BOOKS
Without You, There is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite
New York Times Best Seller
"Chilling…reminds us that evil is not only banal; it is also completely arbitrary."
—New York Times Book Review
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 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.
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."
The Interpreter
Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award - Nominee
PEN Openbook Award winner
“[With] the small beautiful shiver of sadness. . . [Kim] speaks succinctly of memory, pain, isolation, and regret.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“Fascinating. . . a seductive allegory spun out in appropriately broken prose, that figures translation as detective work.” ―Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Deftly crafted, original, and fitted together by a complex, believable and interesting character, the enjoyment is intense... . .A stunning first novel. . .In these hauntingly enthralling pages, Kim expertly snaps her debut puzzle together.” ―Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Suzy Park is a twenty-nine-year-old Korean American interpreter for the New York City court system who makes a startling and ominous discovery about her family history that will send her on a chilling quest. Five years prior, her parents--hardworking greengrocers who forfeited personal happiness for their children's gain--were brutally murdered in an apparent robbery of their store. But the glint of a new lead entices Suzy into the dangerous Korean underworld, and ultimately reveals the mystery of her parents' homicide.
ANTHOLOGIES
