INSIDE KOREA’S BRAIN WASHING ACADEMY
Without You, There Is No Us Suki Kim Rider €11.99
Never underestimate the potency of pronouns. In Soviet Russia, Lenin used a pair of them – ‘Who whom?’ – to summarise the power of rulers over the ruled (what counts is ‘who’ can do what and to ‘whom’). Now North Korea, the world’s most Orwellian state, has effectively abolished the first person singular.
When Suki Kim spent six months teaching there in 2011, she noticed that every student spoke in the collective plural. ‘But here there was no “I”.’ Even ‘we’ was used with the belief that the then-ailing Kim Jong-Il had power of life and death over all of them, that they existed only so long as he permitted it.
‘Without you, there is no us’ is a refrain from the song that her students chanted as they marched in military formation from dormitory to dining hall. It sounds like absolute tyranny but would we feel the same horror if it turned up in a Christian hymn?
The cult mentality of North Korea has long been closer to religion than politics. With the ascendancy of Kim Jong-Un, following his father and grandfather, the country even has its own holy trinity now.
Suki Kim was well placed to spot these theocratic resemblances because the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, where she taught English, was wholly funded d and staffed by y foreign evangel-gelical Christianss who seemed content just too ‘show North Koreans the love of Christ’.
This seems bizarre in a country whereh no organised religion is permitted. No doubt the Great Leader was glad of the cash the Christians raised to fund free private tutoring for the sons of his elite. He also had minders installed to ensure there was no criticism of the regime – and no mention of Jesus.
But the undergraduates’ lack of general knowledge amazed Suki Kim. ‘These were North Korea’s brightest students, yet photos of the United Nations, the Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramids of Giza elicited only blank expressions.’
Their work, like their daily lives, had no progression or pacing, merely a continuous monotone. No ups and downs, either: as in North Korean newspapers or TV programmes, everything is pitched at the same level of hysterical triumphalism.
One day the students came in to class shouting ‘We beat Japan!’ She learned later that the football game had not been televised live, thoughg theyy all thought so: it was shownshow only whenwhe the regime was certainta their teamte had won.wo
Amid the boredombore of robotic conformity, the rare moments of human candour are thrilling. Discussing the football, one student eventually confided to her that ‘it was very boring to watch only winning games’.
But how could she – or any foreigner – really know what lay behind their smiling, vacant gazes? On her final day news came through that Kim Jong-Il had died, and suddenly the students seemed more unknowable than ever. Were they so terrified that they felt compelled to lie, boasting about the greatness of the Leader and weeping wildly at his demise? Or did they believe it?
Even after six months with them, she was none the wiser. And, she confesses: ‘I could not decide which was worse.’ A suitably unsettling note on which to end this solemn, scary book.