This feeling was akin to heartbreak, and it took me a while to make sense of it - until one evening after dinner, looking at the students dotted across the schoolyard with their buckets, on gardening duty, which seemed to happen more frequently as we neared Victory Day, July 27th, it occurred to me that it was all futile, the fantasy of Korean unity, the five thousand years of Korean identity, because the unified nation was broken, irreparably, in 1945 when a group of politicians drew a random blue line across the map, separating families who would die without ever meeting again, with all their sorrow and anger and regret unrequited, their bodies turning to earth, becoming part of this land. On that evening, as a sun the colour of mournful pomegranate fell behind the Forever Tower, behind the smoke stack, behind this city, this school, behind the children of the elite who were now my children for a brief time, these lovely, lying children, I saw very clearly there was no redemption here.

I've read a few books about North Korea now that cover the experiences of defectors and individuals working within the government. Without You, There Is No Us offers the unique perspective of someone working as a teacher in a Pyongyang university. Suki Kim, a South Korean American journalist, enters Pyongyang University of Science and Technology under the guise of an evangelical Christian missionary and starts to secretly document her experiences there, including her relationships with her students, the restrictions implemented on the staff, and the feeling of being closely watched at all times.

The most compelling aspect of this memoir is Kim's relationship with her students, who she very quickly becomes attached to, feeling as though they are her own children. The bond they form is really endearing yet also fraught with distrust and uncertainty as she can't help but feel that they are also monitoring her and have secrets of their own. She tries to feed their curiosity of the outside world, all the while knowing that she could potentially be risking their safety, and the way she writes about them is really moving, love radiating off the page like a painful ache.

My sole issue with the book is that, sometimes, it can feel a bit repetitive. It feels wrong to imply that parts of someone's true story feel irrelevant and I don't mean that at all. I just feel that some parts could be trimmed down, particularly the moments with Kim and the other members of staff. While that aspect of the book was interesting, there were times where it felt like it had already been said, the point already made, and were unnecessarily drawn out. There were moments where my interest lagged a little but I hasten to add that those instances were usually short-lived and I'd be invested again within a few pages if not a few paragraphs.

I wouldn't recommend this as someone's introduction to North Korea - for that I'd say start with Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick but I would wholeheartedly recommend it for those who are interested in the subject and want to see a different perspective.