Without You There Is No Us summary

To us it may sound like a paranoid delusion. In North Korea, it’s reality: everywhere you go, someone is watching you – and they’re waiting for you to make a mistake.

Minders are tasked with keeping a constant watch on foreigners.

So what are all those minders and informants actually looking for? Unfortunately, they aren’t just trying to protect citizens. They’re watching for a tremendous number of “crimes” – and committing these crimes can have very serious consequences.

Carelessly handling images of the Great Leader, for instance, is a crime.

After spending all day being watched by Big Brother and getting scolded for things like folding your hands, you might want to take a walk through the forest to relax. As you might’ve guessed, however, walking around freely isn’t permitted.

Visitors can’t just go anywhere they want. If you’re a foreigner, you need to get permission before going anywhere, even if you just want to buy something from the shop in the diplomatic compound or visit a foreigners-only restaurant.

When you think of North Korea, “human rights violations” and “nuclear weapons” might well be the first things that come to your mind.

The DPRK certainly isn’t short on the former. The country regularly abuses its citizens and suppresses dissent. Since 1948, over one million lives have been taken in executions, in concentration camps or through forced labor.

In 2008, every North Korean university except for PUST was apparently shut down. Why?

Well, whenever the government needs workers, citizens are required to respond. The universities were closed in 2008 because almost every student was taken out to do construction work!

Kim once caught a glimpse of some construction workers while taking a guided tour. She was taken aback by how ghastly they looked: they were skeletal, gray-faced and hollow-eyed.

A tremendous number of North Koreans are undernourished, and the country still suffers from terrible famines. Between 1994 and 1998, a terrible famine called the Arduous March killed as many as three million citizens – a tenth of the population. The people had already been in danger when the economy and food supply system collapsed, so the ensuing famine wreaked havoc.

North Korea does have some things in common with parts of the Western world. There are religious monuments and shrines everywhere, just like in many Catholic countries. In North Korea, however, these devotional places and objects praise the Great Leaders: the Eternal President Kim il-Sung, his late son Kim Jong-il, and the current leader, Kim Jong-un.

You’ll find images and symbols of the Great Leaders anywhere you go. The country has more than 35,000 statues of them. Even the smallest villages can have huge, shrine-like murals for Kim Il-sung.

Kim really learned how tightly controlled her students’ lives were when she asked them to write a job application letter.

They’d never heard of such a thing. A job application letter? North Koreans don’t apply for jobs, so the idea that they’d be able to choose their own job was alien to them. They’re assigned their jobs by the authorities. Kim’s students didn’t understand the idea of making themselves marketable for a prospective employer.