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Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite Hardcover | Pages: 291 pages
Rating: 3.9 | 15199 Users | 1960 Reviews

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Title:Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
Author:Suki Kim
Book Format:Hardcover
Book Edition:Special Edition
Pages:Pages: 291 pages
Published:October 14th 2014 by Crown (first published 2014)
Categories:Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir. History. Cultural. Asia

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

A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign

Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has accepted a job teaching English. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them to write, all under the watchful eye of the regime.

Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues - evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. She is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. To them, everything in North Korea is the best, the tallest, the most delicious, the envy of all nations. Still, she cannot help but love them - their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished.

As the weeks pass, she begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own - at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. The students in turn offer Suki tantalizing glimpses into their lives, from their thoughts on how to impress girls to their disappointment that soccer games are only televised when the North Korean team wins. Then Kim Jong-il dies, leaving the students devastated, and leading Suki to question whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged.

Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."

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Original Title: Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
ISBN: 0307720659 (ISBN13: 9780307720658)

Rating Of Books Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
Ratings: 3.9 From 15199 Users | 1960 Reviews

Criticism Of Books Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
I scored this from a Goodreads Giveaway, which is basically the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me in my life, and I'm pretty depressed that I can't write a rave review since I assume this means no publishers will ever send me a free ARC again.Oh well.All the other readers on here loved this and I don't think it's a bad book by any means, but it just wasn't for me. I was excited to read it since I know nothing about North Korea, but I failed to notice the clear and accurate label on

Without You, There Is No Us by author and journalist Suki Kim is slightly different to the other memoirs by defectors. While most memoirs I have read are about conditions in the camps or dealing with daily life for the poverty-stricken lower and middle classes, this one explores the lives of the rich and 'privileged' boys being groomed to take over the North Korean administration some day.Suki Kim has basically infiltrated PUST (Pyongyang University of Science and Technology), a Christian-funded

Really fascinating, well-written and gripping, although the ending was slightly underwhelming.

Personal Review .......and Audiobook Review of Without You There Is No Us Personal first: News about my surgery yesterday Im in bed recovering - cant see well out of my right eye from swelling - but no major pain - from Mohs surgery. The cancer cells are gone - but because there was a lot of those cancer suckers - Ill be having a minimum of 3 more surgeries. I had caught the skin cancer early- but it was growing fast it had spread substantially from the day I was diagnosed to the day I had

Eh. The subject and bits of the book were super interesting. The writing, not so much. I get that when every day is the same, when your freedom is so limited, when everyone is terrified to say anything out of line, that there may not be a great deal to write about. But surely, when you're essentially undercover as a missionary undercover as a teacher, there must be more to write about than your "lover". The last quarter of the book, after the students had warmed up a bit, was so interesting! The

Very interesting read! I appreciated the insights in Suki Kims Without You, There is No Us; however, it is her relationship with her students which resonates most strongly. The way she views them and their potential is inextricably linked to their circumstance as citizens of North Korea. It is clear that she cares deeply for them, but there are things she cant share with them. An interesting aspect of their behavior is how quickly they resort to lying to cover the vast gaps in their knowledge

It's hard to rate this book. As a memoir, I'd give it two stars. First off, no one is reading this book to hear about how she misses her non-boyfriend who lives in Brooklyn. We're reading it because we're interested in the DPRK. Additionally, it doesn't come together as a narrative and none of the characters are fleshed out. While she tells some anecdotes about individual students, they are discrete one-offs, and not part of any coherent characterization. The Christian missionaries that she