Traveling internationally, even the small amount I’ve been able to do, is wonderful but alienating. The language is different (even when it’s the same), the food is different, the entire pattern of life is different. And that’s in first world, Western countries. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to go to North Korea. It must be like going to the moon.
Suki Kim, author of Without You, There Is No Us, emigrated to the United States from South Korea with her parents when she was about 13 years old. She became a writer and a habitual wanderer, ending up on a few news trips to North Korea. When an opportunity came up to go there on an extended sojourn by joining the teaching staff of a missionary group running a university, she jumped at the chance. And so she found herself at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), teaching English to upper-class North Korean young men for about six months before returning to the U.S. and writing a book about her experiences there…
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