[Vision2020] North Korea and Full Meaning of "I and Thou"

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Visionaries:

For some time I've been trying to find a way to write about North Korea and
Suki Kim's book was the answer.

A short version of this appeared in the Daily News last week and the longer
one appended below was published in the Sandpoint Reader yesterday.  The
full version is attached.

I believe that Trump is actually crazier than Kim Jong-Un, but neither one
of them can be trusted.

nfg

*North Korea and the Full Meaning of “I and Thou”*


            Suki Kim’s book *Without You, There is No Us* is one of the
most moving accounts of another culture that I’ve read in a long time.
During the summer and fall of 2011, Kim, born in Seoul and now a New York
writer, taught English at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology
(PUST) in North Korea.

            As incredible as it may seem, PUST, where the sons of North
Korea’s elite are schooled, is financed and staffed by Christian
missionaries. They are forbidden to proselytize, but nonetheless believe
that by “showing the love of Christ and being kind” to these future
leaders, they would plant the seeds for their eventual conversion.

As Kim explains: “North Korea was the evangelical Christian Holy Grail, the
hardest place to crack in the whole world, and converting its people would
guarantee the missionaries a spot in heaven.”

            Suki Kim mentions two meanings of “without you, there is no
us.”  The first is that Koreans cannot recover their true identity as a
people without a peace treaty and the unification of their divided country.
Over the years, some family visits have been allowed, but most Koreans do
not know what happened to family members after the war.

North Korean officials make this process nearly impossible by removing
people from their home towns. The ancient clan system, which provided
social cohesion through large extended families, has been abolished.

The most remarkable insight in Kim’s book is the realization that her
students were not just robots. They joked around and teased each other, and
they expressed genuine love for their teachers and parents.

One day Kim asked her students to write a letter on any topic. Most of them
wrote to their mothers, about how they missed them and how they kept their
pictures nearby for consolation. One of their fondest memories was helping
their mothers make kimchee.

Kim found them to be ideal students: “They shouted out each answer
together, hung on my every word, and demanded more homework. I had never
been revered so absolutely.” Kim was convinced that their sincerity was not
false, and they truly loved their dear “professor.” They cried when she
left after their summer session together, and they desperately wanted her
to come back in the fall.

It is significant that, in the open topic letters she assigned, none of
Kim’s students mentioned the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.
Miraculously, they were liberated for just a brief moment.  One of them
wrote: “I am so glad at this chance to write down what is on my mind.” Kim
was surprised that one student had the courage to write that he was “fed
up” with the PUST routine.

But then on December 17, 2011, the “Great Leader” died.  The second meaning
of “without you, there is no us” now captured their minds with full force.
Years of brainwashing convinced them that without Kim Jong-Il, they could
not be.  These young men who missed their mothers and loved their teachers
were now nothing but shadows, something very much like the wraiths of
Hades.

The next morning Kim was in the dining room eating her last breakfast on
campus. Her students refused to sit with her or even meet her eyes, and
they looked as if the “life had been sucked out of them. I no longer
existed for them in this world without their Great Leader.” In stark
contrast to the departure after summer session, this time there were no
tears and no good byes.

North Korea is one of the last hold-outs of the Cold War, an ideological
battle between Western individualism and Communist collectivism. Most
people have found the latter not only economically destructive but also
morally corrosive, and North Korea is the most dramatic example of the
multiple failures of Communism.

We in the West have not fully examined the fundamental problems with our
own excessive focus on the individual, which has led, arguably, to many of
our society’s ills.  When pondering this issue, I always like to turn to
the wisdom of Martin Buber for guidance.

In his classic book *I and Thou* Buber writes: “There is no I as such but
only the I of the basic word I-Thou. I require a Thou to become; becoming
I, I say Thou.” For Buber, too many of us interact with others on an “I-It”
basis. The truth in Buber’s profound statement is verified in the fact that
our personal identities are just as much formed by others as they are by
ourselves.

So Buber offers the most fundamental meaning of “without you, there is no
us.” The I-Thou relationship is the only place where authentic persons are
found, but, every day, individualist and collectivist ideologies may rob
people of their very souls.

Nick Gier of Moscow taught philosophy and religion at the University of
Idaho for 31 years.



A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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