Free Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim Page A

Thus, for the moment, girls and casual dating were just a fantasy. Park Jun-ho said, “Maybe Min-jun’s sister is pretty, but I bet she’s too shy for me.” It was then that quiet Ryu Jung-min at the table leaned in and said, “But the really funny thing is that this boy talks like this, but he has never had a girlfriend in his life! He is a disaster with girls!”
    At the mention of Jun-ho’s disastrous ways with girls, all four of us burst out laughing. Disaster would become a favorite word for the boys that summer, almost a private joke. They loved saying it under any circumstances—sometimes they would say “disaster food,” or that an exam had been a disaster.
    At such moments, it was as though we were sitting in any school cafeteria anywhere. They were simply college students who were interested in the one thing most boys their age were interested in: girls. At moments like those, I forgot where I was. Or if I did remember, I quickly made myself forget. And my guard came down, and I felt a sudden freedom from the constraints that wound all of us so tight, and I looked across at their mischievous faces and felt such tenderness for them, and I became a momentary confidante for their gossip about girls and a well-wisher on the twentieth birthday of my charming student, and I felt pleased and relaxed until my eyes would catch the shining metal pins on their chests, the eternally present face of their Eternal President, there on each of their hearts, marking his territory, although they were just badges, and these young men could easily pull them off and throw them into the trash along with the uneaten grub on their trays, but then it would dawn on me that such a thing would never happen, and that this glimmer of hope was only a mirage.
    DURING THAT FIRST week, I kept noticing things that bothered me. Once we asked the students to put together a skit, and they chose to write about two Canadian teachers going to a local hospital. One of them was injured so the other offered to sell his blood to help him, but they discovered that medical care was free due to the solicitude of the Great General Kim Jong-il.
    Katie pointed out to them that this made no sense, since 1) a foreign teacher would be allowed only in a foreign hospital, which was not free, 2) people generally are not paid for donating blood, and 3) emergency rooms do not require patients to pay up front. The students became puzzled and said, “Well, okay, the friend who is not injured needs to tell the wife of the injured one, so he goes to the airport to fly to Canada to let her know.” Katie asked why he wouldn’t just call the wife instead of flying all the way to Canada. The students stumbled and said, “Okay, in that case, the friend could use the phone at the hospital, and maybe the doctor will call for them, but how would the doctor speak to the wife in Canada when he speaks no English?” Katie asked why the friend would not just talk to the wife directly. And on it went. Each answer depressed us further, because it was plain that a simple thing like calling a family member in a foreign country was inconceivable to them, at least not without special permission.
    Another time, we played a game of Truth or Lie. We asked students to come up with two true statements about themselves and one false one, and the rest of the class had to guess which was which. When one student got up and said, “I visited China last year on vacation,” the whole class burst out laughing and shouted, “False!” They all knew that this was impossible.
    Then another student said, “When I was a child, I ate tough beef,” and many students nodded and shouted out, “True!” I recalled a defector telling me that the first time he ate beef, it was strangely leathery. According to him, during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, hardly anyone was buying beef, and the rumor was that instead of throwing the aged meat out, Australia had given it to the people of North