Without You, There Is No Us

Whereas Hessler’s book is about a country gradually opening up to the west, Suki Kim’s book is about a country completely isolated.

Kim works for six months in North Korea at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a school for the boys of the ruling elite. While living there, rather than connecting with her students, she is unsettled by how deep the country’s deceptions are.

The university, although claiming to be a school for science and industry, has neither labs nor modern technology. Her travel is circumscribed and carefully scripted. The students lie effortlessly about things of little consequence. The… show more.

In 2011, novelists and journalist Suki Kim spent six months teaching English to young members of the North Korean elite at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, and this is her account of that experience. Where Demick’s book is an unparalleled insight into the life of ordinary North Koreans, Suki Kim lays bare the denial and self-deception required of her students, and the claustrophobia and absurdity of living in the “upper classes” of North Korea’s supposedly egalitarian society.