two different but equally fascinating windows into the strange, hyper-controlling dictatorship and its citizens.

More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a quietly gripping book even though not much of moment happens over Kim’s five months teaching young men at a missionary-run college in Pyongyang. She was in a unique position in that students saw her as ethnically one of their own but she brought an outsider’s perspective to bear on what she observed. Just before she flew back to the States in 2011, Kim Jong-Il died, an event she uses as a framing device. It could have represented a turning point for the country, but instead history has repeated itself with Kim Jong-un. Kim thus ends on a note of frustration: she wants better for these young men she became so fond of. A rare glimpse into a country that carefully safeguards its secrets and masks its truth.

See my full review at Nudge.

Related reading: The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson is also revelatory about North Korea’s repressive society.

[Vicki · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugggghhhhhhhhhhh. 2.5 stars because I'm feeling glad to be done.

Okay, I'm a PRK junkie, so maybe my bar is higher than most. If you don't know much about North Korea maybe this would be better. But when I found out she'd been writing about North Korea since 2002 I was absolutely floored. This was very shallow and uninformative, and I figured she took the job on a lark and didn't really have a plan or even an opinion to convey going in. Turns out she had both, she just didn't do a good job.

The good: much of what is written about the PRK for Western audiences is first-hand accounts by defectors, and the torture-pornier, the wider the audience. So you read a lot from the perspective of starving farmers, people whose families were sent to camps, people who themselves were sent to camps, and in one particularly memorable instance (Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West), people who were born in camps. This book shows the lives of the most privileged members of North Korean society, which both fills a gap in the coverage and shows that there's not really a "good" place to be in a society this repressive. Also she contextualizes her connection to both North Korea and the tragedy of the separation with her grandmother's, mother's, and uncle's story. That was both useful and moving.

The bad: this is so shallow! She "loved" her students right away. Like, as a reader you think "wow that was fast," and then a couple of pages later she says she's been there ... a whole week but it feels like forever. What? Do words have meaning? You didn't love these kids, you met them. And then there's a lot of very useless filler. It is worth noting that a well-fed, short-term, mentally well-adjusted person still feels oppressed and worn down by being the target of constant monitoring and engaging in endless self-censorship. That's a reasonably useful data point. It doesn't deserve to be 1/3 of the narrative. I know this was a "memoir," but Kim has said that she considers herself an investigative journalist.* If that's the case, she should realize she isn't the story. And not to be rude, but she's not even very interesting. Another weakness was her attempt to conflate sincerely-held religious belief with the enforced Great Leader Worship indoctrination. The first time she brought this up, it at least felt organic and like a thought that might sincerely occur to an atheist surrounded simultaneously by both North Koreans and passionate evangelicals. But she kept it up and it wasn't long at all before it felt cheap and disingenuous. I'm an agnostic atheist; I get it. Other people's deeply-held beliefs can sometimes feel unnerving: it makes you an other and you wonder what they'd do in service of this force that is not working on you. But she was seriously just being a dick to be a dick, including the entire argument where she post hoc justified the fact that she was lying to her colleagues and planning to betray them in the future with "well I guess their God must want this to happen, because I'm going to do it and He's supposedly all-knowing!" I mean, have some self-respect. You sound like every jackoff college freshman who's rebelling against his parents. You don't get to excuse your own behavior by citing a belief system that you're mocking with the citation. If you don't believe that there is an all-knowing God whose plans are in motion, you can't hide behind that belief to excuse your own bad behavior. You need to find another excuse or act according to a justifiable set of .... what's that word? Oh yeah, morals. Find some.

*The ugly: Here's the elephant in the room. I am an active internet (and RL) feminist, an avid reader, and a lover of books about the PRK. So I heard about this book first in the controversy surrounding Kim's consternation that her work had been "pinkwashed" -- treated as a fluffy account of a dead-serious subject, because she's a laydee. But if anyone pinkwashed this book it was Suki Kim. She talks endlessly (and in the world's most cringeworthy fashion) about her "lover" in Brooklyn, and whether he's written, and whether he really likes her, and whether he knows how much she misses him and and and. But this is 1) completely uninteresting; 2) not even relatable in the context of the book -- while her family history is unpacked and explained and adds context this guy is only brought up to say "I have a lover" (cringe) "I miss my lover" (cringe) "My lover hasn't written lately" (cringe). This is not interesting even coming from your best friend (who you would hopefully talk out of using "lover" instead of boyfriend or even fergodssake fuckbuddy), let alone taking up space in an undercover account of life in the PRK. There is a certain point where she tries to treat this nonsense as a contextualizing bit of information, which goes like this: "I miss my lover. When the North and South were separated there were parents on one side and children on the other. That must have been hard, which I can attest to, because my lover hasn't emailed me from Brooklyn in a while." That was as successful as it sounds.

Look, if you want to write a story about your time in the PRK in a casual, conversational tone and treat your love life as some kind of gag-worthy tantalizing tidbit that must ever be brought up but never be unpacked (lover's name? Who knows. Job, background, length of time in relationship? Nada. Just "I have a boyfriend, you know" like a 9th grader after summer camp, again and again), then you've picked your pony. Don't turn around and cry sexism because people treated it as the fluff you wrote. Want to know what happens when women who are journalists write about the PRK and treat the book as a journalistic effort? They get all of the awards and all of the prizes, and don't get "pinkwashed" just because of genitalia. (To wit: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea)

TL; dr: skip this and read Nothing To Envy.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2011 Suki Kim, a Korean-American journalist, travelled to North Korea to begin a six month teaching position at a university outside of Pyongyang. The students were all young men—the children of some of North Korea’s elite families.

Ms. Kim writes poignantly about the relationships she developed with the students, and about her observations of daily life both inside and outside the university walls. An atmosphere of fear, loneliness and repression engulfed every aspect of life, and was stifling. Yet, at times, Ms. Kim was able to connect on a meaningful and emotional level with her students. These interactions made her observations all the more heartbreaking.

This fascinating memoir is well worth reading as it provides the reader with an unprecedented look at the atmosphere inside North Korea’s completely isolated society.

[Murtaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

While obviously controversial, this was an absolutely incredible memoir and piece of investigative journalism written from inside one of the most opaque societies on earth. Suki Kim went undercover as a missionary high-school teacher to provide a glimpse into the lives of the children of North Korea's elite. A journalist with deep history covering the country and the child of Korean immigrants herself, Kim has produced here a powerful and rare look at what life is like for a relatively privileged segment ordinary people in the Hermit Kingdom. The book is beautifully written, weaving together history, personal reflections and investigative reporting. As a whole, it helps shine a light on the ongoing tragedy of Korea's 1953 partition.

There was a lot of backlash to this book over Kim's decision to falsely portray herself as a teacher in North Korea, as well as her decision weave her personal reflections into the story. I think this backlash is misplaced. First of all, almost all Western reporting on North Korea is the product of highly-scripted visits to the country by journalists who only see what the regime permits. For the purpose of understanding the country and its people, these pieces are effectively useless. Kim's reporting here provides pretty much the only genuine, if limited, insight into North Korean society that we have received in years. There would have to be a price to accomplish that, and I fail to see how it could have been done in any way besides through undercover work.

There was also criticism of her for incorporating her personal story into the narrative, with the suggestion being that this undermined her impartiality. This criticism is even more off-base in my view. It is easy for those at a personal distance from events to look at global tragedies dispassionately; as though they are some kind of journalistic abstraction. But for people like Kim whose lives and identities are the product of these traumas, that's neither possible or desirable. This book is the product of an earnest, painful desire to somehow undo the horror of modern Korea history. She writes with a clear love of its people because they are ultimately her people. There is no "objective" careerist journalist who would have taken such a risk, nor would they have been able to tell the full story in all its intimate dimensions. Without Kim's work our public knowledge of North Korea would almost be nil, just a collection of bizarre photographs its leaders and scattered testimonies from defectors. This inadequacy of information has made it easy to reduce North Korea's long-suffering people to something like a collective punchline. We also would have little to no idea what its elites think, or how their worldview is formed from a young age. This is a priceless contribution.

Overall, I was really moved by the beautiful writing, thoughtful reflections and great heroism of the author. North Korea is one of the most baffling and tragic places on earth. This book does an immense service by lifting the veil of secrecy on that country, even just a bit. It was a pleasure to read and definitely one of the best books of its genre that I have come across in a long time.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir offers a unique insight into the lives of North Korea's most "privileged" youth. Learning about these young men and the way they view the world (not to mention how some of those views were challenged under the tutelage of an American professor) was fascinating.

Unfortunately, there was an undercurrent running through the pages that tainted what ought to have been an enlightening experience. As a Christian, I found the author's attitude towards my faith vexing. The style of the book isn't altogether journalistic, but I still would have expected (and appreciated) a little more objectivity.

Kim openly admits to not understanding Christian beliefs, and having never read a Bible. Despite this, she repeatedly compares the faith of her missionary colleagues to the indoctrinated devotion of her students to their dictator. Early on, there is a flippant suggestion that the missionaries are really only there because saving souls in North Korea will earn them a place in heaven. Her attitude towards these missionaries (people she lived and worked alongside for months) struck me as condescending in general.

I do not expect everyone to share my beliefs, or even to respect them. But somehow it really chafed to see them so haphazardly misconstrued.

Perhaps this is less relevant, but I watched a TEDtalk given by the author where she seemed to suggest she would prefer her students to go on living in blind ignorance rather than learn the truth, which would jeopardize their safety. This is less pointed in the book, where she dwells only a little on the conflict she feels between encouraging the young men to think for themselves, and fearing what will happen if they do. Perhaps she only reached this conclusion later. Either way— and I know it's easy for an outsider to say, but— I vehemently disagree. Better to suffer and die in truth than live a perpetuating, oppressive lie.

Conclusion: Disappointing read, even if not a total waste of time.

[Ms. Smartarse · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most memorable TED talk I watched last year, was a 13-minute-long one by journalist Suki Kim, about her experience of teaching English at a private university in North Korea.


Click on the picture to view the TED talk

It's one of the more visually drab talks, but the atmosphere of it just got me hooked. At the time, I didn't know that said talk was based on a book (i.e. this one), but as soon as Ema had pointed it out, reading it had constantly been in the back of my mind.

Unlike other documentaries and books that deal with the subject, Suki Kim's work presents the life of the elite North Korean youth, not the life of former defectors completely disenchanted with the regime. This book, is all about earnest young men eager to go to school and learn, and also... just being regular youngsters in a country that doesn't really allow for such things.



I'm guessing most of us have probably come across one or two derisive meme about the North Korean regime's austerity measures. And if you fancy yourself in a particularly masochistic mood and read through some of the associated comments, you've probably seen enough reactions that call the memes gross exaggerations.

I was always inclined to take memes with a hefty pinch of salt. My parents had been brought up in a communist dictatorship, and yet are fully capable of independent and critical thought. So it kind of came as a surprise to find those very memes presented as facts in this book: real adoration of the president, sincere belief in the country's greatness, the constant presence of minders, spying on one another...


Reporter: A 7-year-old got three bull's eyes?
Translator: Yeah!
Reporter: That's pretty impressive.
Translator: Uhum!"

One of the aspects that I both disliked and simultaneously kept thinking about, was Ms. Kim's constant attempts to tell the truth to her students. She wanted to let them know about Facebook, and other countries, the Arab Spring... This seemed really irksome to me, as those poor students were unlikely to experience any of them first hand, or even be able to apply them in their own country. It would just seem like yet another thing to boast about. On the other hand, having (the correct) information is always useful.

Score: 4.7 / 5 stars

There were so many conflicting emotions I felt throughout reading this book, that I can't really choose one. So I'll just leave you with part of the author's closing speech from her TED talk:

I don't want you to lead a revolution, let some other young person do it. The rest of the world might casually encourage or even expect some sort of North Korean spring. But I don't want you to do anything risky, because I know in your world, someone is always watching. I don't want to imagine what might happen to you. If my attempts to reach you have inspired something new in you, I would rather you forget me. Become soldiers of your leader and live long, safe lives.

[Xueting · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very harrowing book. Lots of scenes are going to stay in my mind for a long time, I'm sure. I wish the author thought more about organising her book better though, by chapters or something else. She gave us so much detail and they were quite overwhelming at times when she just reported what happened and created a chilling hook, but went on almost immediately to another chilling occurrence. But I love her tone and perspective on North Korea - it's refreshing and so eye-opening to hear from a South Korean who spent so much time intimately with the people. The students were special. I felt her frustrations between loving and caring for them yet repelled by their very different way of life and thinking.

[Adrian Dumitru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nu suntem conștienți de libertățile pe care le consideram normalitate.

[Kavita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without You, There Is No Us by author and journalist Suki Kim is slightly different to the other memoirs by defectors. While most memoirs I have read are about conditions in the camps or dealing with daily life for the poverty-stricken lower and middle classes, this one explores the lives of the rich and 'privileged' boys being groomed to take over the North Korean administration some day.

Suki Kim has basically infiltrated PUST (Pyongyang University of Science and Technology), a Christian-funded university, pretending to be a missionary. In the book, she exposes both the Kim regime's dictatorship in which even the elites are brainwashed and not given any freedom, and the missionaries who lie in wait like vultures waiting to pounce on the carrion the moment the country opens up.

Kim's relationship with her students goes beyond the usual teacher - student relationships, partly because she is aware that their lives are restricted and feels for them, and partly because for the students, she is a major link to life on the outside. Kim describes her time with the North Korean boys, effusing her narrative with emotions, both positive and negative. The boys are completely brainwashed to the extent that they believe that North Korea is the most advanced country in the world, where they have achieved miracles such as changing people's blood types! They also believe that the axis of evil is USA, Japan and South Korea, and are forever prepared to wage war against their enemies. They are denied basic amenities like Google that we take for granted. They simply have no idea about the outside world, and one of the author's goals is to show them that there is a life outside NK and to get the boys start questioning their system. She does this by simple and sly techniques by obliquely mentioning some developments they were not privy to earlier, by keeping her Mac book in sight, and so on.

If the North Korean regime blocks information to the students, restricts their lives and brainwashes them, the missionaries deny them simple and basic pleasures such as a screening of a Harry Potter movie, because it's not Christian. We all know that the Kim regime is bad, but this was no less cruel in my view. They also insist on the students learning to eat with a fork, which makes no sense, since the food served is completely different. How are they going to eat soupy ramen with a knife and fork?! I found these people extremely annoying in every aspect. The missionaries positioned in North Korea and China are doing a lot of harm. But when did they ever do anything else? I liked that the author does not spare them or see their work in NK as charity. She is well aware that their sole aim is to spread Christianity, and they don't care how they do it or about the consequences.

I also liked that the author contributed some personal history in the form of reminiscences of her parents' lives during the war and how they had to flee at the time. She also talked about her own memories, growing up as a child in South Korea and often makes a comparison between the north and south cultures, emphasising how far the two countries have grown apart in the past sixty years.

While I found the book informative and enjoyable, there were some annoying elements. Kim's Americanism shows through when she keeps wondering about USA and how things are different here. Well, why wouldn't they be? US isn't a prototype for the rest of the world! Every place is different, and thrusting in America as the global standard really annoyed me. Another thing I found bizarre was that Kim would mention her lover consistently throughout the book, without us ever getting to actually know him. He was irrelevant but she would bring him up at every opportunity. Even when discussing something as trivial as a textbook passage on New York, a mention of Brooklyn would bring out a couple of random sentences about her absent lover. I would make this a full five star, if this lover had been edited out completely.

[Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

After having loved The Interpreter, I was ecstatic when I found out Suki Kim was releasing another book that would be published this year. When I found out it was about North Korea, I was interested but unsure how it would compare to her debut novel.

Without You, There is No Us is about a year Kim spent at a prestigious all-male college of science and technology in North Korea at the end of Kim Jong-Il's life. Having lived in America since the age of thirteen after being born in South Korea, she had experience with drastically different countries. Despite the fact that Kim speaks Korean, she was only allowed to communicate with her students in English. Although they were supposedly some of the smartest students in North Korea, their sense of the world was incredibly limited. The idea of blissful ignorance comes into mind, and granted, these students do have more cushioned lives, but we know that life in North Korea is anything but blissful. The government aims to keep its people in a state of constant unawareness and blind dependence on the ruling party to prevent any protests or insurrections. I know this practice is common in many countries, even America to an extent, and it makes me so sad because I believe this is one of the greatest violations of human rights.

Kim gives many examples of how the students believe everything they hear, probably because they have never been taught to question anything or because they know they could be punished for doubting what their government tells them. Raised to despise countries such as the US, Japan, and South Korea to the point of wanting to kill their citizens, the students would tell Kim how evil certain American things were like McDonald's, even though they don't know what food McDonald's serves (and will probably never try it). Other examples include things like them thinking kimchi is the world's most popular food and Korean is the most spoken language across the globe.

I really liked the cultural insight Kim was able to provide, having come from not just America but also South Korea. Obviously Americans are taught that North Korea is evil, but most don't know much about the conflict between North and South Korea. Kim's family experienced that, and it really added to the book.

Who knows what will happen with North Korea in the future, or if it will open in my lifetime. With a new leader in the past few years, the idea of change is possible but unlikely. After all, Kim Jong-Un is following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps, and little has changed in foreign relations in the last few decades. Without You, There Is No Us should be required reading to give Americans and other foreigners a brief, informal introduction to life in North Korea. If we are able to sympathize with the North Korean people, I believe that more will be done to try to help them and work to create change with the North Korean government.