Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields—except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has accepted a job teaching English. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them to write, all under the watchful eye of the regime. Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues—evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves—their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own—at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged.


學生們排成兩列縱隊，高聲詠唱讚頌金正日和祖國北韓的歌曲，一日三次從不間斷：「沒有您，就沒有祖國。沒有您，就沒有我們。」這場面令人不寒而慄，但逐漸地，連金淑姬也不知不覺記起曲調、開始哼唱。那是 2011 年，當時北韓所有大學都已經關閉了一整年，學生被下放到建築工地中，唯有全男校平壤科技大學的 270 名學生例外。這所高牆圍繞的學校，每個房間的牆上都高掛著金日成和金正日父子面無表情的畫像，而金淑姬即是在此任教英語科。接下來六個月，她必須與她負責照顧的學生共進三餐並盡心盡力教導他們寫作，這一切都受到北韓政權的監視。在平壤科大的生活孤獨又封閉，對金淑姬來講更是如此，她寫的信都得接受審查，筆記和照片還必須藏起不讓監視人員看到，連她的同事，福音派基督傳教士也得防範；他們不曉得是真的不知道，或是只是假裝沒注意到金淑姬與其他人的信仰不同。時間一天天過去，她感到困惑：為什麼學生們能輕而易舉地說謊？學生們對體制的絕對服從更是讓她焦躁不安。但同時她似乎還是能看見學生私下的真性情——他們天真的熱情、對於取悅他人的渴望及尚未完全被澆熄的好奇心。她開始在有意無意間告訴學生們，在他們所認識的世界之外，還有其他地方的存在；在那裡有各種新奇的事物，如上網、自在旅遊，甚至還提及民主選舉或是其他在北韓被視為對國家變節的觀念。然而，金正日死後，金淑姬喜愛的學生們為此傷心欲絕，她不禁懷疑起自己能否在與學生的鴻溝間搭起橋樑。