Without You, There Is No Us
My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
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A haunting account 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 gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, 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."
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Without You, There Is No Us offers an interesting and unique, albeit depressing, view of North Korea, a country so backwards it borders on the unfathomable. Kim is allowed in to North Korea for an extended period teaching English at a school to the sons of the most elite families by pretending to be a missionary. Her position is tenuous at best. Not only is she not religious and could be found out by the other teachers, all the foreign faculty is constantly watched and monitored. There is no privacy. It is utterly paranoia inducing, which is completely warranted. I appreciated the subtle comparisons and subsequent critiques between her students' faith, gullibility, and brainwashing and that of the devout teachers' attitudes about their own religion.I can barely imagine Kim actually living this, or what citizens on a daily basis must go through. She has managed to write in a straightforward and almost stark way that imparts a good representation of her experiences recounting the monotony, frustration, and fear. Rare but truly tender moments between Kim and her students break my heart.I struggle to wrap my head around North Korea. It angers me, terrifies me, and makes me profoundly grateful. It's easy to forget how lucky I am to live with even the most basic and simple choices. I love my denim and blue jeans which has been deemed too American for Koreans. I can do, say, and go where I want.Reading Without You kept reminding me of reading [b:Little House in the Big Woods 77766 Little House in the Big Woods (Little House, #1) Laura Ingalls Wilder https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1350471760s/77766.jpg 1200805] as a child. I remember having a hard time actually imagining a life with such little technology or luxuries I took for granted. The students entertained themselves with songs and skits, just like I remember reading in the Little House series. North Korea is stuck between two worlds. The electricity is unreliable and looking at nighttime satellite imagery shows a country swathed in black. Citizens are kept relatively ignorant for easy control. They are fear-mongered, brainwashed, and worn down with constant labor or service.I fervently hope I live to see the day the North Korean dictatorship falls, but would Korea become one country again? It would be a huge burden on the south and the Stockholm syndrome of an entire nation seems rather absolute and daunting.I imagine Kim will no longer ever be let into North Korea, not that it would be safe for her to go back. Before starting this book I didn't understand the seriousness of her sacrifice. I'm glad I stumbled on to this book for her personal view of this tragic country and for what I learned reading it.
