Miss Kim wrote: 'He was an only child, and she wept during their twenty-minute meeting, so he told her, "If you keep crying, I am going to go back inside." One student's father stopped by the campus to see him but was turned away and all he could do was leave a note.Īnother was late for lunch one day because his mother had come to the gate with rice cakes and roast chicken as it was his birthday. Many of the boy's families lived as little as 10 minutes drive away in Pyongyang, but they were hardly ever allowed to see them or have any contact at all during term time. One student asked Miss Kim if it were true that everyone in the world spoke Korean, as it was 'so superior that they spoke it in England, China and America.' If any of them did know more the fear and the consequences of being exposed were so great they never let it be known.' 'But on another level they were the elite. There is only one TV channel about the Great Leader and one newspaper about the Great Leader.
'They didn't even know about the existence of the internet. Students often watched from their dormitory windows while Miss Kim practiced playing basketball below If Miss Kim, then aged 40, had been caught, she risked being branded a spy and being thrown in one of North Korea's gulags, or forced labour camps, where 120,000 political prisoners are thought to be held.Įvery piece of material for every lesson had to be submitted and approved for use by a shadowy group known as the 'counterparts' - North Korean staff overseeing the lessons of the foreign teachers who had been brought in. Their new teacher was getting up at 5am every day to write-up notes she had taken on her experiences, making sure she copied everything to five USB sticks and left nothing on her laptop which could be spied on by her hosts.
The 270 boys aged 19-20 were the offspring of some of the regime's most loyal citizens - some of the few allowed to live in the capital outside of which the vast majority are stuck in grinding poverty in the countryside. Posing as one of the Christian missionaries running the facility, Miss Kim spent months secretly documenting her experiences for a book, 'Without You, There Is No Us: My secret life teaching the sons of North Korea's elite'. Portraits of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il hang on the wall above the blackboard One student once asked her if it was true everyone in the world spoke Korean.
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