Suki Kim

In December 2011, when the announcement that Kim Jung-il had died was made, Suki Kim was packing her bags outside of Pyongyang. After six months teaching English at North Korea’s only privately-funded university, she was heading back into the free world. The Diplomat’s Catherine Putz recently had a chance to talk with Suki Kim, author of Without You, There Is No Us; My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elites, about the memoir she went to North Korea to write.

Without You, There Is No Us chronicles the six months in 2011 you spent teaching the sons of North Korea’s elites, it was not your first trip to the country. How did that visit differ from your previous trips? What were you doing there?

Since 2002, I have traveled to North Korea five times. The first three times, my experience was similar: the prescribed story was handed to me with a press package. The goal of my handlers was clear: I was to sell the North Korean regime’s propaganda, functioning more as publicist than journalist. In pieces that I wrote for Harper’s and the New York Review of Books, I did my best to go beyond the propaganda. Yet each time I came away feeling that writing a meaningful story about the DPRK was impossible unless I could find some way to be “embedded” there. When I learned of the opportunity to teach at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), the only privately-run university in North Korea, I saw it as a way to gain a deeper understanding of how the regime indoctrinates young people, especially in the upper echelon of society. I was there as an English teacher, and the school was run by evangelical Christians.

What was a typical day like at the University for you and the other teachers? What was it like for the students?

It was a walled compound, guarded around the clock. The students were never allowed out. The only times the teachers were allowed to leave were during group outings, either to go sightseeing or grocery shopping. We were always accompanied by minders, whose job was to watch us and make sure we did nothing unauthorized. The students’ days were meticulously mapped out. They got up at dawn, did group exercises. They had all these duties in groups, such as a guard duty, a garden duty, even a duty to clean the bottom of a tower on which was inscribed “Our Great Leader is Eternally With Us.” They had daily classes on Juche (North Korea’s founding philosophy that roughly translates as “self reliance”). They marched to each meal singing songs about the Great Leader. They had weekly meetings called “Daily Life Unity critique” where they reported on each other and did self critique, to test and prove their loyalty to the Party and the Great Leader. With all these incessant duties there’s actually no free time for people.

Many of the teachers found it very claustrophobic, not only infantilizing but paranoia-inducing. It felt almost unbearable, to be watched around the clock, to never be left alone. Even when I was physically alone, I knew that I was being watched and reported on. Each meal, each class, each conversation – there was never a private moment. Losing privacy so absolutely is an alien experience. In some ways, I was amazed by how quickly I adapted to it, because I had no choice. If I hadn’t been able to accept that reality, I would have had to leave.

The students you write about are fascinating. At times they seem completely innocent, at other points you note that they are well-practiced liars and very easily could report on you. How did you deal with this dichotomy? How did it impact your relationship with the students?

The duality of their personalities unnerved me. They were so easy to love, and yet also impossible to trust. They were innocent and childlike because they had been so sheltered from the world. Yet, they were also corrupt and indoctrinated in the teachings of their Great Leader. They were sincere, shy and respectful, but they also lied so casually. They were the future leaders of North Korea, mostly from Pyongyang, and yet they were so clueless and sheltered in their upbringing that they sounded like children from a small village. It took a while for me to understand and accept these paradoxes, but ultimately, we were more or less trapped together in a walled compound and sharing so much – from eating meals together and playing basketball to laughing at inside jokes – I fell in love with them all.

Western historians tend to call the Korean War the “forgotten war,” but you note in the book that in Korea it is far from forgotten. In what ways is the war ever-present on both sides of the border?

Just about everything in North Korea is about war and national security – their panic level is perpetually equivalent to the “orange” alert level of our homeland security advisory system. Their rhetoric is all about war. Their Great Leader – the role passed through the three generations, from Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un – is referred to as the Supreme Commander, or the Great General. Every workplace is referred to as a “battlefield.” My students called their classrooms the “platoons,” and their class monitors the “platoon leaders.” Since the Korean War never ended but instead paused, in 1953, in an armistice, North Korea’s official enemy, other than South Korea, has been the United States.

I spent 2009-2010 living in South Korea on a Fulbright Fellowship, and what struck me then was how the war was still everywhere. The very polarized opinions regarding the very politicized Sunshine Policy are a great example. On human level, however there’s a lot of guilt in South Korea. They are the better half. They were on the right side of the border when Korean War tore them in half. Most South Koreans do not want reunification because it would mean that they would have to feed the North, which has turned into this bully right across the border, who is also family. The reminder of the division, however, is always there because the two Koreas are so extreme on either side of ideology and wealth.

What do people, journalists and others, get wrong about North Korea?

The information we have is dismal. Most accounts come from defectors, but they provide one-track information from the people who fled. Inside information is rare. Also, nothing there is verifiable which makes it hard to expect some sort of a standard in reporting. So they often resort to the hyperbole or all these comic images of the Great Leader – of a crazy man with a funny hairdo and outfits, whose hobby is threatening nuclear war. It is unfortunate because North Korea is not that funny; the truth is dire and frightening.

The one thing truly lacking is a human portrait. Not being a real journalist, at least not a conventional one, I wanted to help outsiders see North Koreans as real people, as people we can relate to, in the hope that readers would feel more invested in what happens to them. My goal was to write a book that humanizes North Korea.

Will you go back to North Korea? Do you think you can?

Not for a while. It would be dangerous, and I doubt I will be allowed in anyway. Besides, my obsession has changed with this book. I poured everything into this book that I’ve been carrying with me all my life. In a way, I’m not that curious right now. I’m not saying I know everything, but I got to know it as much as I could. I thought about it as much as I can. I went there five times and experienced it from different angles. I interviewed all those defectors, and I traveled all the surrounding regions, from China to Mongolia to Thailand to wherever the defectors go. I did this entire research in South Korea, interviewing every single organization. I lived in North Korea for six months. I don’t know what more I could learn about this topic at this point.

You were just about to leave North Korea on the day Kim Jong-il’s death was announced in December 2011. In the years since, has anything changed in North Korea? Do you think anything can?

I am not hopeful about the future of North Korea while the current regime is in place. To ensure the survival of the army of henchmen who rule North Korea, the myth of the Great Leader must be maintained, and that’s possible only if the people remain ignorant and powerless. Becoming a more open society would be suicide for the Kim Jong-un regime. We have already seen the ruthless side of this young leader. Five of the seven key figures who walked alongside Kim Jong-il’s hearse at his state funeral in December 2011 have since been stripped of their titles, sent to labor camps, or executed. The two superpowers – China and the United States – that could put pressure on North Korea have done virtually nothing to bring about a change. Meanwhile, the inhuman suffering of North Koreans continues.