Fear, loneliness, and duty — an American journalist on daily life in **rth Korea
 

http://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/t...=f&x=363&y=490â??The level of fear is unimaginable.â?* â??author Suki Kim In 2011, American journalist Suki Kim secured a job teaching English at an all-male university in **rth Korea. Pyongyang University of Science and Tech**logy had just 270 students, all of whom were the sons of **rth Korean elites. Kim spent six months at the college, recording **tes for what would become her 2014 book, Without You, There Is ** Us: Undercover Among the Sons of **rth Koreaâ??s Elite. Last week, after the news that **rth Korea had conducted yet a**ther missile test, I reached out to Kim by phone. Her perspective is valuable and rare; few Americans have spent much time on the ground there. I wanted to k**w what daily life was like for average citizens of **rth Korea, the worldâ??s most reclusive country. â??The level of fear is unimaginable,â?* she told me. â??Itâ??s possible to be both happy and terrified all at once, and I think thatâ??s the case for many **rth Koreans.â?* Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Sean Illing Tell me how you ended up in **rth Korea in the first place. Suki Kim Well, I was born and raised in South Korea, with family separated on both sides of the line, so I understood the layered depths of tragedy that divided Korea. In 2002, I had spent about eight days in **rth Korea as part of an aid organization and was utterly devastated by what I witnessed. After that, I returned a couple more times, trying to understand this world from the inside. Courtesy of Suki Kim Pyongyangâ??s Sunan International Airport. The woman is holding a sign that reads â??The Sun of the 21st Centuryâ?* in ho**r of Kim Jong Ilâ??s 60th birthday (2002). In 2011, I realized that what I needed to do was get embedded in the country for a longer period of time, to really absorb what was happening there. I found an evangelical group that was teaching there, and I decided that would be a great cover. So I made way into the country by essentially posing as an English teacher. Sean Illing And where did they place you? Suki Kim I ended up in a military compound teaching 19- and 20-year-olds who were children of **rth Korean elites. They were all male, and **body was allowed to leave for six months. Courtesy of Suki Kim Students doing morning exercises at PUST, Pyongyang University of Science & Tech**logy (2011). Sean Illing What does â??eliteâ?* mean in **rth Korea? Who were these kids? Suki Kim Itâ??s a vague term, but it basically meant children of party officials, people who were formally â??approvedâ?* by the party. In some cases, elite means people who might be related, however loosely, to the Kim family. I called them elite because of how privileged they were relative to most **rth Koreans. In 2011, all the universities were shut down for a year, and all the students were sent to construction sites to build their â??powerful and prosperous nationâ?* â?? that was the slogan they used. And so the vast majority of **rth Koreans were forced to sacrifice everything for the sake of the regime, and for most that meant working endlessly on construction projects. But these young men I was teaching were excepted from this. There were 270 of them, and they were the only young men in the country who were **t sent to toil away at the construction sites. Sean Illing What was that teaching experience like? How receptive were the students? Suki Kim It was an incredibly odd experience. My motive was to write **tes for my book, so I was trying to understand how these people thought and felt. But all of my daily teaching was under constant surveillance. Everything was monitored, recorded, and approved very rigorously. I was aware of this all the time, and so were the students. So even when they were receptive, there was always this cloud hanging over everything. Courtesy of Suki Kim Suki Kim teaching a class (2011). Sean Illing Were the students ever alone? Suki Kim Never. They are never alone. They have a buddy system, where they go everywhere together in a pair. Even when they come for ****** hours, they're never alone. I was living in a dormitory right next to students in a compound thatâ??s watched by the soldiers. My room, literally, was above the minder's room, so the minder was watching me constantly. So you find that people just do what theyâ??re told. Courtesy of Suki Kim According to Kim, students often watched from their dormitory ******* while she practiced shooting hoops on a court below (2011). Sean Illing And what was daily life like for your students outside of your classroom? Was everything regimented, surveilled, and controlled? Suki Kim Every second. They wake up at 5 am and take part in group exercise, very much like boot camp. They run in a group, march in a group, do everything as a group. It mirrors a military environment, which is to say thereâ??s a rigid hierarchy and everything is regimented and everyone has a role. Thatâ??s how we all functioned. Sean Illing You too? Suki Kim Yes. Everything was mapped out by the hour. Theyâ??d have to march to the cafeteria in a group to have a meal, and the students would have their self-study and then theyâ??d sing songs about the â??Great Leaderâ?* [**rth Koreaâ??s founder and the current leaderâ??s grandfather, Kim Il Sung]. Even when theyâ??re marching to the cafeteria, theyâ??d be singing as a group about the Great Leader. Thatâ??s how things worked. So much of their routine was about ho**ring the regime and the founding philosophy of the country. Courtesy of Suki Kim Meal from the PUST cafeteria: meat soup, a rarity, served with rice and cabbage kimchi (2011). Sean Illing Itâ??s probably worth repeating that you were only observing the elites. Conditions for virtually all other **rth Koreans are even worse. Suki Kim Absolutely. There are degrees of how the surveillance system works, but this is more or less how it functions. For **n-elites, life is equally oppressive but includes far worse physical labor. Sean Illing Obviously there wasnâ??t much freedom of thought for your students, but what kind of books did they read? What kinds of shows or films did they watch? Suki Kim The kids were sweet and adorable and **t that different from 19-year-old kids anywhere else. But television is what youâ??d expect under a totalitarian state: Every program is about the Great Leader. On Chosun Central TV (the state-sanctioned broadcaster), there was one feature drama that playing in evenings. One time it was The Nation of the Sun, which was about the heroic actions of the Great Leader. A**ther time, a Chinese drama called How the Steel was Tempered, which was based on a social Russian **vel of the same name, which was about the socialist ideals. Their newspaper was six pages long, and every article is about the Great Leader. The same was true of the textbooks they read, and virtually every other form of education or entertainment. Theyâ??re born into a world in which this is the only truth they k**w, and itâ??s all they ever hear or read or watch. This doesnâ??t mean the kids are like robots â?? they laugh and smile like anyone else. But their worlds and imaginations are constrained in ways we canâ??t really imagine. Courtesy of Suki Kim Kimâ??s students watching March of the Penguins (2011). Sean Illing And what did they do for fun? Suki Kim There were ** games, but they all gathered and sang songs, one by one, on their birthdays. The songs were all about the Great Leader, or their country or friendship. Sometimes they played soccer or basketball. Sean Illing I take it everyone dressed and looked the same? Suki Kim They wore uniforms (shirt, tie, dark trousers, jacket) at school. On weekends, they wore what were basically shabby trainer suits and T-shirts. They washed their own clothes by hand. Sean Illing Did they have celebrity idols, people they admired that werenâ??t connected to the regime? Suki Kim ** celebrity idols. Only the Great Leader. The only celebrity I recall them mentioning is Ri Myung-hun, a famous **rth Korean basketball player who they claim is the tallest and best player in the world. In reality, Myung-hun hasnâ??t played basketball since the 1990s. And they only mentioned him because we had some discussion about basketball, and they were aware of Michael Jordan. (They seemed to think he still was playing basketball. Dates and time can be blurry in that land where news does **t really get reported.) A**ther American celebrity they were aware of was, oddly e**ugh, Bill Gates. But they had ** idea who Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs was. Sean Illing What does the outside world look like through their eyes? Suki Kim Theyâ??re all aware that the outside world exists, and theyâ??re curious about it, but this is **t something they can express. Theyâ??re just **t allowed to do that. These were kids of elites, and some would claim to have seen the outside world, but itâ??s pretty clear that almost **ne of them had ever left the country. Curiosity is forbidden in **rth Korea. This is what I meant earlier when I spoke about psychological abuse. When youâ??re always being watched, always being disciplined, youâ??re conditioned to accept it, and it causes you to police your own thoughts and actions. Courtesy of Suki Kim Sports day at PUST. In the background is the Forever Tower, on which â??Our Great Leader Is Always With Usâ?* is inscribed (2011). Sean Illing Are they happy? I realize thatâ??s a strange question, given everything youâ??ve just said. But I ask because if unfreedom is all theyâ??ve ever k**wn, Iâ??m **t sure freedom is something they can miss. Thatâ??s **t to say that their condition is just or right; Iâ??m just wondering how self-aware they are of their own circumstances. Suki Kim What I learned living there is that concepts like happiness and truth and self-fulfillment are simply different in **rth Korea. Our meaning of happiness has ** resonance there. Individual fulfillment there is serving their nation and leader â?? period. Sean Illing Happiness is relative. Suki Kim Itâ??s very relative. The question of happiness takes on a completely different meaning in the **rth Korean context. I observed what you might call happiness, but again that means something different. Happiness was risking their life in service of their leader and their country. Itâ??s bizarre, but I donâ??t think itâ??s insincere. You have to remember that this is their home, and they had been taught to believe that this is all that mattered. When you consider how theyâ??re raised and how theyâ??re educated, this is **t all that surprising. Courtesy of Suki Kim Students playing soccer; in the background is the Kimilsungism study hall (2011). Sean Illing The regime is still an affront to human freedom, but I take your point â?? and I realize youâ??re **t defending the **rth Korean system. Suki Kim Definitely **t. We have to remember that what is important to them is **t voluntarily decided. What is important to them has been dictated by their incredibly abusive regime, so as much as I think we need to understand that their priorities are different, we must **t forget that this is a horrendously abusive regime. Itâ??s possible to be both happy and terrified all at once, and I think thatâ??s the case for many **rth Koreans. Sean Illing Do they have any inkling at all that they're living under an authoritarian state? Is that thought even thinkable for most **rth Koreans? Suki Kim I never sensed that they considered their regime authoritarian in that way, and, again, some of that may be because they were children of pro-regime families and therefore soldiers of the Great Leader. So to question any of this would be to question the very foundation of their world and their identity. Courtesy of Suki Kim Suki Kim with a **rth Korean student at Kim Il Sung University campus, with a statue of Kim Il Sung in the background. The studentâ??s face has been blurred for privacy concerns. Sean Illing In a context like this, doubt is almost inconceivable, right? Suki Kim I realized at some point that I couldn't think about truth and lies in the way I **rmally did. If you're born into a system thatâ??s built on lies and that's all you ever k**w, all you've ever been fed, that is the truth of your experience, the only truth you've lived. Thatâ??s **t something you question or doubt, or that anyone around you questions or doubts. Sean Illing All that time you spent with those students, did any of them ever open to you? Did the veneer ever *****? Suki Kim There were moments where you could see a little interior light shining through, where they would almost express frustration about this or that, but they're **t allowed to act on any of this, and so it's all subtle and controlled. The level of fear is unimaginable. Courtesy of Suki Kim The Pyongyang University of Science & Tech**logy campus. The enclosed walkway connects all buildings. A Pyongyang *****stack is in the distance (2011). Sean Illing If the Kim Jong Un regime were to collapse tomorrow, and **rth Koreans were suddenly liberated, how do you think they would react? Suki Kim I feel like they would probably be relieved about the system. But I also think theyâ??d find something else to believe in absolutely, some kind of faith that requires total fidelity. There's a deeper layer of psychological trauma here that is difficult to grasp. I think they're conditioned to follow whoever is in power, whoever is appointed the leader. We've **w had three generations of tyrannical rule and abuse, and people who have lived under this their entire life have never thought for themselves. How do you fully account for that kind of damage? My suspicion is that they'd blindly follow whoever would ascend to power. I hate to say it, but the soil is ripe for future dictatorships. Courtesy of Suki Kim Suki on the day she departed Pyongyang, about to board a flight on **rth Koreaâ??s Air Koryo at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport (2011).

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