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, without you, there is no motherland.” By you, they meant Kim Jong-il.

I sang along, but I could not help noticing that if you replaced the word Jesus with Great Leader, the content was not so different from some of the North Korean songs my students chanted several times each day. In both groups, singing was a joyful, collective ritual from which they took strength. Often I thought how absurd it was that the missionaries and the students could not sing together.

We were then brought to a big room featuring a larger-than-life wax figure of Kim Il-sung himself, standing against a backdrop of pink Kimilsungias (hybrid flowers bred to honor the Great Leader; the ones named after his son are called Kimjongilias)

I must admit that during the time I spent with my students, I was happy at moments. Our life was simple, every day the same ritual, with little time for superfluous reflection. The fact that I could never step outside the campus on my own, that I could never freely ask anyone a question, that I had no phone to call anybody, that I was not allowed even one unfiltered glimpse of the rest of the country—these things receded. With each day, I thought about the outside world less. It was not that I ceased missing it; rather, I began to accept that there was no point in thinking about it, since it was utterly inaccessible.

it occurred to me that it was all futile, the fantasy of Korean unity, the five thousand years of Korean identity, because the unified nation was broken, irreparably, in 1945 when a group of politicians drew a random line across the map, separating families who would die without ever meeting again, with all their sorrow and anger and regret unrequited, their bodies turning to earth, becoming part of this land. On that evening, as a sun the color of mournful pomegranate fell behind the Forever Tower, behind the smoke stack, behind this city, this school, behind the children of the elite who were now my children for a brief time, these lovely, lying children, I saw very clearly that there was no redemption here.

My fellow teachers had been asking for permission to visit one of the two churches in Pyongyang, and our destination was Bongsu Church. President Kim was with us that day and explained that it was not a real church but that we were to respect their desire to show us they had religious freedom, which they did not.

We were directed to front-row seats and given brand-new Bibles and hymn books in Korean and English. Each of us was also given a set of headphones and a device so that we could listen to the service with the aid of simultaneous translation. When you turned it on, a perky voice said, “Welcome to our church,” as though it were an English conversation lesson. Next to the pastor was a projector screen on which we could see ourselves. I looked around to see who was filming us, but it was impossible to tell. Soon a woman in a shiny hanbok went up to the altar to recite a prayer—really more of a beseeching soliloquy about unification, the sorrow of the Korean people, and the evils of those who had separated us. It sounded as though she had performed it many times before. The sermon was much the same. The pastor talked about the evils of the South Korean regime, which, backed by the American imperialists, kept Korea divided. This crime would be punished, he insisted, quoting Romans 6:23—“For the wages of sin is death …”—to underscore his point. At some point we all had to go to the front and sing to our North Korean Christian brothers and sisters, who put on happy and excited expressions as if on cue. We were encouraged to take photos throughout. I kept looking at the faces of the pastor and parishioners, which revealed nothing. It was all theater, and I was part of it. They were pretending to be Christians, and we were pretending to believe them. I remembered that we had been ins...

Soon we were ushered out and encouraged to take a Bible and a hymn book with us as souvenirs. The parishioners smiled and waved and sang, “Let’s meet again,” and the pastor stood outside and posed for pictures with all of us. And we got on the bus, all the parishioners still waving at us, and then we could see them walking away all at once, quickly disappearing into Pyongyang’s streets as though they had dispensed with their morning duty.

That afternoon, some teachers were shown an election booth. They were urged to take photos, and the standard pretty female guide explained how votes were cast. According to her, there were two candidates’ names on the ballot, and Pyongyang citizens chose one of them, just as they might in any other free country. 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. Did this mean the government had set up a fake election just for us? Beyond the church and the election booth and the people lined up to vote, what else was there for our eyes only? Did the lights in the windows go dark as soon we drove past them?

Next, a group of about twenty girls between the ages of eight and ten sang about their love of the motherland, smiling adorably. They followed that up with a perky song about the greatness of their Great Leader, and the three in front shook something open, unfurling the DPRK flag, which they raised over their heads with theatrical affection. Then, suddenly and in the same sweet voices, they broke into a refrain about the “burning hatred in our hearts,” and I had to close my eyes to escape the concert hall, the relentless slogans, the brutal words coming from angelic mouths.

WHEN ARE YOU LEAVING? It was the last day of the summer session, and my students kept coming up to me, asking the same thing over and over, the way children do. I told them that all the teachers were going to meet at 6:30 a.m. to leave for the airport. “Teacher, we come and see you off,” they said, repeatedly. All of us knew they could not do that, as it would mean deviating from the schedule. Even though our dormitory buildings were next to each other, they could not just roll out of bed and come outside to say goodbye. Yet they kept promising. Teacher, we see you off tomorrow morning. One student must have said it five times. I liked believing that they very much wanted to, and that they repeated it so many times in order to show me that, but knowing that it was impossible filled me with sadness. There was no mercy here.

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

“There’s no freedom,” he sighed. “They are watching us constantly. I know they are recording everything we say and keeping files on us, and I feel really bad all the time. I just don’t feel comfortable here. It’s not about the terrible food and the material lack of everything. It’s the basic humanity. It’s missing here.”

INSIDE THE CLINIC, I saw Kim Yong-suk sitting by Ri Sang-woo, who was hooked up to an IV bag, with an English textbook open at his side. The buddy system among the students was remarkably tight. Buddies seemed to spend all their time together. They sat together, ate together, and, at times, held hands, either while walking or sitting in a class. When one student sprained his ankle, he limped a little and did not need a crutch, yet his buddy was always by his side to support him, wherever he went. So it was Yong-suk who brought every meal from the cafeteria to the clinic for Sang-woo and spent all but his class time at his bedside, helping him with the schoolwork he was missing. He even spent nights on an air mattress next to Sang-woo. I was both impressed and disturbed by the buddy system. I noticed that with the shuffling of classes from summer to fall, most of the pairings changed as well, and students were never seen with their former buddies again. Yong-suk had been Hwang Jae-mun’s buddy during the summer, but now, despite the fact that they were in the same class, Yong-suk was devoted only to Sang-woo. There was perhaps nothing unusual about friendships shifting at the beginning of a new semester, but in this case buddies were paired by the school, through designated seats and room assignments. Their loyalty to each other seemed boundless, and that made their ability to shift alliances overnight seem oddly heartless. Also, the ease with which they followed orders to i...

When their thesis sentences came in, I saw that one student had written: “Despite the harmful effect of nuclear weapons, some countries such as the United States keep developing nuclear weapons.” It seemed he had no idea that North Korea’s development and testing of nuclear weapons was an international concern.

BACK IN MY room, I felt agitated knowing that my journalist friend was at PUST, most likely housed in the teachers’ dormitory, where guests were always put up. But it did not matter. There was no way to communicate. I could not tell him anything that was going on with me, and he could not tell me any of his news. In this system, we simply were not allowed to know each other. He would most likely be here for a few days and leave. He would see what he was allowed to observe, and get out when he was told to leave, and write about the designated sliver that the regime had permitted him to see. It would not be anything close to the truth of this place, and he would know that, but he would be helpless to find out more. None of that had any bearing on my daily life, and it was strange how quickly I could put the thought out of my mind. His presence was irrelevant because, for the moment, we belonged in different worlds. This realization was alarming. It felt like a taste of how my students viewed me, or of what might have been behind the vacant gazes of Pyongyang citizens. A foreign visitor could never penetrate their world, let alone appease their suffering. No one ever deviated from the script.

Everything was designed to subjugate you and seize your will.