Free Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim

being a bit daunted by the different accents they heard at the school. For example, Joan, who was in her seventies and originally from Alabama, spoke with an accent that was very unfamiliar to them, and they found it quite difficult to understand her. Other teachers had New Zealand, Australian, or British accents. One student asked whether an American or British accent would be more advantageous for his future. It was a valid question, although I did not know in what capacity they were expected to use English when so few North Koreans were allowed to travel. I wanted to tell him that he should watch foreign news on the BBC and CNN and decide which accent he liked better. But I knew the only TV channels he had access to were the North Korean ones. I also wished he could watch Hollywood films so that he would be exposed to everyday English. Of course this was not an option, either.
    On rare occasions when questions strayed from the topic of how best to learn English, they usually went something like this:
    How long does it take to fly here from New York?
    Do you miss your mother?
    Who would you marry, an American or a Korean man?
    But they never deviated further than that.
    The next day was Park Jun-ho’s twentieth birthday, and he was in high spirits. He was popular and sharp, and could be playful, though his laughing eyes sometimes turned cold at a moment’s notice. He said very proudly that his family of four lived in the center of Pyongyang, and he was cocky enough to declare that his own speaking skill was excellent, since his father had spoken to him in Chinese and English from the time he was little. That day being his birthday, his mother would have made him noodles—a Chinese birthday tradition, but not a South Korean one—but since he was not at home, the students in his class had planned a celebration.
    “Hong Mun-sup will play guitar, and Park Se-hoon is the class dancer! Then Kim Tae-hyun plays the girl in this skit, and Ri Jin-chul the boy,” Jun-ho explained. The plan was to gather in one of their rooms that evening and amuse the birthday boy with performances. One by one, they would sing him a song, and this would last a couple of hours. When I asked what kinds of songs, the students just shrugged and said, “Songs about friendship.” Here there were no bars, no girls, and no computer games. Other than soccer and basketball and weekly gatherings to watch the TV drama called The Nation of the Sun , about the heroic actions of their Great Leader, their only form of entertainment was one another. It was saddening that they had so few ways to amuse themselves, but also lovely. The last time I had made up stories and acted them out with friends was as a child in South Korea, during the seventies, and we did it because we too had little else to play with and no choice but to be creative. Memories of throwing on my mother’s clothes to playact a princess, a prince, a pirate rushed back to me, and I felt a yearning for a time long gone.
    Park Jun-ho began teasing Choi Min-jun, his roommate, at the dinner table. He told me that Min-jun was known among the boys as the serious one, and they often called him a “romantic.” Min-jun became embarrassed and waved his hands in denial. He said Jun-ho was always jesting, and that he regretted telling Jun-ho about his pretty younger sister, who was sixteen, because Jun-ho had said that if they ever met, he would say to her, “You just wait for me.”
    They all cracked up at this. After all, their only interaction with the opposite sex was with their foreign teachers or the guards who occupied the lower floors of their dormitory. Dr. Joseph told me that initially the school had wanted to bring in male guards, but they felt that they might appear too threatening to the foreigners. With female guards, there were instead concerns that the boys might be distracted, but it turned out that they were from such different social strata that the boys pretty much ignored them.