This is what it's like to go undercover in North Korea | Suki Kim

3,650,150 views ・ 2015-06-08

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In 2011, during the final six months of Kim Jong-Il's life,
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I lived undercover in North Korea.
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I was born and raised in South Korea, their enemy.
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I live in America, their other enemy.
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Since 2002, I had visited North Korea a few times.
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And I had come to realize that to write about it with any meaning,
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or to understand the place beyond the regime's propaganda,
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the only option was total immersion.
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So I posed as a teacher and a missionary
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at an all-male university in Pyongyang.
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The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology
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was founded by Evangelical Christians who cooperate with the regime
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to educate the sons of the North Korean elite,
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without proselytizing, which is a capital crime there.
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The students were 270 young men, expected to be the future leaders
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of the most isolated and brutal dictatorship in existence.
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When I arrived, they became my students.
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2011 was a special year,
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marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korea's original Great Leader,
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Kim Il-Sung.
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To celebrate the occasion, the regime shut down all universities,
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and sent students off to the fields
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to build the DPRK's much-heralded ideal
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as the world's most powerful and prosperous nation.
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My students were the only ones spared from that fate.
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North Korea is a gulag posing as a nation.
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Everything there is about the Great Leader.
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Every book, every newspaper article, every song, every TV program --
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there is just one subject.
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The flowers are named after him,
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the mountains are carved with his slogans.
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Every citizen wears the badge of the Great Leader at all times.
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Even their calendar system begins with the birth of Kim Il-Sung.
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The school was a heavily guarded prison, posing as a campus.
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Teachers could only leave on group outings accompanied by an official minder.
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Even then, our trips were limited to sanctioned national monuments
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celebrating the Great Leader.
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The students were not allowed to leave the campus,
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or communicate with their parents.
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Their days were meticulously mapped out, and any free time they had
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was devoted to honoring their Great Leader.
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Lesson plans had to meet the approval of North Korean staff,
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every class was recorded and reported on, every room was bugged,
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and every conversation, overheard.
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Every blank space was covered with the portraits of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il,
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like everywhere else in North Korea.
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We were never allowed to discuss the outside world.
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As students of science and technology, many of them were computer majors
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but they did not know the existence of the Internet.
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They had never heard of Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.
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Facebook, Twitter -- none of those things would have meant a thing.
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And I could not tell them.
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I went there looking for truth.
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But where do you even start when an entire nation's ideology,
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my students' day-to-day realities,
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and even my own position at the universities,
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were all built on lies?
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I started with a game.
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We played "Truth and Lie."
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A volunteer would write a sentence on the chalkboard,
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and the other students had to guess
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whether it was a truth or a lie.
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Once a student wrote, "I visited China last year on vacation,"
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and everyone shouted, "Lie!"
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They all knew this wasn't possible.
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Virtually no North Korean is allowed to leave the country.
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Even traveling within their own country requires a travel pass.
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I had hoped that this game would reveal some truth about my students,
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because they lie so often and so easily,
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whether about the mythical accomplishments of their Great Leader,
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or the strange claim that they cloned a rabbit as fifth graders.
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The difference between truth and lies seemed at times hazy to them.
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It took me a while to understand the different types of lies;
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they lie to shield their system from the world,
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or they were taught lies, and were just regurgitating them.
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Or, at moments, they lied out of habit.
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But if all they have ever known were lies,
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how could we expect them to be otherwise?
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Next, I tried to teach them essay writing.
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But that turned out to be nearly impossible.
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Essays are about coming up with one's own thesis,
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and making an evidence-based argument to prove it.
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These students, however, were simply told what to think,
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and they obeyed.
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In their world, critical thinking was not allowed.
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I also gave them the weekly assignment of writing a personal letter,
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to anybody.
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It took a long time, but eventually some of them began to write
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to their mothers, their friends, their girlfriends.
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Although those were just homework,
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and would never reach their intended recipients,
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my students slowly began to reveal their true feelings in them.
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They wrote that they were fed up with the sameness of everything.
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They were worried about their future.
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In those letters, they rarely ever mentioned their Great Leader.
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I was spending all of my time with these young men.
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We all ate meals together, played basketball together.
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I often called them gentlemen, which made them giggle.
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They blushed at the mention of girls.
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And I came to adore them.
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And watching them open up even in the tiniest of ways,
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was deeply moving.
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But something also felt wrong.
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During those months of living in their world,
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I often wondered if the truth would, in fact, improve their lives.
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I wanted so much to tell them the truth,
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of their country and of the outside world,
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where Arab youth were turning their rotten regime inside out,
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using the power of social media,
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where everyone except them was connected through the world wide web,
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which wasn't worldwide after all.
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But for them, the truth was dangerous.
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By encouraging them to run after it, I was putting them at risk --
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of persecution,
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of heartbreak.
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When you're not allowed to express anything in the open,
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you become good at reading what is unspoken.
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In one of their personal letters to me, a student wrote that he understood
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why I always called them gentlemen.
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It was because I was wishing them to be gentle in life, he said.
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On my last day in December of 2011,
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the day Kim Jong-Il's death was announced,
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their world shattered.
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I had to leave without a proper goodbye.
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But I think they knew how sad I was for them.
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Once, toward the end of my stay, a student said to me,
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"Professor, we never think of you as being different from us.
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Our circumstances are different, but you're the same as us.
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We want you to know that we truly think of you as being the same."
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Today, if I could respond to my students with a letter of my own,
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which is of course impossible,
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I would tell them this:
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"My dear gentlemen,
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It's been a bit over three years since I last saw you.
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And now, you must be 22 -- maybe even as old as 23.
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At our final class, I asked you if there was anything you wanted.
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The only wish you expressed, the only thing you ever asked of me
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in all those months we spent together,
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was for me to speak to you in Korean.
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Just once.
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I was there to teach you English;
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you knew it wasn't allowed.
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But I understood then, you wanted to share that bond of our mother tongue.
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I called you my gentlemen,
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but I don't know if being gentle in Kim Jong-Un's merciless North Korea
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is a good thing.
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I don't want you to lead a revolution --
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let some other young person do it.
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The rest of the world might casually encourage or even expect
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some sort of North Korean Spring,
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but I don't want you to do anything risky,
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because I know in your world, someone is always watching.
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I don't want to imagine what might happen to you.
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If my attempts to reach you have inspired something new in you,
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I would rather you forget me.
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Become soldiers of your Great Leader, and live long, safe lives.
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You once asked me if I thought your city of Pyongyang was beautiful,
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and I could not answer truthfully then.
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But I know why you asked.
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I know that it was important for you to hear that I, your teacher,
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the one who has seen the world that you are forbidden from,
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declare your city as the most beautiful.
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I know hearing that would make your lives there a bit more bearable,
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but no, I don't find your capital beautiful.
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Not because it's monotone and concrete,
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but because of what it symbolizes:
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a monster that feeds off the rest of the country,
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where citizens are soldiers and slaves.
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All I see there is darkness.
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But it's your home, so I cannot hate it.
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And I hope instead that you, my lovely young gentlemen,
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will one day help make it beautiful.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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