
Without You, There Is No Us
My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
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Narrated by:
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Janet Song
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By:
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Suki Kim
About this listen
A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign
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.
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Riveting!!
- By Iread on 11-12-20
By: Chol-hwan Kang, and others
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Not the End of the World
- How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
- By: Hannah Ritchie
- Narrated by: Hannah Ritchie PhD
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children.
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Environmental Sustainability Analysis
- By RM on 04-16-24
By: Hannah Ritchie
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Nothing to Envy
- Ordinary Lives in North Korea
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.
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The man who wants to be GOD
- By Gohar on 05-08-10
By: Barbara Demick
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Your Face Belongs to Us
- A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
- By: Kashmir Hill
- Narrated by: Kashmir Hill
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online life: their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed.
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Entertaining but should be a 10 page article
- By Anonymous User on 12-11-24
By: Kashmir Hill
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The Great Successor
- The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un
- By: Anna Fifield
- Narrated by: Olivia Mackenzie-Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived.
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Great book
- By WPD on 06-26-19
By: Anna Fifield
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Under the Same Sky
- From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America
- By: Joseph Kim, Stephan Talty
- Narrated by: Raymond Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage.
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Tugs at the heart strings
- By R3v13w3r on 07-15-15
By: Joseph Kim, and others
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Limitarianism
- The Case Against Extreme Wealth
- By: Ingrid Robeyns
- Narrated by: Rachel Bavidge
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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This will be the first authoritative trade book to unpack the concept of a cap on wealth, where to draw the line, how to collect the excess, and what to do with the money. In the process, Robeyns ignites an urgent debate about wealth, one that calls into question the very forces we live by (capitalism and neoliberalism) and invites us to a radical reimagining of our world.
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How important it is for everyone to read this book!
- By MSH on 02-27-24
By: Ingrid Robeyns
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The Hard Road Out
- One Woman’s Escape from North Korea
- By: Jihyun Park, Seh-Lynn Chai, Sarah Baldwin - translator
- Narrated by: Rosa Escoda
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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North Korea is an open-air prison from which there is no escape. Only a handful of men and women have succeeded. Jihyun Park is one of these rare survivors. Twice she left the land of the ‘socialist miracle’ to flee famine and dictatorship. By the age of 29, she had already witnessed a lifetime of suffering. Family members had died of starvation; her brother was beaten nearly to death by soldiers. Even smiling and laughing was discouraged.
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The window to North Korea
- By Anonymous User on 02-25-25
By: Jihyun Park, and others
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Becoming Kim Jong Un
- A Former CIA Officer's Insights into North Korea's Enigmatic Young Dictator
- By: Jung H. Pak
- Narrated by: Jung H. Pak
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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A groundbreaking account of the rise of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—from his nuclear ambitions to his summits with President Donald J. Trump—by a leading American expert. From the beginning of Kim's reign, former CIA analyst Jung Pak has been at the forefront of shaping US policy on North Korea and providing strategic assessments for leadership at the highest levels in the government. Now, in this masterly book, she traces and explains Kim's ascent on the world stage.
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Too much about Trump
- By BMH on 05-07-20
By: Jung H. Pak
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In Order to Live
- A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
- By: Yeonmi Park
- Narrated by: Eji Kim
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
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Wow. What a story!
- By Jfm on 02-01-16
By: Yeonmi Park
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All in Her Head
- The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today
- By: Elizabeth Comen
- Narrated by: Anna Caputo
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences.
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Historical and hopeful
- By Meghan Hurley on 10-26-24
By: Elizabeth Comen
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Escape from Camp 14
- One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
- By: Blaine Harden
- Narrated by: Blaine Harden
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did. In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state.
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Harrowing story of escaping No Korea
- By Charlene Saulnier on 04-06-25
By: Blaine Harden
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Mean
- By: Myriam Gurba
- Narrated by: Myriam Gurba
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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True crime, memoir, and ghost story, Mean is the bold and hilarious tale of Myriam Gurba’s coming-of-age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Gurba takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race, turning what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, intoxicating, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.
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A heartbreaking instant classic
- By Alenya Felts on 04-26-18
By: Myriam Gurba
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The Girl with Seven Names
- A North Korean Defector’s Story
- By: Hyeonseo Lee, David John
- Narrated by: Josie Dunn
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?
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Did not like narrator
- By Linda H. Andreae on 10-09-19
By: Hyeonseo Lee, and others
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Legacy
- A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
- By: Uché Blackstock MD
- Narrated by: Uché Blackstock MD
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.
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I Feel Validated!
- By Lisa M Walker on 07-13-24
What listeners say about Without You, There Is No Us
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- Mztarangel
- 01-14-15
Wonderful read!
Through the whole book I felt like I was a tiny listening device secretly smuggled in and hidden somewhere on Ms. Kim's person. Right next to her tightly kept, secret flash drives. Each day listening to and absorbing every word. Leaving my imagination hungry for more examples of life on what seemed to be a distant planet people actually lived on. Her bravery alone is something to be commended. Loved this book! Eye opening for sure.
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- Ian
- 09-12-16
Interesting, to say the least.
This is an interesting view into a side of North Korea I knew nothing about. I've read The Aquariums of Pyonyang, and other such books of tragedy, but had never heard of a story about the people at the top of the food chain in North Korea.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-29-22
Unbelievable
I thank the author for telling her story.
I pray for the natives and the soldiers
that remain living and keeping the peace.
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- Valeriek
- 06-01-21
Bad narration
I could not stand the narrator. Terrible voice and inflection. I think I would have liked the story more and have a better connection to the story if it had been read by someone else.
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- OwlLover
- 03-11-22
Personal and political
This is an intimate experience and it is told as such. The author gives a view into the lives of college students and the people working at the institution within a complex environment. It is done in a way that foster both empathy and interest, abd delivers even frustrating details with care so that it does not disparage the people referenced. This is an interesting story of the writer's experience, kept personal while exposing truths one may never otherwise be able to imagine.
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- Datadana7
- 08-10-23
A rare insight into North Korea?
This rare insight into North Korea is an eye-opener. The writer style makes you feel that you are there enduring every moment.
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- Susan
- 01-15-15
Fascinating
The book started a little slow for me but before long I found myself pulled in. I can't imagine how frightening it would have been to teach in that school, especially knowing she would be writing about it. I'm very curious about what consequences there were for the school, teachers and students. Provides unique insight into a slice of North Korean life.
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3 people found this helpful
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- SAL
- 11-09-16
A Must Read
Where does Without You, There Is No Us rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This book is so educational about the life and culture of a group of "elite" young males in North Korea (DPRK) and their South Korean/American English teacher. Elite in North Korea is an oxymoron. I respect and value the mental and emotional struggles she experienced in always trying to be honest at all times with her students and her missionary coworkers who assumed she was Christian; description of their daily life - monotonous, and pervasive indoctrination and total distrust; and constantly having to be mentally careful of her words and actions. She so well explained the psyche of these students who since birth have been isolated from the rest of the world; indoctrinated to believe that North Korea is all powerful; and without "their dictator" who was all knowing and powerful that they would not be or survive. I had a read a couple of books about struggles of poor North Koreans and this book is important because it shows the reader why the next generation of influential male adults will act as they do.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The author Suki Kim who risked returning to the country where her grandparents had fled to learn about life in DPRK today and tell this story in a book.
What does Janet Song bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I appreciate that both the author and narrator were women since this is a critical part of the memoirs.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
There is so much not to be forgotten in this book, but I shall always remember that one student was not upset about being caught cheating at Trivia, but he "should have cheated better.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mama
- 04-17-18
eye opening
I thought I knew "enough " about NoKo. But this was fascinating! Really well performed, too. Such an interesting author with such an interesting story to tell!
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- mrsgrz
- 10-05-15
Very interesting read
This story of a teacher in North Korea is very informative. Stories of her experiences there are quite eye opening. I learned a lot about this country and the deprecation and isolation of its people. Narrator was good and easy to follow.
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