Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite

My Days Among the North Korean Elite, the first moving book to directly target the sons of North Korea's upper-class families
 A deep revelation of another world beyond defection, a close-up observation of North Korea's never-before-seen privileged class

　　★Barbara Demick, author of "Nothing to Envy," praised it as "an incredible experience!"
　　★A writer disguised as a teacher, 270 Pyongyang university students like soldiers, a first-hand record of a different group of North Koreans
　　★Highly praised by influential writers, unanimously acclaimed by newspapers and magazines, the most unique account of North Korea
　　★Everyday trivial matters reflect many major issues such as national culture and education, interspersed with personal family background and the indelible human emotion in a great era, combining narrative skills and rich storytelling, detailed and profound, touching people's hearts

　　North Korean privileged students—
　　They are youthful souls embracing privilege under a rigid system
　　They have no arduous and dangerous defection experiences, nor do they have impoverished and miserable daily lives
　　They attend classes entirely in English at North Korea's most advanced universities, play golf, watch Harry Potter movies, and even throw birthday parties
　　
　　Undercover South Korean teacher—
　　She is their small window for curiously exploring the outside world
　　This is not her first time in North Korea, but it is her first in-depth and long-term contact with local young people
　　Her true identity is a journalist and novelist, re-connecting the two Koreas with a humanistic pen

　　◎ The conflict between true emotion and the system resounds loudly in the quietest place in the world

　　There, day after day, without change, monotonous days torment your soul.
　　Emptiness…endless emptiness, gradually losing the meaning of one's own existence.
　　During the last six months of Kim Jong-il's regime, she went to North Korea to teach English to the sons of the privileged class,
　　The invaluable experience left her with profound and lingering memories. ── Chinese translation of "Without You, There Is No Us" published by Face Publishing
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.＂

2015-10-13

Broadway Books

320

9780307720665