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

by Suki Kim

Sometimes the longer you are inside a prison, the harder it is to fathom what is possible beyond its walls.

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.

That was the inherent contradiction. This was a nation backed into a corner. They did not want to open up, and yet they had no choice but to move toward engagement if they wanted to survive. They had built the entire foundation of their country on isolationism and wanting to kill Americans and South Koreans, yet they needed to learn English and feed their children with foreign money.

“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.”