Welcome to Litsy!

I know we all live in different parts of the world, with different governments and societal expectations, but North Korea ☹️.
Thanks Jessie, I found this an interesting and thought provoking read.

A rare and interesting look into North Korea, told by a Korean woman who spent several months there teaching English to elite college students. The students total lack of connection to the rest of the world was astounding, as was her own experience in the isolated country.

Loved this #reread of a great #audiobook. Suki taught at an English-language college for North Korea‘s elite boys run by Christian missionaries. Suki is not Christian and was there undercover to connect with the boys and write about her experiences. The insights into what they do/don‘t know about the outside world were fascinating. Her relationships with them have as much depth as I‘ve read between and outsider & North Koreans.

Note ⬇️

A fascinating behind the scenes look at an elite college in North Korea. I was so nervous for Suki Kim while reading this, and really appreciated her insights into a culture few get to see. #ReadingAsia2021

This one million more light years sincere than any book about teaching I have ever read. I regret waiting so long to read it. I read “The Interperter” and loved it but did not read “Without You Their is No Us” because it was recommended by NPR. The people that employ that racist Maureen Corrigan, and yes this is totally about her review of “Please Take Care of Mom”, which is one of the best books ever.

Switching to this audiobook for the commute home!
#currentlyreading #audiocommuting #trainreads #summersendreadathon

Loved this #audiobook. The author goes undercover pretending to be a missionary and teaches English at a university that basically (in relative luxury) imprisons the children of North Korea‘s elite.

She tries very hard to introduce them to the outside world as best she can with the minders and bugging. It‘s a look at what even the most privileged know about the outside world there. Definitely the Hermit Kingdom! 4.5⭐️

“Their faces still come to me, one by one, and this motherly feeling overwhelms me. I taught them how to speak, this strange breed of children, unaware of the world outside. Yet I hope they have forgotten everything I inspired in them and have simply grown to become soldiers of the regime...I cannot bear the idea that any of my students...might end up somewhere dark and cold, in one of the gulags that exist all over North Korea.”

Ms Kim went to North Korea as a Christian Missionary to teach English to sons of the North Korean elite. (She isn‘t Christian which adds a whole extra layer of complexity). The claustrophobic environment in which she teaches is palpably uncomfortable. Her emails and conversations are monitored and she never knows if her students are genuinely interested in her life or trying to trick her jnto saying something that could get her expelled.

1. Pretty Woman
2. Not exactly vacation, but I lived in Japan for 2 years after college and I am missing it big time lately
3. True crime, and I like books about North Korea because I'm fascinated that a country's people can be so unaware of the outside world. Tagged book is a great example and I highly recommend.
4. Red ❤️
5. What's your favorite book? Mine is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

#friyayintro

A real and serious exploration of a Korean-American woman's experience as a teacher/journalist in North Korea. The level of detail and personal insights make it a powerful description of North Korea's elite students, even as she acknowledges the limits of her interactions with the unrepresentative upper echelon. Her phrasing is poetic--she refers to the dialect as "a linguistic Galapagos,” which reminds me of my mom's frozen-in-time 1970s Korean.

I reviewed this book yesterday as a memoir and it's described as such in the litsy database and then I found this article. https://newrepublic.com/article/133893/reluctant-memoirist
one thing I did think was how sad her book couldn't be marketed as both investigative journalism and a memoir. I hate that the author felt like she had her authority taken away and some of the backlash she got but I'm also annoyed that memoir is viewed as lesser.

I listened to this on audio on #scribd and I found this fascinating. Posing as a Christian missionary to teach in a university in North Korea this book had me on edge. The paranoia is palatable as she had to self censor all the time and knowing that anyone could report you made human interaction with her students scary as hell. Are they asking about taxes because of curiosity or are they trying to trap u?

It takes tremendous energy to censor yourself all the time, to have to, in a sense, continually lie.
#nonfiction #quotes

An extremely enlightening read. My fascination with North Korea only grew while reading this book. Emotional and Mind-Boggling. Highly recommended! #favorite #nonfiction

Kim's first hand account as an English teacher for North Korean college students displays the extent of the country's isolation. The reality of life in North Korea is chilling: the youth are fed a steady diet of lies about their country and have no way of learning the truth. Kim makes cautious attempts to expose her students to life outside their country, but it's a daunting task when every lesson must be approved and her every move is watched.

I found this to be a pretty fascinating non fiction book that gives us a glimpse into life in North Korea. Kim manages to get a position teaching at a missionary school for North Korean elite boys. She describes her day to day experience teaching these boys while knowing that her every move is being recorded and watched. At times a little self-indulgent but for the most part a really interesting and terrifying book. A great book club book

Wow! @Onlaughterandliteracy I love everything you put together for me in this box! I love the 📚that show different aspects to life in North Korea! I would definitely do a buddy read of These is my words! And I just started audio-coloring with some bookmarks and I'm so excited to have a whole book to start on! Plus the HP tattoos and the Hufflepuff book mark! I 🖤💛 them! Thank you so much for every thoughtful gift! #bibliophilebookexchange

Listening to an audiobook on my headphones but I think Easy wants to listen too. I have so many great books from the library that I "have to" read this week. #dogsoflitsy

This was so so sad to read, but I'm really glad it's out there. It bothers me so much when people make jokes about North Korea, and especially about the "ignorance" of the average citizen. It's gross to basically make fun of people for being in what is essentially a nationwide cult where they are completely cut off from the rest of the world. I appreciate the author for trying to show us the humanity of these young men. And I pray for them 4/5 ⭐️

The rest of the time, the commentators exhausted every glorifying adjective to describe Kim Jong-Il, who was "so great" and "very great" and "the greatest." The message was, of course, the same in their newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, as well as in the students' Juche class. I once saw a student's notebook in which one page was entitled "The Great Achievement of Our Great General."

[Gee. Make you think of anyone? A certain orange someone? Ahem ?]

If they were to wake up and realize that the outside world was in fact not crumbling, that it was their country that was in danger of collapse, and that everything they had been taught about the Great Leader was bogus, would that make them happier? How would they live from that point on? Awakening was a luxury available only to those in the free world.

Feels like a good time to read this one... 😕 #nowreading

A fascinating glimpse into a closed society that is basically a real-life dystopia. It is heartbreaking how Korea was artificially divided and essentially destroyed by foreign powers. Kim is a South Korean/American journalist who posed as a missionary teacher to gain access to the country that should have been her own. While there she had no freedom of movement, and she was closely monitored. What she was allowed to see was baffling and chilling.

Suki Kim was in North Korea under the guise of teaching English to children of the elite. Really she's an investigative journalist looking to shed light on life in North Korea. It was an extremely interesting read despite the feeling that she saw only what they wanted her to see. Her interactions with and observations of the students were probably the most illuminating.

My current in-person book club pick. Hopefully it goes better then the last one, which I bailed on after about 45 pages. Since I'm the one who suggested this title, I'm more optimistic. I decided to read this after loving Pachinko, because I wanted to get a better understanding of what happened to the Koreas after the split.

My kitty is happy that it got too hot for me to keep reading outside. 😻

I guess I had a lot of orange books!! Currently listening to Mort(e) on audiobook. Pretty crazy so far... #ORANGEYOUGLAD

A cascade of awesome #ORANGEYOUGLAD titles! Thanks for doing an awesome giveaway @Liberty !!! 🙌👏

An interesting and fascinating look into the lives of students in North Korea. Also a very interesting listen on audiobook.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1692031465

I don't know why but I'm obsessed with reading about North Korea. The way this sentence is phrased struck me as very funny

101 Books
55 by Women
21 by POC
17 Nonfiction/Essay Collections
17 Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Favorite Authors Discovered in 2016: Rainbow Rowell, Octavia Butler, Leigh Bardugo, Fredrick Bachman, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Longest book: Infinite Jest
Least Popular: The Invisible Musician

Total Pages: 33,182
#2016stats #2016readingwrapup

Here's to another year of awesome books!

Just chilling with the new kitten who is in quarantine and my book club book.

When you are shut off from the world, every day is exactly the same as the one before. This sameness has a way of wearing down your soul until you become nothing but a breathing, toiling, consuming thing that awakes to the sun and sleeps at the dawning of the dark. The emptiness runs deep, deeper with each slowing day, and you become increasingly invisible and inconsequential. That‘s how I felt at times, a tiny insect circling itself...

Welcome back to Iowa, Suki Kim! (She was last here during the caucus in January, reporting on the Rubio campaign.) She opened her lecture with the video of the song "Without You, There is No Us", a propaganda piece that informed the title of her book. #iowacitybookfestival #uicenterforhumanrights #onecommunityonebook

"For the first time in my life, thinking was dangerous to my survival."
Fascinating memoir of a Korean American teaching elite students in North Korea. It's been a bit of a slow start but is getting more intense as Kim becomes more involved in the life of the school. #memoir

Time to read while the kiddo is in the pool. Fascinating story so far. #memoir #momreader @Crownpublishing

A reporter goes into North Korea undercover as a teacher. The subject matter and the stories she shares are heartbreaking, but she manages to write in such a way that I could keep reading without having to take breathers. Great book.

I enjoyed this book more as I got further into it. I could've lived without all the references to her lover and her frequent digs at Christianity... But this is her memoir and she can do as she pleases. Overall, an interesting look into a slice of North Korea that no one gets to see.

I started this on my commute home today, got out of the car and went inside, and am now just sitting stone still on the couch continuing to let the audible player run. Totally engrossing.

I'm trying out the #recommendsday tag on this fascinating nonfiction book by a woman who taught English at a school for the elite in North Korea.

Hour 5 - just started this and I will definitely get back to it! So much to think about, I realize how much we don't know about the people who live in North Korea.

Working undercover as a teacher at the only western-run university in North Korea, Kim had an unprecedented look into the lives of her students. Make sure to also read her New Republic essay "The Reluctant Memoirist," which sheds light on the publishing decision to market her book as a memoir.

Only through the first chapter and it is awesome! Compelled to pickup after hearing interview on NPR. Looking forward to MORE.

I feel like I know so little about North Korea (and this cover is really appealing). Any opinions on this one?

Resume strategies from the DPRK. 🤔

Really interesting insight into North Korea from a journalist undercover as an English teacher at a Pyongyang university