Suki Kim is an investigative journalist, a novelist, and the only writer ever to have lived undercover in North Korea for immersive journalism. Born and raised in South Korea, Kim has traveled to North Korea since 2002, when she entered Pyongyang by joining a Kim Jong Il loyalist group for a cover feature for The New York Review of Books. During a decade-long investigation, she has witnessed both Kim Jong-Il’s 60th birthday celebration and his death at age 69; she also profiled the New York Philharmonic’s 2008 concert there for Harper’s, for whom she has written in depth about North Korean defectors. In 2011, she went undercover in Pyongyang for six months to live with the future leaders during the final year of Kim Jong-il’s reign, which gave her unprecedented insights into the psychology of its elite, and the country’s current state during a regime change. Kim’s New York Times bestselling nonfiction book Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite(Penguin Random House) is a literary, investigative documentation of North Korea’s most important recent history.
Send questions, comments and corrections to info@creativewritingmfa.info.
Disclaimer: No endorsement of these ratings should be implied by the writers and writing programs listed on this site, or by the editors and publishers of Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology.