These lovely, lying children, I saw very clearly that there was no redemption here.
The terror here was palpable.
That was the inherent contradiction. This was a nation backed into a corner. They did not want to open up, and yet they had no choice but to move toward engagement if they wanted to survive. They had...
Sometimes the longer you are inside a prison, the harder it is to fathom what is possible beyond its walls.
I wondered if it was possible that they had never been taught that lying was a bad thing.
But the blessing came with its price. Being bilingual, being multicultural should have brought two worlds into one heart, and yet for Suzy, it meant a persistent hollowness. It seems that she needed t...
18
Resignation is a habit, and it is contagious. It
I sang along, but I could not help noticing that if you replaced the word Jesus with Great Leader, the content was not so different from some of the North Korean songs my students chanted several time...
That the unfortunate thing about losing the trivia game was that they had been caught cheating and should have cheated better, I wondered if it was possible that they had never been taught that lying...
They would swear that the United States was their number one enemy, and yet carrying a pack of Marlboro Lights seemed to be a sign of privilege and class.
TIME THERE SEEMED TO PASS DIFFERENTLY. WHEN YOU ARE shut off from the world, every day is exactly the same as the one before. This sameness has a way of wearing down your soul until you become nothing...
North Korea was the evangelical Christian Holy Grail, the hardest place to crack in the whole world, and converting its people would guarantee the missionaries a spot in heaven.
Never hint that there is something wrong with their country.
I reminded myself that I did not come from a place where mind games were a prerequisite for survival to such an extreme degree, a place where the slightest act of rebellion could have unimaginable con...
I feel a greater obligation, both as a writer and as someone deeply concerned about the future of Korea, to tell the stark truth about the DPRK, in hopes that the lives of average North Koreans, inclu...
We accepted our situation meekly. How quickly we became prisoners, how quickly we gave up our freedom, how quickly we tolerated the loss of that freedom, like a child being abused, in silence. In this...
The surprise turned out to be songs: Our Unforgettable Teacher and the Song of Suki, a regional folksong they had been vaguely aware of, whose lyrics they had searched out during their August vacation...
The entire country was like a linguistic and cultural Galápagos.
I am often asked, Which Korea do you come from? North or South? It is a nonsensical question. The chance of me or any Korean out and about in the world being from the North is almost nil. Virtually no...