BookBrowse Reviews Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim

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Written by a South Korean native, this memoir offers insights into the upper echelons of North Korean society.

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Suki Kim worked as an English teacher at North Korea's Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) from July through December 2011. A writer and journalist by trade who had visited North Korea on assignment before, Kim spent months trying in vain to get a visa using her American passport (she was born in South Korea). She was suddenly and inexplicably permitted entry to teach for two terms at PUST. The university, with its Evangelical Christian backing, is an anomaly in North Korea (see 'Beyond the Book'). Unknown to her PUST backers, Kim's objective was to glean enough information about the secretive university and its enigmatic students to create a publishable work. Her engaging memoir Without You There Is No Us is the product of that endeavor.

Most recent books about North Korea concentrate on the terrible conditions most of the population must endure, and many readers will be familiar with the food shortages and repressive political atmosphere rampant throughout the country that affect its most vulnerable citizens. Kim's book is one of the few, however, that describes what life is like for North Koreans who are being groomed for leadership positions in the regime: the sons of wealthy and powerful members of the military and government who were her pupils during her months at PUST. It's a portrait of a culture and way of thinking that is equally alien to many.

The incidents and attitudes the author relates are not completely surprising given what is known about North Korea's social structure, but it gives one pause given that she's writing about the most educated students in the nation. They seem to exhibit no individual thought and express little curiosity about the rest of the world, believing that their country is the best and that everything they're told by their leaders is not only completely true but all they need to know. For example, the students claim that Korean is not only the best language but that that it's widely spoken in England and the United States because it's so much better than those countries' native languages - an illustration that their nationalism even trumps logic, since all classes at PUST are held in English. The students, the crème de la crème of Korean society, are also so isolated, according to the author, that they were unable to recognize pictures of famous monuments such as the Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Kim also found that the boys exhibited an aptitude for "group think," always saying "we" and "our" instead of "I" and "my." Each had a "buddy" assigned to them at all times to ensure proper behavior. Decisions were made as a group, with those disagreeing going along with the rest because dissent is strongly discouraged. Kim also writes that the students live in constant fear of saying something that will get them in trouble. During one conversation over dinner, the author writes, "one of the boys blurted out that he liked singing rock 'n roll, and then he turned red, quickly checking to see who might be listening. I had never seen anyone scan the room so fast, and the other students went quiet and looked at their food." Over time, they have learned to prevaricate about their lives so that they never appear critical of the State. In one instance students assigned to write an essay about their childhood all invariably painted idyllic images of things they could never have experienced during the years of their youth (the worst of the famine).

Kim moves beyond chronicling her time with her students, relaying her own psychological toll of living in such a restrictive environment. Her descriptions of the claustrophobia, loneliness, and sheer exhaustion she experienced as a result of constantly being on her guard and under scrutiny are exceptionally vivid.

My only real criticism is that there simply wasn't enough in-depth material about the students. Men of that age (18 – 20) are notoriously difficult for adults to get to know, but between the life-long guardedness they cultivated and the fact that her time at PUST was so brief it's not surprising that the account seems somewhat superficial and distant. Her need to protect the individual students, too, led her to strip identifying details from various anecdotes, further validating my feeling that I was reading about a subject in an experiment rather than a human being. I came away having learned something about the North Korean culture but I never felt that the boys she taught became less of a mystery.

That said, Without You There Is No Us is an intriguing glimpse of a segment of the North Korean populace that is rarely highlighted. Anyone interested in learning more about this secretive country and how it educates its upper echelon would do well to pick up a copy. Book groups in particular will find plenty to discuss.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in November 2014, and has been updated for the November 2015 edition. Click here to go to this issue.