Without You, There Is No Us: My secret life teaching the sons of North Korea’s elite
Dec 2014 · Random House
4.3star
38 reviewsreport
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304
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About this ebook
It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, except for the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. This is where Suki Kim 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 the university is lonely and claustrophobic. Her letters are read by censors and she must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but also from her colleagues, evangelical Christian missionaries, whose faith she does not share.
As the weeks pass she discovers how easily her students lie, and how total is their obedience to Kim Jong-il. She also, bravely, hints at the existence of a world beyond their own: the internet, free travel, democracy, and other ideas forbidden in a country where torture and execution are commonplace. Yet her pupils are also full of boyish enthusiasm, with flashes of curiosity not yet extinguished.
Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life inside the world's most inscrutable country.
Life at the university is lonely and claustrophobic. Her letters are read by censors and she must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but also from her colleagues, evangelical Christian missionaries, whose faith she does not share.
As the weeks pass she discovers how easily her students lie, and how total is their obedience to Kim Jong-il. She also, bravely, hints at the existence of a world beyond their own: the internet, free travel, democracy, and other ideas forbidden in a country where torture and execution are commonplace. Yet her pupils are also full of boyish enthusiasm, with flashes of curiosity not yet extinguished.
Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life inside the world's most inscrutable country.
Ratings and reviews
4.3
38 reviews
Tom Watsham
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May 31, 2015
Great insight to a part of the world where there is little I would loved to had an unedited version which there was more details of the regularity of life in the school but on the whole very good read
Scott Davis (Ghost)
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March 26, 2016
A deeply engaging description of life in North Korea.
1 person found this review helpful
A J
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December 19, 2014
A true insight into an isolated place
1 person found this review helpful
About the author
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.
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