Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim

 

WITHOUT YOU, THERE IS NO US has been sitting on my Kindle for a while but it took me a while to finish because it is so heavy. I read every nonfiction book about N. Korea that I can get my hands on because I find it so fascinating but most of the books I've read are memoirs from defectors. I've read a couple memoirs from people who traveled there for one reason or another, but usually it was to get a story or travel somewhere really unusual. Suki Kim is different from those: she is a journalist who traveled there incognito with a bunch of Christian missionaries to learn more about N. Korea through one of its universities, teaching English to some of their elite youth.

I thought this memoir was interesting because Kim is South Korean and so she did at times feel an almost cultural kinship with the N. Korean students she was teaching because of their shared history. But at the same time, the way they have been isolated from the rest of the world and raised to believe in the complete superiority of their nation with a fairytale fervor that feels almost religious made it hard for her to relate to them because she literally came from a different world.

I think this memoir shows her frustration at teaching without really being able to teach, and wanting to shed light and inform without getting anyone into trouble. Her whole situation felt very precarious and dangerous and it felt like she constantly had to walk on eggshells. Not just with the N. Koreans either, but with the very missionaries she arrived there with, with whom she does not share her faith.

Anyway, I liked this book a lot, although with books like these when there's no real sense of closure at the end, it makes me realize how life doesn't come to a neat full stop like fiction and how unsatisfying that can be (which is maybe why we shape fictional narratives the way we do). Highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning about N. Korea from a gentle, sympathetic, but grounded Western perspective.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars