Journalist Suki Kim teaches “the sons of the elite” English for 2 semesters at a private university in North Korea financed by evangelical Christians in order to learn more about life in the repressive, secretive regime. My reading about North Korea is so much more depressing than my reading about the Holocaust and not just because the Holocaust is over. Korea is its own Holocaust, allowed to go on for over 50 years and created in some respects by the Allies division of Korea after the Korean War. Millions have died there, some from famine, some in the gulags where “criminals” are sent to the third generation to repent. I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly bothered me about Kim’s book until I read a blog post by her explaining how she had written about her students in such a way that they could never be identified. That explains the discordant blandness of her descriptions of the young men next to her obvious affection for her “gentlemen.” Of course if any of them could be identified they would be punished for any wayward word. I’m not sure how many more books I can read on the topic. The complete thought-control in North Korea may be worse than the deprivation.
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