Skip to Main Content (Press Enter)
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
Add Without You, There Is No Us to bookshelf
Add to Bookshelf

Without You, There Is No Us

Best Seller
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
Paperback $17.00
Oct 13, 2015 | ISBN 9780307720665

Buy from Other Retailers:

See All Formats (2) +
  • $17.00

    Oct 13, 2015 | ISBN 9780307720665

    Buy from Other Retailers:

  • Oct 14, 2014 | ISBN 9780307720672

    Buy from Other Retailers:

  • Oct 14, 2014 | ISBN 9781101912751

    515 Minutes

    Buy from Other Retailers:

Buy the Audiobook Download:

Listen to a sample from Without You, There Is No Us

Product Details

Praise

A New York Times Bestseller

“Chilling…reminds us that evil is not only banal; it is also completely arbitrary.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Quasi-apocalyptic, but amazingly not speculative…I devoured [it] for its wry and rare observations on that inexplicable land.”
Daniel Handler, Wall Street Journal 

“Daring…Kim finds that paranoia is contagious — and can become chillingly routine. ‘My little soldiers were also little robots,’ she writes before departing, mourning not only that she must leave, but that they must stay.”
—Boston Globe

“Remarkable…A deeply unsettling book, offering a rare and disturbing inside glimpse into the strangeness, brutality and claustrophobia of North Korea… Kim’s book is full of small observations that vividly evoke the paranoia and loneliness of a nation living in fear and in thrall to its ‘Great Leaders’…Her portraits of her students are tender and heartbreaking, highlighting the enormity of what is at stake.”
—Chicago Tribune

“A book about censorship, trust, fear, love, and truth, seen through the prism of a school that functions as a comfortable prison…The title comes from a song the students sing in honor of ‘The Dear Leader,’ including the lyric, ’Without you, there is no us.’ Within that title, and this book, is a multitude of truths.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Sometimes personal histories retain a potent electromagnetic force, [like] Suki Kim’s rivetingly topical look inside the most isolationist country on earth.”
—Vogue

“Enthralling…Reveals the perplexing innocence and ignorance of one of the world’s most secretive countries.”
—O: The Oprah Magazine

“A devastatingly vulnerable account… Kim’s stark and delicate language, intertwined with the suspense of being an undercover journalist in a foreign-yet-familiar land, truly humanized North Korea for me.”
—Slate

“Touching, beautifully written…A rare, intimate portrait of life in the world’s least-known country: grinding poverty for the masses,  bland tedium for the ruling class, no fun, no freedom, and fear for all.”
Katha Pollitt, Salon

“[Kim’s] account is fascinating…She is an outsider telling an inside story…Her relationship with her students is the most interesting part of her book…It is tempting to treat the cult of the North Korean Kim dynasty as a grotesque joke, as the makers of The Interview, the recent Hollywood movie about an assassination plot against the current “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-un, have done. Suki Kim, quite rightly, does not. The oppression and starvation of millions of people, and a gulag that enslaves up to 200,000 prisoners, many of them worked to death, is really not that funny… Kim got a close look at some of the cult’s manifestations…Her frustration and rage about the waste of young lives and talent crushed by a horribly oppressive system is entirely justified. Being punished for dissent is bad enough. But to be forced to parrot lies and keenly applaud one’s enforcers is a form of constant mental torture.”
Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books

“A vivid, uncompromising and intensely personal account.” 
Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A starkly revealing look at this hermit nation…Kim opens herself as well as the DPRK to scrutiny…Moving and emotionally evocative.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Offers great details about [the students’] blinkered worldview…A frank depiction of North Korean life.”
—Foreign Policy

“Readers intrigued by Kim Jong Un’s recent extended absence from public view can gain insight into the repressive system that shapes North Korea’s ruling class from Suki Kim’s new memoir.” 
—Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

“We in the West know almost nothing about life in North Korea, including even how its elites live (read Suki Kim’s terrific Without You, There Is No Us for one of the few accounts).”
The Nation

“Suki Kim’s compelling reports for Harper’sThe New York Review of Books, and others have expanded and deepened our understanding both of life in the North, and the West’s profound misapprehensions about it.…[This book is] a fascinating, if deeply fraught document about the education of the North Korean elite, an aspect of the country that until very recently has been almost completely occluded… Kim’s access to the boys constitutes the unique nature of her book [and] illuminates just how sheltered they are.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“[An] extraordinary and troubling portrait of life under severe repression…[Kim’s] account is both perplexing and deeply stirring.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A rare and nuanced look at North Korean culture, and an uncommon addition to the ‘inspirational-teacher’ genre.”
Booklist, starred review

“A touching portrayal of the student experience in North Korea, which provides readers with a rare glimpse of life in this enigmatic country…Well-written and thoroughly captivating.”
Library Journal, starred review

“Strangely terrifying…A beautifully written book that greatly expands the limited bounds of what we know about North Korea’s ruling class.”
Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy

“Terrifying and sublime, Without You, There Is No Us is a stealth account of heartbreak. Suki Kim, brilliant author of The Interpreter, penetrates the soul of her divided country of origin, bearing witness to generations of maimed lives and arrested identities. This look inside totalitarian North Korea is like no other.”
Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Lark and Termite and Quiet Dell

“This superb work of investigative journalism is distinguished by its grave beauty and aching tenderness. So skilled is Suki Kim in conveying the eeriness and surreal disconnect of the North Korean landscape that I sometimes felt I was reading a ghost story, one that will haunt me with its silences, with its image of snow falling upon a desolate campus, with the far laughter of her beloved students.”
Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss
 
“Like an explorer returned from a distant planet or another dimension, Suki Kim has many extraordinary tales to tell, among them how different—and how awful—life is for those who live in North Korea. The devil is in the details here, for her gritty narrative focuses on everyday events to reveal how repression shapes daily life, even for the most privileged. Yet Kim also bears witness to that part of the human soul that no oppressor can ever claim.”
Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana
 
“In language at once stark and delicate, Suki Kim shatters the polemic of North and South Korea. She couples an investigative reporter’s fierce desire to strip away the fiction of the Hermit Kingdom with an immigrant’s insatiable hunger for an emotional home, no matter how troubled and no matter how impossible.” 
Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt
 
“Combining a great novelist’s eye for character and a skilled journalist’s grasp of politics, Without You, There Is No Us helps us understand North Korea like nothing else I have ever read or watched. The elegance of Kim’s prose and her great compassion for ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary situation kept me turning the pages, riveted by her story. This is a book that rejoins North Korea with humanity.”
Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City
 
“What a unique book this is! It delivers a beautifully and bravely observed inside account—startling, insightful, moving—of the planet’s most notoriously closed and bewildering society.  But what I liked best about it was being in the company of Suki Kim’s voice—so intimate, vulnerable, obsessive, resilient, confiding and charming.”
Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name and The Interior Circuit

Author Q&A

 A conversation with Suki Kim, author of Without You, There Is No Us
 
Q. In 2011 you traveled to North Korea to teach at a school staffed entirely by foreigners and kept notes secretly the entire time. If your notes had been discovered, you could have been deported, or even imprisoned. What made you willing to take that risk?
A. I’ve been obsessed with North Korea all my life. I was born and raised in South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. when I was 13 years old. Members of both sides of my family were taken to North Korea during the Korean War and never seen again. Beginning in 2002, I traveled there to report stories for various magazines. When I learned about PUST (Pyongyang University of Science & Technology), a university staffed only by foreigners, I realized this could be an unusual opportunity to get behind the curtain, and I applied for a job there.
My goal was to write a book that humanizes North Koreans. I wanted to go beyond the almost comic images of the Great Leader—of a crazy man with a funny hairdo and outfits, whose hobby is threatening nuclear war. The truth is so much more dire and frightening. I wanted to help outsiders see North Koreans as real people, as people we can relate to, so that we can begin to care about what happens to them. That was my goal and it seemed worth the risk.

Can you paint a picture for us of what life is like there?

I can only paint a picture of life at PUST since teachers and students were hardly ever allowed out. The campus had a guardhouse and a gate, and the only times we were allowed to leave were during group outings, either to go sightseeing or grocery shopping. We were always accompanied by minders, whose job was to watch us and make sure we did nothing unauthorized. Sometimes they even followed us to the bathroom. The places we saw on our outings were the standard attractions that the regime allowed foreigners to see, so they were inevitably immaculate and unrevealing. Whether it was a mountain or a museum or a fruit farm or a subway, everything ran according to a script, and the script was always focused on the splendid achievements of the Great Leader, either Kim Jong-il or Kim Il-sung.

PUST was established and funded by evangelical Christian missionaries, so to get a job there you had to pose as both a missionary and a teacher. Did that pose an ethical dilemma for you?

Deliberately lying, especially when you know it might hurt other people, doesn’t feel good, but I’m comfortable with the choices I made. I did feel guilty letting my Christian missionary believe I was one of them, but my priority was telling the story of my students’ lives. And in truth my missionary colleagues also lied, since their greater goal was not to educate the students but to convert North Koreans to Christianity in the future. The other dilemma was knowing that publishing my book might negatively affect either my former students or the university. Although none of the students did anything more than express curiosity, I changed all names and identifying details in order to protect them. I don’t know whether there will be any negative consequences for PUST, but my allegiance is not to them.
 
Tell us a few of the ground rules the PUST administrators gave you ahead of time.
We were told never to discuss the outside world in detail. Never compare; do not hint in any way that life is better outside. Never talk about politics. Never say the names of the Leaders: Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un. They are considered deities, so it is disrespectful to refer to them by name or point at their images. Do not wear jeans; Kim Jong-il doesn’t like them because they’re a symbol of America. Never talk about Christianity—no uttering “Jesus” or “church” or “ministers.” Since we knew our rooms were most likely bugged, the missionaries would simply mouth “M” when they wanted to say “minister.”  
 
What surprised you most about the young men you taught?
The duality of their personalities. They were the crème de la crème of North Korea, mostly from wealthy families in Pyongyang, and yet they were respectful, earnest, almost provincial. They could be sweet and boyish, yet they were fervent followers of the Great Leader, and when they were in that mode, they seemed one-dimensional and almost robotic. Three times a day, they marched to the cafeteria, in formation, chanting patriotic songs, like soldiers. They spoke in a way that was very scripted. There were phrases all my students repeated all the time, such as “powerful and prosperous nation,” an expression I had already heard from other North Koreans on previous visits. Their songs were extremely violent and aggressive towards America – for example, the lyrics of one song were about hunting the heads of Americans – but at the same time they were incredibly excited for the chance to watch Harry Potter.
 
You say that you came to love your students. What did you love about them?
We were more or less trapped together in a walled compound, and in those circumstances love or understanding or camaraderie often develops. It was not possible not to love them. My students were very innocent, almost childlike, because they had been so sheltered from the world. They still had that old-world ethic of respecting their teachers and obeying their parents, and they were shy. Shyness is something I haven’t seen much in young people of the same age in the United States. In this odd way, they seemed pure.
 
In the book you talk about how much the students lied. What did they lie about, and why?
They would lie about almost anything with an ease that I found unnerving. They would tell
me they had slept very late on days when I had seen them doing their morning exercises at 6 AM. They would tell me they called their parents all the time, when in fact they were not allowed to at all. They told me they had partied with their friends during the summer break, when I knew that most of their friends at other universities had been assigned to work in construction fields that summer. Their lies seemed to be about their system and the restrictions that they were not allowed to reveal. For example, they all had guard duty. From evening until the following morning, no matter how severe the weather, six students took turns standing outside the empty building on campus known as Kimilsungism Study Hall, guarding the spirit of their dead Great Leader. But they wouldn’t admit to doing it, and even when they did, they wouldn’t talk about it.
Of course, lying and secrecy were all they had ever known. From the time they were born, my students had been told that the Korean War was started by South Korea and the United States, that their Great Leader Kim Jong-il was admired around the world, and that their nation was the most powerful and prosperous on the planet. In a country where the government invents its own truth, how could they be expected to do otherwise?
 
What were your students’ knowledge of and attitudes toward the West?
They could be very naïve. One student asked me if people spoke Korean in the outside world and another asked whether it was true that naengmyun (their national dish) was hailed as the best in the world. Their lack of general knowledge astounded me. Many of them did not know what the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal was. They thought their intranet, a censored network of pre-downloaded information, was the same as the Internet. And although their majors were in science and technology, they didn’t know when the first man walked on the moon. But all of them could recite exactly when and for how much Alaska was sold to America—a lesson on imperialism. And they all knew the book Gone with the Wind, although they called it Disappeared with the Wind. I always wondered whether they were allowed to read it because the book is about a war between North and South, and the North wins!
 
What were you most afraid of while you were at PUST?
I was afraid that my notes would be found and I’d be accused of spying. The punishment for that could easily have been hard labor in a gulag. What also scared me, every single day, was that I would get my students in trouble. We developed a real bond over time, and I was afraid I would instill doubts in their minds about the regime. Even teaching them to write an essay turned out to be dangerous, since the idea of coming up with your own thesis and making an argument based on evidence doesn’t exist in North Korea. It was completely foreign to them. They are told what to think, and it requires no proof. Critical thinking is very dangerous. 
Why did you title the book WITHOUT YOU, THERE IS NO US?
That’s a line from a song I heard my students chanting as they marched to the cafeteria. I heard it so often that I memorized the tune and the lyrics. The “you” in the song is clearly Kim Jong-il, and from what I saw, the lyric accurately describes their world. 
 
Life in Pyongyang was vastly different from life in the U.S. In your time there, what was the most difficult thing to get used to?
To never be left alone is extremely exhausting. The minders were always watching, the students were reporting on us; every meal, every conversation, every class was under scrutiny. Our rooms and offices were bugged. Each building on campus was connected by an enclosed walkway with windows on either side, so everything everywhere was visible. We had to get permission for everything as though we were children. Thinking was dangerous, but there was also no time for thinking. It sometimes felt as though “I” did not exist. This was a very foreign feeling—deeply claustrophobic and sometimes almost unbearable.
 
What was it like to be in North Korea on the day that Kim Jong-il’s death was announced? How did the students react?
It was my next-to-last day in North Korea, December 19, 2011, and I was packing for the flight home when I found out. That was the one day when the teachers were invited inside the building where our students had daily propaganda classes with their North Korean professors. It was their holy building, honoring the spirit of Kim Il-sung, the one they literally guarded day and night. Inside, there was a wake of sorts, with a few students greeting mourners in front of a large portrait of Kim Jong-il in the center of the lobby. I didn’t see any of them crying, but their faces were ghostly, as though the sky had fallen. For the rest of the day, the campus remained eerily empty. Dinner was canceled, and the few students I passed did not meet my eyes. I saw my students for the last time at breakfast the next morning. They looked as though they’d been crying all night, as though their souls had been sucked out of them, as though they’d just lost a parent. Their sorrow seemed so absolute and irrevocable that I thought about the song lyric that ended up being the title of my book: Without you, there is no us.
 
What do you think the young men who were your students are doing today?
Right now they are seniors in college. Under Kim Jong-un, there have been fresh rounds of executions and purges, mostly among the elite. In North Korea, when the parents are punished, the children are usually punished too. I worry about their fate.
 
Do you think North Korea will ever become a more open society?
I don’t really see how that’s possible as long as the current regime is in power. For their survival, North Korea must maintain the myth of the Great Leader, which is possible only if the people remain ignorant and powerless, so becoming a more open society would be suicide for the Kim Jong-un regime. Already we are seeing the ruthless side of this young leader. Most of the seven key figures who walked alongside Kim Jong-il’s hearse at his state funeral in December 2011 have since been stripped of their titles, sent to labor camps, or executed. The two superpowers – China and the United States – that could put pressure on North Korea have done virtually nothing to bring about a change. Meanwhile, the inhuman suffering of the people of North Korea continues.

Looking for More Great Reads?
21 Books You’ve Been Meaning to Read
Back to Top