Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Eastern Gossip

Here are my questions, none of which are answered by the author: Why on earth would North Korea allow Christian missionaries to teach at a military college? Indeed why let them into the country at all since their avowed mission in life (the clue is in the name) is to proselytise the natives? What's the real motive?

Further, why would said missionaries seek or accept such an assignment knowing that they would be stopped on in one way or another the moment they engaged in any talk of the Lord? What did they hope to gain? Are they playing the long game?

Finally, knowing that whatever latitude they were given by the North Koreans was dependent on compliant behaviour and discretion, what possessed the missionaries to allow an undercover journalist to slip through their vetting? The task was teaching English after all. Surely one or two bona fide members of the tribe had acceptable qualifications. Why not use trusted members of the team?

Answers to these would have been at least as interesting as her rapportage, even if demanding a bit more investigativeness on her part. Or perhaps I'm wrong. Who knows, could be wheels within eccentric wheels to consider here.

However, presuming there is no larger picture and given the circumstances of her arrival and job in North Korea, Suki Kim's apparent intention and status hardly put her in a dangerous position. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut, which she generally did, and teach young men some grammar. There's no John le Carre sub-plot of secrets sought or officials traduced. For six months she walked from Point A to Point B on the campus, with the occasional guided tour to some nondescript 'sights' (mostly just sites it seems).

And there is certainly nothing new in what she has to report. On the scale of North Korean horror stories, hers might rate 1 out of a magnitude 10. Mostly she gossips about the social discipline exhibited by her pupils. That and their lack of trivial cultural knowledge, for example about the latest Harry Potter film. Who on the planet with the least interest in North Korea doesn't know that the Internet is highly restricted and censored? Any existential detail she provides is based almost solely on her classroom interactions, which are probably not that different from the highly regimented educational regimes in South Korea or Japan.

So the only real consequences of Suki Kim's publicised 'investigation' are likely to be the reduced credibility of the missionaries and the increased political vulnerability of her former students. North Korean undoubtedly will remain as dismal and as mad as it has been. Having said that, I like gossip as much as anyone. So I hard a hard time putting it down. I feel shame.

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