Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim Page B

ponytail, and freckles covering her childlike features, she looked like a quiet, churchgoing country girl, but on the field she was ferocious, with quick foot movements and remarkable stamina. The boys were impressed. They weren’t used to playing with girls. But this wasn’t just any girl. This was one of the first foreigners they had ever met. Their professor, no less. They loved the novelty of it, and Sarah became a mini-star on campus. A few other professors, including me, joined in at times, but never with her expertise.
    During a break in the game, Sarah came up to me and said, “Oh, I feel good being here now, really good, I could really imagine living here.” The boys must have felt just as relaxed because some who had been standing in front of the big gray building across the road walked over to watch as well. They were wearing the same uniform Choi Min-jun had been wearing a few nights ago at dinner. “So why are you wearing that?” I asked casually. “Oh, we guard our Kimilsungism Study Hall,” one said. I learned that six boys took turns guarding the large, austere building all night long, from dinnertime until breakfast. I could not imagine what could be inside that needed guarding; it seemed that their demonstration of devotion was itself the point. The mystery of the uniform was not that mysterious after all, so why had some of them been so afraid to tell us?

6
    T HE WORLD WIDE WEB WAS NOT REALLY WORLDWIDE , it turned out. None of us ever breathed a word about it. A few students who had transferred from Kim Chaek University said that what they most missed from their old school was how they had all been connected by an electronic network. I understood that they were talking about their Intranet, a heavily censored network that allowed them access only to already downloaded information and state-sponsored websites.
    I was not allowed to tell them that their intranet was not the same as the Internet—that the rest of the world was connected while only they were left out. I would look for signs that one of them guessed the truth, but I saw none. Without having experienced the World Wide Web, could I have imagined it? Even if someone had described it to me, I would never have been able to fathom it.
    I asked innocently whether they could communicate with their parents over this electronic connection, and they answered, “No, just by phone, sometimes.” I asked whether their parents knew how to use a computer. Most said their fathers knew how, but not their mothers. One said that his father was a government official so he was good with computers, and another said that his father was a doctor so he also knew how to use them.
    They had all heard of Bill Gates from their former universities, but I wanted to tell them about Mark Zuckerberg, who at their age had revolutionized the way we communicate with one another. How very much they would have enjoyed learning about the boy wonder and his invention of Facebook, the magic of connecting with people all over the world! Sometimes I would fantasize about smuggling in The Social Network, writing subtitles, and secretly distributing it throughout the student dorms, but I was not a superhero, and all I could do was smile at their claims about their amazing intranet across our trays of dull-tasting kimchi and rice.
    By the second week, with the counterparts’ approval, the teachers had begun to introduce the students to various parlor games—trivia contests, spelling bees, Pictionary. Right away I was struck by their astounding lack of general knowledge about the world. These were North Korea’s brightest students, yet photos of the United Nations, the Taj Mahal, and the Great Pyramids of Giza elicited only blank expressions. A few guessed the names and locations of the Eiffel Tower and Stonehenge, but only after much hemming and hawing. Hardly anyone knew what country had first landed men on the moon, despite the fact that they were science and technology majors.