North Korea's secrets spilled in author's haunting memoir
Suki Kim spent six months teaching English to the sons of North Korea's elite and left feeling sad for a people 'utterly debased'
"Without you there is no motherland, without you there is no us," is a popular line from a song that praises former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Three times a day, the students at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a closely guarded all-male institution where the sons of North Korea's elite are sent to study, sing that song as they march on campus.
Suki Kim spent six months teaching English to PUST students in 2011, the year the dictator died. A Korean-born resident of New York whose family was split by the Korean war, Kim lived on the university campus along with 270 students, to whom she gained unprecedented access. Every night, she secretly recorded her experiences in a notebook, and this formed the basis of her haunting memoir, .
I first went to North Korea in 2002 to write about Kim Jong-il's 60th birthday celebrations for . But I quickly realised there was no way to write about North Korea beyond what the North Korean government would want as propaganda. So when I got the opportunity to live [there] in 2011, I realised it was the only possible way to humanise the people there. But I did not go there for the sole purpose of writing a book. I went because North Korea was such a cause of heartbreak for me and my family, and I wanted to understand the country better.
My students said to me that their life was so fulfilled with [Kim Jong-il]. They woke up at 5.30am every morning for a group exercise in which they would chant and scream "reunification" of their motherland. Their routine was meticulously regimented and they were not allowed to leave the campus, not even to keep in touch with their parents. As time passed, they began to admit they were fed up with the sameness of everything. Their school was a miniature North Korea.
