There are a couple of scenes from Suki Kim’s recently released memoir where she nearly lets down her guard.

In Without You, There is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite Kim, a novelist and non-fiction author, documents the two terms she spent teaching at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) in 2011. The school, North Korea’s first privately funded university, was launched in late 2010 largely due to the efforts of evangelical Christian James Kim – who also founded the Yanbian University of Science and Technology in northeastern China – and is primarily staffed by the devout.

In one scene Kim, who is not religious, talks with a fellow teacher about their love lives, and is asked about what her own (complicated) love interest believes in.

To the confusion of her colleague, Kim replies – and then repeats – that he’s “spiritual,” but does not elaborate.

Closer to the book’s end, Kim erupts at one of the more religious staff members who describes North Korean conditions as “temporary” compared to the eternal consequences of their mission; a phrasing Kim considers dismissive of North Korean suffering.

Neither case blew the author’s “cover” – though she maintains she never lied about her religious beliefs, largely because no one at the school sought an explicit answer. But they do illustrate the line the author maintained while gathering information for the book, and the ethical dilemmas involved in investigating the secretive world of North Korea without revealing one’s motives.

And Kim – who had previously traveled to North Korea in 2002 to cover Kim Jong Il’s 60th birthday for the New York Review of Books and in 2008, writing about the New York Philharmonic’s performance there for Harper’s – does describe her work as an “investigation.” She does not, however, think of it as journalism: It is composed as a memoir, with Kim frequently reflecting on her state of mind, feelings and relationships during the process of getting hired at PUST, teaching the students and interacting with the other teachers.

She told NK News she understands why people may criticize her book, especially as her colleagues there – many of whom she said she had grown close to – will probably see its publication as a betrayal. Still, she said that she felt telling a story about the children of North Korea’s elites – PUST’s student body – outweighed these concerns.

“Because there is no way of covering North Korea in a straightforward way, are we just going to not attempt to tell the truth about that world?” she said. “I think I was just only really interested in making North Koreans come across to the rest of the world as real human beings with feelings.”

NK News: You write that just after you found out that this university was going to start that you wanted to apply for it. Were you thinking of writing a book from the beginning?

Kim: I think from the beginning of when I first went to North Korea, actually going back to 2002, I had been looking for a way to write a book about North Korea. I think there’s just no way you can write about North Korea by going in for a few days on those North Korean regime-sponsored trips, basically, so I realized PUST was actually a way of possibly seeing more of the inside of that country.

‘No one really asked me, “Are you Christian?” I think that was sort of assumed’

NK News: A recurring concern in your story is not “blowing your cover,” letting your colleagues find out that you didn’t share their religious beliefs. If you had told them your beliefs were different from the outset do you think the experience would have been different?

Kim: No one really asked me, “Are you Christian?” I think that was sort of assumed. They never talked about their faith, because they had to (not be) proselytizing, so I think in some way, the reason it never came up is because they themselves never brought up their faith. So, it wasn’t really a question that I had to battle with…I knew I had to be discreet, but they were also discreet.

NK News: There’s a scene in the book when you’re talking to one of the other teachers about your significant other, and you tell her he’s “spiritual.” That was one example where it seemed like you didn’t want to give your beliefs away.

Kim: The constant theme of the book is feeling like you’re “the other,” or not one of them, like I was not one of the North Koreans, and I was also not one of my colleagues.

(My colleague and I) had this moment where I felt like we were girlfriends, almost. I think it’s a scene where she (was talking about how she) wanted to get married. I guess in the world of missionaries it’s beneficial to be married so you go together to deliver (the gospel). I think that that’s what she was really talking about, needing to be married, and I think … once I said he was “spiritual” she was kind of confused, and I was afraid if I told her that perhaps my significant other was not sharing her faith, (and) possibly me not sharing her faith, my fear was that I would no longer be welcome in her world, their world.

NK News: There’s also a scene where the teaching assistant, Katie, answers an uncomfortable question about her mixed racial heritage from the students. There’s been increasing attention to North Korea’s notions of racial purity in recent years; did the students never give you an indication that Katie’s background bothered them?



Kim: No, I didn’t get that sense. I think this is maybe what I wanted to get across in the book, because we have these ideas about North Korea. The way they interacted with Katie, for example, who is half-Korean, they adored her, boys had a crush on her, because she was really pretty, and really perky and just a lovely, lovely girl.

Would North Korean boys have crushes on a girl who was half-white? It’s supposedly not possible, they have this thing for purity of blood. But in reality, she was 23 at the time, and the boys were 19 and 20, they loved having a TA who was almost their age.

I think that was such a normal interaction of youth, which I found really hopeful. There was no North Korean or American, it was just a human interaction.

NK News: You describe a confrontation with a teacher near the end where it sounds like she’s justifying their work based on the heavenly consequences and not the temporary ones. Does it seem to you that they have a plan for how to accomplish these conversions if they’re not allowed to discuss their faith? It seems like there’s a step missing along the way.



Kim: (laughs) You know, I think it’s something you just can’t openly talk about there. We just didn’t talk about this stuff. That scene is where I kind of broke down, I just reached this limit. She said that this was all temporary, that the real world is with the Lord, which I think is all justified in her belief, (but) I felt this anger, this unbelievable anger at the word “temporary,” I didn’t see how it was temporary, the suffering (in the North). But I think maybe with the Christian faith it is, because the Lord is eternal, with Jesus, so I think this whole notion, from that I gathered that this (university) is just a long-term project.

NK News: You also talk a great deal about what you were going through personally at the time, including with your ailing sister. Were those personal reasons for undertaking this project as important as telling the story of these North Korean elites?



‘One of the most tragic things about the coverage of North Korea is that it becomes so objectified that we are not able to feel the tragedy’

Kim: I was born into a separated family, with members having gone missing during the (Korean War) on both sides of my family. So I think the sorrow, the tragedy of the Korean division is one I was born into, a personal reality I was born into, so the obsession with North Korea really was never this sort of journalistic interest, it was a personal one that began as a child.

I wrote about it in a more personal way than, in fact, I myself was comfortable with. I really wanted to humanize the portrait of the boys I met, and I had to be personal too. I had to personalize me as well as them, so that this became a memoir, it literally became a personal interaction, I wasn’t just a reporter.

Because I was so personal, our interaction became far more intimate. One of the most tragic things about the coverage of North Korea is that it becomes so objectified that we are not able to feel the tragedy. There’s just no person there behind the images. I had to become a person first, not a writer, not a journalist; just me, Suki Kim, as a person.

NK News: After you left the North, how long did it take you to finish the book? It’s almost been three years since you left.



Kim: I came out of there with nearly 400 (pages of) notes. It took me, I think, roughly a little over a year. I felt when I first came out, in some ways quite traumatized, so it took me a little while to collect myself.

I was writing all through 2012 and I gave it to my editor the next spring (2013).

NK News: You talk a little bit about feeling overwhelmed by the environment when you went back to New York during your break between summer and fall sessions. Did you feel that way again when the December session ended?

Kim: It was a little different in that, the December after the fall semester ended, it was very traumatizing because Kim Jong Il had died, so it ended in a way that I had not anticipated.

I remember thinking we don’t talk about the human side of that war. My grandmother died mourning her son that she missed every second of her life until she died. Which is understandable if you lose your 17-year-old son and never see your son again. How many people in North Korea have just desperately missed somebody because of this division?

You know, whenever I look at family reunions and things like that, I think, “How do you live spending 50 years missing someone?” And I think that’s really at the heart of this tragedy.

Also, when I left at the end of 2011 … you know I really adored my students. Kim Jong Il died, this new leader Kim Jong Un was coming into power. It was such an unfathomable future for them. Now we know not much has changed, Kim Jong Un pretty much carried on, but I think when I left that place it was just so scary, the future, for my students.

So I think that I had my own deep sorrow, for months and months.

NK News: There’s one section where you talk about how easily the students would lie. Does it seem like they do so more easily than South Koreans or Americans that age, or is it just a different kind of dishonesty?



Kim: It was different. It’s like that scene in the book where one of the students (during games at the school), he said their team had cheated, and they should have cheated better and they would have won. And he said it so openly. It was that kind of thing where they didn’t think there was something wrong with it. Making things up sometimes seemed very natural.

NK News: One criticism I’ve heard of this book is that you weren’t completely honest with them, either, or your colleagues in terms of your background and why you were there. What would you say to that?

Kim: In an ideal world it would be nice to do an investigation with permission, but that’s virtually impossible. North Korea is not going to give permission to be investigated. It’s a tough one; in order to investigate the truth, you can’t enter there telling them that’s what you’re going to do, because you’re just never going to get the truth. I never actively said I was Christian or non-Christian, (and) I see why on some level people would criticize that, but I don’t really understand how else one is supposed to investigate a subject like North Korea.

I do want to add how I do feel bad for hurting the feelings of my former colleagues, many of them were incredibly nice, and I am very sorry. But when we talk about, “Why didn’t she find a more honest route in order to cover it,” there isn’t one.

I think when we talk about guilt, or lying, this country that has violated human rights to this degree, to an unthinkable degree, for the rest of the world to just pretend that that’s okay, for over six decades, I don’t know how acceptable that is. Because there is no way of covering North Korea in a straightforward way, are we just going to not attempt to tell the truth about that world?

‘Even with PUST I don’t have one feeling or another about it. Like, “Is that a good project for North Korea, or a bad project?”’

We have almost no account from inside North Korea that actually tells how the elites live, and I think that knowledge for the rest of the world is important. So how does one get that? You’re certainly not going to get that with North Korea’s blessing.



NK News: At the end of the book you say that you recognize that this book will anger the PUST president and your former colleagues. Did you ever have doubts about finishing this book because of that?



Kim: No, telling the truth about North Korea was not something I ever had doubts (about). I don’t think I did a book where they’re (depicted as) good or bad, you know, it’s not one way or another. Even with PUST I don’t have one feeling or another about it. Like, “Is that a good project for North Korea, or a bad project?” I think I was just only really interested in making North Koreans come across to the rest of the world as real human beings with feelings. In a very, very thorough way, in a portrait.

NK News: Do you think they may have faced consequences after this book was published?



Kim: I don’t know. It’s not something that I can predict. I did my best to protect people’s identities. Of course, (I) changed all the names and any identifiable characteristics were changed, and blurred.

NK News: What are your future plans? Do you have plans for your next book yet?



Kim: No, I have zero plans. I think that maybe I can start writing again, but … I don’t know. I think for now, (this is) a book that I had been planning for over a decade, in some ways all my life, everything that I know was poured into that book. So I think that I’m just experiencing the aftermath of that (laughs).

Main picture: Suki Kim

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.