Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

by Suki Kim

  Waiting for us at the top of the hill were three men in khaki uniforms and a female guide in her twenties—quite pretty, as female guides always were. In the distance was a set of long, low buildings with bright blue roofs, which the guide explained was a factory for slicing and drying apples, and I recalled the packaged snack, labeled simply “Dried Apples,” sold at the city’s Potonggang supermarket. Other than alcohol, cigarettes, and water, this seemed to be one of the few locally produced products. In the future, the guide told us, they would also grow other kinds of fruit at the farm, and there were plans to raise turtles.

  Then she launched into a very long description of the two-year history of the farm, highlighted by the times that Kim Jongil had visited. Among his comments: The apples were very big and round, and he was happy that now his people would be fed apples. Then he worried about the working conditions of the farmers and sent tractors to transport them from tree to tree and from their homes to the farm. He even sent every worker a color TV and ordered that they be given access to a signal, like the citizens of Pyongyang. When he returned the next year he commented that the apples were so good it was a shame for him alone to see them, and that he wished he could share the sight with everyone. So it went, with detailed accounts of everything Kim Jong-il had said, and even where he stood as he spoke the words. “Our Great General Comrade Kim Jong-il is not only the greatest in leading our powerful and prosperous nation but even well versed in apple growing,” the guide declared. As she launched into an anecdote about an Italian diplomat who had visited the farm and applauded the Great Leader and donated even more apple seeds, I began to feel restless.

  Luckily, at that moment, two women from our group asked to use a toilet and got one of the men in charge to drive them in a car to the village at the bottom of the hill. I did not need to go to the bathroom but seized the opportunity to escape more tales of the Great Leader and the wondrous apples, and see the neighborhood below. Two minders, of course, came along. The village consisted of a cluster of fifty or sixty houses and a huge Kim Il-sung mural at the top of concrete steps like a shrine. The one-story houses looked identical, each with a blue shingled roof and a small garden. The minders took us to the first of the houses and pointed to an outhouse in the yard. The stench was so unbearable that I felt nauseated just standing in line. Since we were all women, the minders remained about fifty yards away on the other side of the stone fence.

  Just then, a wooden door slid open from the house and an old woman’s face appeared. She was so wrinkled and small and missing so many teeth she could have been a hundred years old. “Who’s here? Where do you girls come from?” she asked. This surprised us since the few locals who ever got this close to us always avoided our eyes. This old woman looked genuinely curious. I said hello in Korean. Almost immediately, one of the minders shouted: “Old woman, these are visitors to the farm! Get inside!” His tone was ice cold, menacing. The old woman did not even reply but immediately shut the door. We were in her yard, using her facilities without permission, and yet she was ordered inside.

  Slaves. The word came back to me again. In that brief moment, I felt a paralyzing fear, and I wanted to get out of this country. I was afraid of getting stuck here. I was afraid of the minders who could order the old woman to go away, and the speed with which she listened. I recalled the way my students stiffened at the sight of Mr. Ri. The terror here was palpable.

  When we returned to the rest of the group, all of us were suddenly told that, because it was Saturday, the workers were resting so we could not tour the factory. On the way back, the bus took a different route, and we passed no skeletal workers.

  AT DINNER, WHEN I told the students at my table that we had visited an apple farm, all three brightened and exclaimed, “Daedonggang Fruit Farm?” I nodded. I told them it was my first visit to such a fruit farm, a fact they found incredible. “I’m a city girl,” I explained, “and in America, teachers teach and farmers farm,” to which one student responded, “Strange, I am a city boy too, but in our country we, even the university students, all know how to farm.”

  The students proudly said that the apple farm was the eleventh songun (military first) wonder of their country, and that they had helped to build it. They told me that in April and May 2009, college students from throughout Pyongyang had spent every Sunday digging holes for the trees, working in teams. They seemed genuinely fond of their memories of working there, though one student admitted that it had been hard because it was extremely cold that spring. I asked if they had since visited to see—and taste—the fruits of their labor. There was a pause before they told me that they had not seen the farm since the trees had been planted. Yet the farm was less than half an hour’s drive from the school.

  To ease the sudden awkwardness, I asked about the other wonders. They seemed relieved and volunteered information eagerly. When General Kim Jong-il took over after Eternal Great Leader Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, they told me, there had been only eight wonders, but now they had twelve. The first one was the Sunrise at Baekdu-san (Mount Baekdu), where Kim Jong-il was born. The second was the winter pines at Dabak Military Base, where Kim Jong-il had first thought of the songun policy. The third was the azaleas at Chulryong hill near a frontline base, where Kim Jong-il often visited. The fourth was the night view of Jangja mountain, where Kim Jong-il had taken refuge during the Korean War as a child. The fifth was the echo of the Oolim Falls, which Kim Jong-il said was the sound of a powerful and prosperous nation. The sixth was the horizon of Handrebul field, the site of Kim Jong-il’s 1998 land reform. The seventh was the potato flowers from the field of Daehongdan, where Kim Il-sung had fought the Japanese imperialists and Kim Jong-il upheld his revolutionary spirit by starting the country’s biggest potato farm. The eighth was the view of the village of Bumanli, which Kim Jong-il had praised as a socialist ideal that shone bright during the Arduous March. The ninth was the beans at the army depot, which Kim Jong-il once said made him happy that his soldiers were well fed. The tenth was the rice harvest in the town of Migok, so plentiful that Kim Jong-il had declared it to be a shining example of socialist farming. The eleventh was the apple farm, and the twelfth was the Ryongjung fish farm of southern Hwanghae province whose sturgeons swarmed toward the sea, just as the satellites of the DPRK, under Kim Jong-il, flew toward the sky. The students uniformly remarked that the increase from eight to twelve wonders under the Great General’s guidance meant that their country was powerful and prosperous and would continue to be so.

  It was at moments like these that I could not help but think that they—my beloved students—were insane. Either they were so terrified that they felt compelled to lie and boast of the greatness of their Leader, or they sincerely believed everything they were telling me. I could not decide which was worse.

  Three times a day, the boys lined up in neat rows, divided into groups, and marched from the dormitory to the cafeteria, chanting songs in military fashion. With each day the songs became more familiar to me. There was the ubiquitous “The Song of General Kim Jong-il.” And there was another I heard so often that I found myself inadvertently humming the refrain, which went “Without you, there is no us, without you, there is no motherland.” By you, they meant Kim Jong-il.

  Once I asked them the title of the song they had been singing that afternoon, and they said “Victory 727” and explained that it commemorated the DPRK’s victory over the U.S. on July 27, 1953. That was the date the armistice was signed by both Koreas, and, of course, the very existence of an armistice means there was neither a victor nor a victory, but I could not tell my students that. Another song was called “Dansumae.” When I translated the title as “In a single breath” (Chosun Central TV translates it as “Without a break”), they waved their hands, dismissing that as the literal meaning. The phrase seemed to have some other connotation, since I remembered seeing it as a slogan mounted on top of several buildings around Pyongyang. The real meaning, they told me, was to conquer and destroy instantly. One st
udent said, “For example, it means that we could take over South Korea and conquer and kill everyone there instantly!” I must have looked taken aback because the second boy at the table dropped his face and the third laughed nervously.

  Then I would remember that they had been raised with the belief that a war with either South Korea or imperialist America was imminent. For them, this threat was very real, or at least their government told them it was. And, although they were students, their lives were as regimented as those of soldiers in barracks. Beyond guarding the Kimilsungism Study Hall and the Forever Tower, as well as scrubbing the outside of the latter, they tended the grounds for several hours a week and cleaned the classrooms, bathrooms, and hallways. They had to count the spoons and the chopsticks to be sure none were missing. Each group had access to the bathhouse for a shower or haircut only during assigned hours, and every morning and afternoon they did group exercises. In their dorm, four students shared a room, and one was designated as the room manager, responsible for maintaining cleanliness and morale. The room manager reported to the class monitor. The chain of authority was clear.

  I began to notice that some of the less savvy boys were paired with sharper ones, who not only roomed with them but sat next to them in class. Naive Choi Min-jun, for example, was never without Park Jun-ho. Ryu Jung-min, who seemed to be without guile, sat with Ri Jin-chul, who never deviated from scripted answers. These duos, which at first struck me as close friendships, seemed, as time went by, more like assigned pairings in which one watched over the other with something more loaded than simple affection.

  Yet they were still young, and their discipline was not absolute. Things did slip out. One student admitted that none of them had cell phones, though his roommate quickly added that they all owned cell phones but had willingly given them up upon entering PUST so that they could concentrate on their studies. Yet another student said that he had not seen or talked to his mother since he came to PUST in April, three months ago. He paused, as though he regretted admitting this, but then another and another said that they too had had no contact with family and friends since then. From their dormitory windows, downtown Pyongyang was visible, so close that they could almost hear the sounds of the city, but there was no such thing as a visiting hour. One student’s father stopped by the campus to see him but was turned away. All he could do was leave a note.

  Just as I began to feel that they were relaxing their guard, I read their next set of letters, which suddenly focused almost entirely on Kim Jong-il. As a group, they became preachy about his greatness, which they called his “solicitude.” If they got a good grade, it was thanks to his solicitude. If their English improved, that also had to do with his solicitude. One of them told a story from his childhood, in the late nineties, when he saw people shouting “Please receive my blood” in front of a hospital. He ended the letter with his own translation of the song “We Envy Nothing in the World.”

  Another student wrote about the country’s CNC (computer numerical control) technology, and how the news of this invention had echoed throughout the world. The reason for this breakthrough, he wrote, was the leadership of the Great General Kim Jong-il. After the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, my student wrote, Kim Jong-il led the world’s progressive nations to victory. The real meaning of “utility in economy” was different from what I, Dear Professor Kim Suki, must assume to be “profit in economy.” Comrade Captain Kim Jong-un had taught them that, as scientists, each of them was a “utility,” and that by coming up with great inventions they helped build a powerful and prosperous nation, which pleased the Great General Kim Jong-il.

  There seemed to be some confusion about how to refer to Kim Jong-il in English. Even the guides were uncertain. In Korean, they usually called him the Great General, but in English, he was referred to in all sorts of ways: Great Generalissimo, Great General Comrade Leader, Great Leader Marshal, Great General, Great Leader, Dear Leader. Great Generalissimo seemed to be a new one; I did not recall hearing it on previous trips. Had it been adopted in anticipation of Kim Jong-un rising from Captain to Great General?

  The student’s letter was the first time that I’d heard any mention of Kim Jong-un, other than the red sign that read “Captain Luck” in the hallway on the way to classrooms. But what seemed most peculiar was the way nearly all the students suddenly chose Kim Jong-il as their main topic, and the use of identical words and phrases such as solicitude, single-unified people, and powerful and prosperous nation. I wondered whether they had gotten a firm lecture from the counterparts during their most recent Saturday meeting, known as Saenghwal chonghwa (Daily Life Unity), where, according to Dr. Joseph, they confessed their mistakes and critiqued themselves and others.

  THE TEACHERS ALSO had a weekly gathering where confessions were made. Every Sunday morning, in a room on the third floor of our dormitory, we held a makeshift service. Although the students sang all the time at the top of their voices, we were told to sing quietly so that no one would hear. Usually, one teacher brought a keyboard and played hymns while another played the flute. I sang along, but I could not help noticing that if you replaced the word Jesus with Great Leader, the content was not so different from some of the North Korean songs my students chanted several times each day. In both groups, singing was a joyful, collective ritual from which they took strength. Often I thought how absurd it was that the missionaries and the students could not sing together.

  Our service inevitably included testimonies—tearful stories in which personal things were revealed, as if it were group therapy. Stories—this world seemed full of stories. It was rare for anyone to actually see Kim Jong-il, so everything we heard about him was a story. And my Christian colleagues had their stories too, in their Bible.

  One evening, I saw Rachel, a thirtysomething Korean Canadian teacher, walking through the small muddy area beside the teacher dormitory. I followed her and asked what she was doing, and she told me that she was looking for the site where “the bell” used to be. According to her, this bell had belonged to the first church in Pyongyang. In the late 1800s, a Welsh Protestant missionary had sailed here from China, but when he arrived, his ship was set on fire by Koreans, and he was stranded here, along with a stack of Bibles. He was soon killed, but a local man found the books and used the pages as wallpaper, and people soon gathered at his house and were converted to Christianity by reading the pages. This was how the first church was born and flourished, only to be shut down once Kim Il-sung came to power. Decades later, while excavating the foundation for PUST, workers found the bell that had belonged to the original church. Until then, no one had a clue that the school’s foundation belonged to God.

  “That’s what’s called divine,” she whispered.

  The cynic in me thought what a good story it was from a PR standpoint. This school needed a lot of money just for its daily operation. Most of it came from churches, and nothing sells better than the story of a miracle. Still, at that moment, I must admit that I wanted to believe the story. I wanted a divine force, any outside force, to intervene here. I very much wanted to believe in this God who had devised a private treasure hunt for believers by hiding a bell under the PUST foundation.

  9

  TWO WEEKS HAD PASSED, THOUGH I WAS LOSING MY SENSE of time. Most of us were not only tired but restless. “Okay, I’ve had enough. I like the students and all, but I need to breathe,” Rachel said. At times, Katie said, she felt desperate to go home. An American teacher from the Midwest said, “I just want to get in my car and drive to a store when I want to. That seems like such a luxury.” They had come to PUST because of their deep faith in God and their desire to spread his gospel, but even they were being worn down by this place.

  We found a bit of relief in talk of a teachers’ field trip to Myohyang-san (Mount Myohyang), a common tourist destination outside Pyongyang. Mount Myohyang was one of only a few mountains open to foreigners. All others were said to be denuded and barren, due to the economic crisis and famine of the
mid-1990s, during which people collected everything for food and fuel and left nothing for the soil, and perhaps also to Kim Il-sung’s Find New Land Campaign of the late 1970s, which led to widespread deforestation. My colleagues were excited by the prospect of hiking on the mountain, but to me, a mountain suggested an isolated tourist spot from which I was unlikely to learn anything new about North Korea.

  The trip to Mount Myohyang began at 7:30 a.m. Not all teachers joined; some were not interested and some did not want to pay for it. Each outing cost money, from gas and entrance fees to meals. Katie and I sat near the back of the bus in order to avoid the hawk eyes of our two minders, who were like a caricature of the good cop and the bad cop. Mr. Ri was the seemingly easygoing one while Mr. Han was testy, with a penchant for Korean history. Katie whispered to me that I must be careful because Mr. Han tailed me at all times. I could not even go to a bathroom without him asking me where I was going, to which I would answer, “You can just follow me in there if you are so curious,” which would shut him up.

  Dr. Joseph told us that we must not take photographs without permission during the bus ride, since if anyone outside saw us taking pictures and reported our vehicle, our minders could get in trouble. But there was nothing worth photographing along the 98-mile highway that connected Pyongyang and Mount Myohyang. The scene on either side of us was just as peaceful and immaculate as the scene on the way to the apple farm. Occasionally I spotted what seemed to be farmers working the land, people bicycling or walking alongside the highway, or dirty-looking kids sitting in groups in the middle of the highway as though it were a playground. Every now and then, in the distance, I saw what looked like villages—identical rows of houses and one big concrete building that looked like a school, as well as the inevitable slogans and portraits on buildings and billboards. Most of the houses were one story high, the color of pale cement, with darker, shingled roofs, but some were three to four stories, big enough for several families. They could have been shabby model houses that no one had moved into, or ghost towns from which people had fled. We did not pass a single car during the ninety minutes it took us to get to our destination.