This is a unique entry among the already rare books about life in North Korea. The author is not an escapee or someone working solely as a journalist. Instead, the author has gone voluntarily as part of a delegation of English language teachers to an elite school, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). Suki Kim had to perform two layers of deception - first to the other teachers by posing as a fellow Christian missionary, and secondly to every other person in North Korea. 
 I must be honest. It's very easy to not take North Korea as anything other than an extensive joke. It's easy to give in to popular cliche and misinformed policy. It's just a silly little tinpot dictatorship. Laugh at it. Laugh at the puppet show. Laugh at Kim Jong-Un's ugly hair. Laugh at this movie. Laugh at their bad English. It is such a target for rhetorical tricks - at once in total opposition to the rest of the world, so self-confident in its boasts, and so weak and impotent it is easily ridiculed. Laugh at it and feel like you're doing something to change it. 
 In any case, that's why clear-eyed observation of the regime is needed. This particular book also provides a rare view of the social elite, as few others in North Korea would have the opportunity to receive an education like this. Those who live in the capital have more consistent access to electricity and easier access to foreign goods. 
 Though Kim occasionally talks about her own life, most of the book is about life outside and with the boys in class (No women here except for the teachers). Parts of their life seem almost familiar. They like playing basketball and occasionally have trouble asking the girls out. But from there, there is a vast distance of experience between them. 
 For one, the students have a blinkered view of the world. They are told very well about the failings of America, real and imaginary, but they lack even the most common base of knowledge. They don't even know what the Pyramids are or that people went to space and walked on the moon. There is one infuriating episode where these technical and scientific elites can barely operate basic computers and can't even touch-type, and the author is so overcome with frustration that she has to leave the room. 
 But that is only a lack of technical knowledge. There is another layer to their experience, one which is only hinted at from politics and propaganda. It is about how the students lie. This is more than the usual students' tendency to fib about lost homework or (although they still do that). They lie openly, without hesitation, and are unusually quick to read others emotions. This is part of their social education - where a bad lie can mean demotion or poverty or worse. 
 That's the truly frightening part. It's why so many of the people who do escape are often so reserved. The total control over society, physical and mental. After six months, she barely has any grasp of any of her students' personalities. Even though she becomes more brazen in their attempts to bring in the outside world, she feels as though she has carried no light or fire to them. 
 The author returned home in late December 2011. As luck would have it, Kim Jong-Il had passed away on the 17th. Perhaps real social change could be possible, she thinks, even if it might take one dead dictator at a time. 
 Any book about North Korea will be grim reading, but this one is interesting because of the author's perspective and her understanding of emotional subtlety make this an interesting book and one that breaks free of cliche.