Without You, There is No Us - My Secret Life Teaching the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Suki Kim

Rider & Co

2015

304 páginas

10h 8m

ISBN-13: 9781846044830

It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, except for the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. This is where Suki Kim 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 the university is lonely and claustrophobic. Her letters are read by censors and she must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but also from her colleagues, evangelical Christian missionaries, whose faith she does not share. As the weeks pass she discovers how easily her students lie, and how total is their obedience to Kim Jong-il. She also, bravely, hints at the existence of a world beyond their own: the internet, free travel, democracy, and other ideas forbidden in a country where torture and execution are commonplace. Yet her pupils are also full of boyish enthusiasm, with flashes of curiosity not yet extinguished. Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life inside the world's most inscrutable country.

Resenhas (2)

4 (Muito bom)

Importante e perturbador

A história relatada pela autora, uma jornalista sul-coreana residente em Nova York, deveria ser leitura obrigatória para os brasileiros. Infelizmente é improvável que um dia seja traduzida para o português no Brasil, por motivos óbvios.
As situações por que ela passou, infiltrada como professora de inglês em uma universidade, beiram o surreal, ainda que sejam hoje a vida diária da elite intelectual, não necessariamente econômica, dos norte-coreanos. Todos os cidadãos, inclusive desses privilegiados, são treinados desde cedo para serem soldados-escravos. E a visão que têm do mundo passa por um rigoroso e violento filtro ideológico e ufanista.
Altamente recomendável, ainda que perturbador, principalmente diante do que se tenta implantar em nosso país e do que já acontece na Venezuela.