Without You, There Is No Us: My Secret Life Teaching The Sons Of North Korea's Elite

Author: Suki Kim

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $20.00 AUD
  • : 9781846044830
  • : Ebury Publishing
  • : Rider
  • :
  • : 0.208
  • : February 2015
  • : 19.99
  • : February 2015
  • :
  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Suki Kim
  • :
  • : Paperback
  • : 1
  • :
  • : English
  • : 304
  • : HBJF
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
Barcode 9781846044830
9781846044830

Description

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."

Promotion info

Hardly any authoritative books exist about North Korea, which have been written by outsiders who have actually lived inside the country. This one sheds revealing new light on this fascinating, extraordinary nation, which is so much in the news.

Reviews

"Strangely terrifying...A beautifully written book that greatly expands the limited bounds of what we know about North Korea's ruling class" -- Barbara Demick, author of Nothing To Envy "This superb work of investigative journalism is distinguished by its grave beauty and aching tenderness." -- Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss "Directs the lights of emotion and intelligence on a country where ignorance is far from bliss." Kirkus

Author description

Suki Kim was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, and has travelled in North Korea as a journalist since 2002. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s and the New York Review of Books. She is the author of the award-winning novel, The Interpreter, and the recipient of Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships.