Specify Books To Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
| Original Title: | Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite |
| ISBN: | 0307720659 (ISBN13: 9780307720658) |
Suki Kim
Hardcover | Pages: 291 pages Rating: 3.9 | 15199 Users | 1960 Reviews
Chronicle Conducive To Books Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reignEvery 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 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 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 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. She is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. To them, everything in North Korea is the best, the tallest, the most delicious, the envy of all nations. Still, she cannot help but love them - their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished.
As the weeks pass, she 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. The students in turn offer Suki tantalizing glimpses into their lives, from their thoughts on how to impress girls to their disappointment that soccer games are only televised when the North Korean team wins. Then Kim Jong-il dies, leaving the students devastated, and leading Suki to question 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."
Identify Regarding Books Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
| Title | : | Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite |
| Author | : | Suki Kim |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 291 pages |
| Published | : | October 14th 2014 by Crown (first published 2014) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir. History. Cultural. Asia |
Rating Regarding Books Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
Ratings: 3.9 From 15199 Users | 1960 ReviewsNotice Regarding Books Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
While obviously controversial, this was an absolutely incredible memoir and piece of investigative journalism written from inside one of the most opaque societies on earth. Suki Kim went undercover as a missionary high-school teacher to provide a glimpse into the lives of the children of North Korea's elite. A journalist with deep history covering the country and the child of Korean immigrants herself, Kim has produced here a powerful and rare look at what life is like for a relativelySo well written i read it continuously, while eating, from when i woke up til i slept again after finishing. Not only is Suki Kim an excellent writer, she is perfectly poised to have done this, and provided the rest of us with a view inside North Korea wed never otherwise have. She is a Korean American who spent two semesters teaching in a fundamentalist Christian-funded school in North Korea for the sons of the elite. Because her Korean is fluent and native, her knowledge of Korean custom
I have previously read other books on North Korea, one that centered on the horrible conditions in the gulags, but this book centers on the schooling of the sons of the elite. The author, whose family had come from South Korea, enters the country of North Korea as a teacher, part of the Christian group that was allowed to build and fully support this school. They were allowed to build this school because it cost the government absolutely nothing and the teachers were given strict mandates.
While obviously controversial, this was an absolutely incredible memoir and piece of investigative journalism written from inside one of the most opaque societies on earth. Suki Kim went undercover as a missionary high-school teacher to provide a glimpse into the lives of the children of North Korea's elite. A journalist with deep history covering the country and the child of Korean immigrants herself, Kim has produced here a powerful and rare look at what life is like for a relatively
Suki Kim spent about seven months teaching English at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) built in an empty suburb of Pyongyang in 2011. She left Pyongyang the day after the news broke of the death of Kim Jong-Il in the Juche Year 100, which counts time on the calendar beginning with the birth of the original Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung. Kims memoir of that time teaching is full of her fearsfears that she will be kicked out of North Korea, fears that she or her friends or
This is a quietly gripping book even though not much of moment happens over Kims five months teaching young men at a missionary-run college in Pyongyang. She was in a unique position in that students saw her as ethnically one of their own but she brought an outsiders perspective to bear on what she observed. Just before she flew back to the States in 2011, Kim Jong-Il died, an event she uses as a framing device. It could have represented a turning point for the country, but instead history has
Investigative reporter Suki Kim volunteered to teach English writing skills at the all male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in 2011. A group of evangelical Christian missionaries taught English (but not religion) to the sons of the elite North Koreans. The school was surrounded by guards at all times, and no one was allowed to leave campus except for authorized outings. Lesson plans had to be approved in advance, and the teachers were carefully watched by the North Korean minders.
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