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

by Suki Kim

Throughout history, China was always the big brother to neighboring Korea, this tiny kingdom unfortunately located adjacent to the massive empire, and in some ways, that tradition seemed to have held up. Anyone following North Korea would tell you that it is China that really holds the power.

It takes tremendous energy to censor yourself all the time, to have to, in a sense, continually lie.

On those outings, we were escorted out and brought back in as a unit. We never crossed the boundary on our own. Would I be shot if I were to run out the gate while jogging? Was there a watch post from which someone surveyed us at all times? Even in my room, I never felt free.

because none of them had any idea that as their bodies bounced, their minds stood so very still within that field in that campus locked away from time.

I learned that six boys took turns guarding the large, austere building all night long, from dinnertime until breakfast. I could not imagine what could be inside that needed guarding; it seemed that their demonstration of devotion was itself the point.

they were talking about their intranet, a heavily censored network that allowed them access only to already downloaded information and state-sponsored websites. I was not allowed to tell them that their intranet was not the same as the Internet—

Right away I was struck by their astounding lack of general knowledge about the world. These were North Korea’s brightest students, yet photos of the United Nations, the Taj Mahal, and the Great Pyramids of Giza elicited only blank expressions.

Hardly anyone knew what country had first landed men on the moon, despite the fact that they were science and technology majors. Asked what year computers had been invented, most had no idea.

they did everything in groups.

An individual action was unthinkable. Group spirit dominated everything.

Another thing that baffled the students was the pronoun “my.” When referring to Pyongyang, they never said “my” city, but rather “our” city. The DPRK was never “my” country but “our” country.

on the one trip we had taken outside the gate, I had seen store signs with words such as namse (a word for vegetables no longer used in South Korea) that harkened back to decades ago. The entire country was like a linguistic and cultural Galápagos.

We accepted our situation meekly. How quickly we became prisoners, how quickly we gave up our freedom, how quickly we tolerated the loss of that freedom, like a child being abused, in silence.

Whenever I asked them if they corresponded with their family and friends, they never answered directly. One student said that he called his parents when he missed them, but when I asked whether there was a phone in the dormitory, he did not answer.

I saw a few people walking alongside it. Their faces were ghastly, as though they had not been fed in years. A skeletal woman held out a pack of cigarettes as though offering it for sale to any passing bus, although there was none but ours. When we passed closer to one of the construction sites, the workers became visible, with hollowed eyes and sunken cheeks, clothing tattered, heads shaved, looking like Nazi concentration camp victims.

I could not help but think that they—my beloved students—were insane. Either they were so terrified that they felt compelled to lie and boast of the greatness of their Leader, or they sincerely believed everything they were telling me. I could not decide which was worse.

Things did slip out. One student admitted that none of them had cell phones, though his roommate quickly added that they all owned cell phones but had willingly given them up upon entering PUST so that they could concentrate on their studies.

The government had succeeded in wiping out the ancient clan system and replacing it with their own; many North Koreans no longer had the support of an extended family and had no one to rely on but their Great Leader.

The answer was right before my eyes. Small, dark, emaciated people with dead eyes. A landscape devoid of any organic signs of life. I remembered how Katie had whispered the word slaves. And when I saw my students marching, I thought of the word soldiers. There they were, every direction we turned: soldiers and slaves.

For the first time in my life, thinking was dangerous to my survival.

I was growing increasingly disturbed by the ease with which they lied.

I was not sure if, having been told such lies as children, they could not differentiate between truth and lies, or whether it was a survival method they had mastered.

When a student from Class 1 said, openly and unashamedly, that the unfortunate thing about losing the trivia

game was that they had been caught cheating and should have cheated better, I wondered if it was possible that they had never been taught that lying was a bad thing. Perhaps they felt free to continue doing it as long as they could get away with it. Was it possible that they just did not know right from wrong?

I tried my best not to show my feelings at those moments. These students were so quick at reading other people’s expressions. They seemed almost trained at it. They could sense when tides turned because perhaps tides always turned, and no one spoke his mind, and so the only way to survive was to try to outdo one another at mind games.

One of the teachers, however, who taught English to the counterparts said that those in her class had let slip that there was only one candidate, handpicked by the government, so Election Day really meant that you showed up and picked that candidate.

THE NEXT DAY, at the staff meeting, we were told we had to reimburse PUST for gas and for the meals for our minders and driver. It was a modest amount, five or ten dollars for each of our outings, but considering that we were teaching for free and had spent our own money, or that of a sponsoring church, to fly there, it seemed strange that we were expected to pay to be guarded.

This was always the case with North Korea. It was like the bad boyfriend whose presence could never be depended on, so you always had to seize the opportunity to spend time with him when he made himself available.

I had met a number of South Korean journalists who were rather jaded by North Korea and uniformly said that to understand the DPRK, you needed to follow the money.

Apparently, the rest of the world was feeding and educating the children of their leaders.

Dr. Joseph clarified that there was no such thing as a vacation in the DPRK.

This was a country where no one was allowed free time.

Curse words directed at the United States and South Korea were scattered throughout the speech.

When nothing can be expressed openly, you become quite good at interpreting silence.

The entire concept of making oneself marketable in the eyes of a prospective employer did not exist.

Although the counterparts approved the lesson, none of the students, some of whom were computer science majors, had ever heard of Steve Jobs.

For example, they did not apply to colleges. They took college entrance exams during their junior and senior years of high school, and then their regional governments decided which colleges they would attend.

Corruption was everywhere. Their grades weren’t the only thing that would save them, but they were the only thing under their control.

the ease with which they followed orders to immediately become someone’s best friend struck me as unnatural.

That suggested there was no fresh water at his house, despite the fact that his family was part of the elite.

they lacked the concept of backing up a claim with evidence.

So the basic three- or five-paragraph essay—with a thesis, an introduction, a body paragraph with supporting details, and a conclusion—was entirely foreign to them.

Their entire system was designed not to be questioned, and to squash critical thinking. So the form of an essay, in which a thesis had to be proven, was antithetical to their entire system.

once we had both safely returned from North Korea, the journalist would email me this: I thought the place was horrible. It makes Gitmo look like a destination resort … Gitmo is a prison camp for Al Qaeda fighters and Islamic radicals, yet they have a soccer field and eat much better than those kids at PUST do. One is a university, the other is a prison camp. But good luck to any student trying to get off campus in the middle of the night