Without You, There Is No Us

My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

By: Suki Kim

Narrated by: Janet Song

A haunting account 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 the all-male 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 gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, 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. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves—their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn 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. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders 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."

North Korea meets Dead Poets Society

What true undercover journalistic endeavor! The closeness Suki felt was so heartfelt! The same for the students! The secrets kept by all were mind bending!

Fascinating story!

This is a fascinating extension to my existing knowledge of North Korea. It gives me first-hand experience on the lives of these elite students as well as ordinary North Koreans. Aside from the amazing story, I thank the author for her braveness to endure the harshness of life in order to bring back rare moments of humanity.

Transporting and with Real heart.

The story takes you on a journey of self and search. You feel a real heart strumming for the writer to find her voice and tell her story.
I listen to many audiobooks because I cannot see letters. So, audiobooks take words off the page and I hear them as pictures. "Without You, There's No Us" I heard my life's story put more elegantly then I could put into words.
I have shared this audiobook with my mom ,who knows me. And My mom said, "this book is beautiful."
I cried when listening. You can hear the conflict of the writer's heart that you empathize with. If you travel and feel somewhere and nowhere all at once. Then wonder if you are lost. This book is for you.
note: to get this work out of North Korea is a work of a journalistic spy.

Absolutely outstanding

While the narrators reading leaves a little to be desired as far as her emotional range, the story itself is just beautiful. If you read or listen to one story about DPRK, make it this one.

Memoirs of Kim Suki

Suki did a terrific job. Made me think on how much of a slavery system the world is sumerged in... There is "clear", but that doesn't mean we are not living in cages of some sort either….