Without You, There Is No Us: My Time With the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim

Author:Suki Kim [Kim, Suki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Travel
ISBN: 9780307720672
Google: 0hxmAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0307720659
Goodreads: 20685373
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2014-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

12

THE DAYS LEADING UP TO THE END OF the summer semester were a jumble. There was much picture taking and sporting competition, as though the incessant activities would distract us from our approaching goodbye. I was torn between sadness and the desire to escape this place. I had been invited back to teach during the fall semester, and I had said yes, but I was honestly not sure if I could go through with it again.

After lunch on July 26, Ruth and I were called to President Kim’s office and told that we would be attending the ceremony for the 58th Anniversary of the Great Victory at the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium. This was a state event, hosted by the Workers’ Party and the Pyongyang People’s Committee, on the eve of Victory Day. Among the invitees were a small group of the PUST senior staff; we would be the only teachers. Joan later told me that she had been working with President Kim for nearly a decade, since the idea of PUST was first conceived, but had never been invited since she was a “white face.” We were chosen, she said, because we were both returning in the fall and because we were of Korean heritage.

When we arrived, it was dead quiet inside the stadium, even though all twenty thousand seats were occupied. Half the attendees were army personnel, the other half citizens in gray summer suits, a sort of civilian uniform for Party members. I saw no non-Korean faces. The stage was decorated with the words ONE HUNDRED WAR, ONE HUNDRED WIN! 58TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY 727, and on either side of it were similar slogans. On stage, three rows of chairs faced the audience.

Soon about a hundred men came out wearing army uniforms, the same ones my students wore to guard the Kimilsungism Study Hall, and everyone in the audience rose and clapped as the men took their seats on the stage. Many of them were porky, with rotund bellies and generous jowls, and their jackets were covered with shiny gold medals. There were two women among them, one wearing a white pantsuit, the other a hanbok. It seems likely that one of them was Kim Kyung-hui, sister of Kim Jong-il and wife of Jang Sung-taek, then the second most powerful man in North Korea.*3

One of the men walked to the podium and began reading an address that was at times unintelligible because of the terrible speakers.*4 It was mainly about the glorious achievements of Kim Il-sung, and the heroic way he had fended off the attacks of the American imperialists and won the war. Curse words directed at the United States and South Korea were scattered throughout the speech. The speaker said that Lee Myung-bak, then the president of South Korea, was driving the entire peninsula into the greedy hands of America, and that if this continued, Seoul would turn into a “sea of blood” filled with “death and corpses.” The event was being taped and televised, and we were periodically told by our minders to applaud.

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