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

　　★《我們最幸福》作者芭芭拉．德米克盛讚：「不可思議的體驗！」
　　★一位偽裝為老師的作家，270個如士兵的平壤大學生，第一手記錄一群不一樣的北韓人
　　★重量級作家讚譽推薦、報刊雜誌一致好評，認識北韓最獨一無二的記述
　　★生活日常瑣事反映出國家文化教育等諸多大問題，穿插個人家族背景和大時代中難以泯滅的人性真情，兼具敘事技巧和豐富故事性，詳實深刻，打動人心

　　北韓權貴學生――
　　他們是僵化體制下擁抱特權的青春靈魂
　　他們沒有艱辛驚險的脫北經驗，也沒有窮苦悲慘的日常生活
　　他們在北韓最先進的大學全英文上課，打高爾夫、看哈利波特電影，還開生日趴
　　
　　南韓裔臥底教師――
　　她是他們好奇探看外在世界的小小窗口
　　她不是第一次赴北韓，卻是首度深入且長期接觸當地的年輕人
　　她的真實身分是新聞工作者暨小說家，以人性之筆重新連結兩韓

　　◎ 真情與體制的衝突，在世界上最安靜的地方轟然響起

　　那裡，毫無變化的日復一日，千篇一律的日子折磨你的靈魂。
　　空虛……無止境的空虛，逐漸感受不到自身存在的意義。
　　金正日政權的最後半年，赴北韓教導上層階級特權分子之子英文，
　　難能可貴的體會讓她留下縈懷不去的深刻回憶。── 中譯本《沒有您，就沒有我們》臉譜出版

　　A haunting memoir 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 the all-male 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.

　　Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues—evangelical Christian missionaries who don’t know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn’t share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves—their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own—at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged.

　　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.”