When Suki Kim’s wrote about the six months she was as a teacher in North Korea, she was haunted by the idea that her book might lead to the punishment or even the death of her former students, who could be punished for knowing too much about the world. For example, they weren’t supposed to know about the internet, because if they accessed it, they would discover contradictions to the facts they were told to believe. This could put them in real danger. Her chilling book describes “the Great Leader’s maniacal and barbaric control” of the people in his country.
Kim, Suki. Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite. Crown Publishers, 2014, p. 199.