by STEVE HAN | @steve_han
editor@charactermedia.com
Suki Kim may have captivated her readers with her latest book, Without You, There Is No Us, which chronicles her six-month journey of teaching English to North Korean students, but it was apparently at the expense of her relationship with the North Korean school.
Teachers at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) criticized Kim, who taught at the school from June to December of 2011 for a myriad of reasons. A few of those include the Korean American author breaking a promise to not publicize her experiences at the private university in North Korea’s capital as well as allegedly writing factually inaccurate information about the school and its teachers, whom she described as Christian missionaries.
“Suki is a good writer, but she definitely wrote to her interest and did not really report the whole story,” Norma Nichols, the co-director at PUST’s international academic affairs, told KoreAm in an email. “She got some facts wrong. I was there during the time she was reporting, so I know that she overlooked some things.”
The North Korean government, largely known for its ban on religions and aversion to foreign influence, approved PUST in 2001. The school eventually opened in 2011 under the conditions that the funding will come from foreign investments and that the teachers would be subject to severe punishment for trying to proselytize students. The school, attended by the male children of North Korea’s most privileged families, was founded by James Kim, a Korean American entrepreneur who also runs a similar school in Yanbian, China.
Although the school admitted that its teachers are indeed Christians, it dismissed what Kim said about her fellow teachers, whom she said they allegedly set a “larger goal to convert” the North Korean students.
“I am really upset about the attitude, her writings, her telling lies, her cheating us,” James Kim, the school’s founder, told the New York Times. “[The North Korean authorities] know we are Christian, we do not hide that … But we are not missionaries. Christians and missionaries are different.”
As of now, PUST hasn’t faced any repercussions because of Kim’s book, but the North Korean authorities have reportedly questioned James Kim extensively since it was published.
Kim has already acknowledged that she is not a Christian and that she deceptively applied for a teaching job at the school, where she clandestinely took notes with the goal of writing about her experiences. Under heavy surveillance, Kim said she scribbled notes and destroyed them after transferring what she wrote to thumb drives, which she either wore around her neck or hid in the garbage can.
KoreAm will feature an exclusive Q&A with Suki Kim in its upcoming December/January issue.
