Suki Kim

Suki Kim
At Miami Book Fair International, Nov. 2015
Born1970 (age 55–56)
Seoul, South Korea
EducationBarnard College
Writing career
Genresnovel, essay
Notable worksThe Interpreter, Without You, There is No Us
Notable awardsPEN Beyond Margins Award
Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award
WebsiteSukiKim.com

Suki Kim (born 1970) is a Korean American journalist and writer. She is the author of the novel The Interpreter and the book Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite, about her time teaching English in Pyongyang. Kim is the only writer to have lived undercover in North Korea to conduct immersive journalism. She is a contributing editor at The New Republic.

Early life

Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the United States with her family at thirteen. She is a naturalized American citizen.

Kim graduated from Barnard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Kim also studied East Asian Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She has received a Fulbright Research Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Open Society Foundations Fellowship. Kim was also a Ferris Journalism Fellow at Princeton University, where she was a visiting lecturer.

Work

The Interpreter

Kim's debut novel, The Interpreter, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2003, is a murder mystery about a young Korean-American woman, Suzy Park, living in New York City and searching for answers as to why her shopkeeper parents were murdered. To search the novel, Kim took a job as an interpreter in New York City.l The book received positive reviews and won several awards. The Interpreter was translated into Dutch, French, Korean, Italian, and Japanese.

North Korea

Kim visited North Korea in February 2002 to participate in the 60th birthday celebration of Kim Jong-il. She documented this experience in a February 2003 cover essay for The New York Review of Books.

Kim accompanied the New York Philharmonic in February 2008, when they traveled to Pyongyang for the historical cultural visit to North Korea from the United States. Her article, "A Really Big Show: The New York Philharmonic's fantasia in North Korea", was published in Harper's Magazine in December 2008.

Kim's second book, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite, documents her three and a half months in Pyongyang, where she taught English at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in 2011. Kim posed as a Christian, as the university is largely funded by Christian evangelicals, and secretly took notes. She obscured the identities of her students to protect them from the authorities. The staff accused Kim of falsely claiming they were missionaries, which Kim dismissed, saying their long-term goal was to convert North Koreans to Christianity.

In a 2016 essay in The New Republic, Kim wrote that she had been criticized for using deception to enter North Korea and accused of endangering her students, lying about her experience or for writing the book for profit. She disagreed with the publisher's marketing of Without You, There Is No Us as a memoir, as it was taken less seriously as a work of investigative journalism. She argued that coverage of North Korea was colored by orientalism as it was dominated by the work of white authors who had only entered North Korea on supervised tours.

Later work

In 2017, Suki Kim broke a sexual harassment scandal against the journalist John Hockenberry at WNYC in an article in The Cut. Her investigation led to the firing of two longterm WNYC hosts, Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz, and the resignation of its CEO, Laura Walker, and Chief Content officer, Dean Cappello. Her article was voted the Best Investigative Reporting of 2017 by Longreads.

In 2020, Kim published an investigative feature in The New Yorker on Free Joseon, a group that has declared itself a provisional government for North Korea. She was the first to interview the group's leader, Adrian Hong, while he was on the run from the Department of Justice.

Bibliography

Books

Year Title
2003 The Interpreter
2014 Without You, There Is No Us; My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Anthologies

Year Title Ref
2005 New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of the New York Times
2017 The Moth Presents All These Wonders
2018 The Best American Essays 2018

Essays and op-eds

About North Korea and South Korea

Year Title Publication Ref
2003 A Visit to North Korea The New York Review of Books
2003 Korea's New Wave The New York Times
2003 Strange Centennial The Boston Globe
2005 Die Ahnen und die Wasser (The Anticipation of the Water) Neue Zurcher Zeitung
2005 Hwang, Drawn and Quartered? The Wall Street Journal
2006 Great Leadership The Wall Street Journal
2007 Asia's Apostles The Washington Post
2007 Globalizing Grief The Wall Street Journal
2008 A Really Big Show: The New York Philharmonic’s Fantasia in North Korea Harper's
2009 Notes from Another Credit Card Crisis The New York Times
2010 The System of Defecting Harper's
2010 North Korean Fans Attend the World Cup Newsweek
2013 The Shared Wound in Korea The New York Times
2013 The Dear Leader's Heinous Act The New York Times
2014 The Good Student in North Korea The New York Times Magazine
2014 My Time at an Elite Pyongyang Boarding School Foreign Affairs
2014 Teaching Essay Writing in Pyongyang Slate
2014 The Sony Hack Is North Korea's Biggest Victory in a Long Time Slate
2014 Dear Leader's Great Victory The National Post
2014 The Secret Shame of North Korea's Slave Workers Newsweek
2015 What ‘The Interview’ Gets Right and Wrong about US Policy Toward North Korea The Nation
2016 Is it Time to Intervene in North Korea? The New Republic
2016 Republic of Disappointment. Slate
2016 Across the Broken Bridge The New Republic
2016 Korean Reporters Got Fired, Got Active, and Got The President Foreign Policy
2017 The Meaning of Kim Jong Nam's Murder The Atlantic
2017 An Extraordinary Statement from a North Korean Prince The New Yorker
2017 Is Christian Evangelicals’ Money Helping to Prop Up North Korea’s Regime? The Washington Post
2017 Tourism to North Korea isn’t about engagement. It’s torture porn. The Washington Post
2017 My two messed-up countries: an immigrant’s dilemma The Guardian
2017 South Korea Is More Worried About Donald Trump Than Kim Jong Un Foreign Policy
2018 The Dealmaker The New Republic
2018 Covering the North Korea Summit While Trapped in a Warehouse in Singapore The New Yorker
2018 North Korea’s Lipstick Diplomacy The New York Times
2020 How South Korea Lost Control of Its Coronavirus Outbreak The New Yorker
2020 The Underground Movement Trying To Topple the North Korean Regime The New Yorker

Other work

Year Title Publication Ref
2003 Translating Poverty and Pain The New York Times
2003 Marriage of Inconvenience? The New York Times
2003 North Ride Home Gourmet
2004 Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl's Habits The New York Times
2006 Our Affair Was One Long Lesson in How to Break Up The New York Times
2010 Forced from Home and Yet Never Free of it The New York Times
2015 Love Stories: Why I Flew to Beijing in Search of the Perfect Dress Vogue
2016 Mr Rubio's Neighborhood The New Republic
2016 The Reluctant Memoirist The New Republic
2016 What Happened in Brisbane The New Republic
2017 Land of Darkness Lapham's Quarterly
2017 Public-Radio Icon John Hockenberry Accused of Harassing Female Colleagues The Cut

Awards

Year Title Notes Ref
2003 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award The Interpreter, winner
2004 Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award The Interpreter, nominee
2004 PEN Openbook Award The Interpreter, winner
2019 Berlin Prize Winner

Fellowships

Year Title Ref
1998 Millay Colony for the Arts
1998 Ucross Foundation
1999 Ragdale Foundation
1999 The Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellowship
2001 MacDowell Fellowship
2002 MacDowell Fellowship
2003 MacDowell Fellowship
2003 Santa Maddalena Foundation Fellowship
2005 Ucross Foundation
2006 Guggenheim Fellowship
2006 MacDowell Fellowship
2007 Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship
2010 MacDowell Fellowship
2012 George Soros's Open Society Foundations Fellowship
2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship
2017 Ferris Journalism Fellowship at Princeton University
2018 Ucross Foundation
2019 Arizona State University's Center on the Future of War Fellowship
2019 New America Foundation Fellowship
2019 MacDowell Fellowship
2020 Schloss Wiepersdorf Fellowship

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Educating the Elite", Barnard magazine, Winter 2015 issue. Accessed June 29, 2020
  2. ↑ "Undercover in North Korea: "All Paths Lead to Catastrophe"". September 4, 2017.
  3. ↑ Kim, Suki (November 21, 2004). "'Facing Poverty With a Rich Girl's Habits'". The New York Times. Retrieved June 10, 2021.
  4. ↑ "The Moth | The Art and Craft of Storytelling". The Moth. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  5. ↑ "Suki Kim — Journalism". journalism.princeton.edu. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  6. ↑ Kim, Suki (March 2, 2003). "NEW YORK OBSERVED: Translating Poverty and Pain". The New York Times. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  7. ↑ Yoon, Cindy. "Suki Kim and 'The Interpreter'". Asia Society.
  8. ↑ Kim, Suki (February 13, 2003). "A Visit to North Korea". The New York Review of Books.
  9. ↑ Szalai, Jennifer (December 3, 2008). "Talking with Suki Kim". Harper's Magazine.
  10. ↑ "Suki Kim: 'Without You, There Is No Us'". The Diane Rehm Show. October 15, 2014.
  11. ↑ Gladstone, Rick (November 30, 2014). "Tales Told Out of School in Pyongyang Cause Stir". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 30, 2022. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  12. ↑ Kim, Suki (June 27, 2016). "The Reluctant Memoirist". The New Republic.
  13. ↑ Kim, Suki (December 1, 2017). "Public-Radio Icon John Hockenberry Accused of Harassing Female Colleagues". The Cut. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  14. ↑ "New York Public Radio Fires Hosts Lopate and Schwartz | WNYC | New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News". WNYC. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  15. ↑ "Embattled Head of New York Public Radio to Step Down (Published 2018)". www.nytimes.com. December 19, 2018. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  16. ↑ Falk, Tyler; Reporter (June 18, 2018). "Cappello leaves WNYC after more than 20 years". Current. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  17. ↑ "Longreads Best of 2017: Investigative Reporting". Longreads. December 15, 2017. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  18. ↑ Kim, Suki (November 13, 2020). "The Underground Movement Trying to Topple the North Korean Regime". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  19. ↑ "The Moth: All These Wonders – stories from Dunnes Stores to North Korea". The Irish Times. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  20. ↑ "Suki Kim". New America. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  21. ↑ Kim, Suki (March 5, 2016). "A Visit to North Korea by Suki Kim | The New York Review of Books". Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved December 4, 2020. {{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  22. ↑ "Opinion | Korea's New Wave (Published 2003)". www.nytimes.com. May 10, 2003. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
  23. ↑ Kim, Suki (2005). "The anticipation of the water". Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
  24. ↑ Kim, Suki (December 29, 2005). "Hwang, Drawn and Quartered?". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  25. ↑ Kim, Suki (October 16, 2006). "Great Leadership". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  26. ↑ Kim, Suki (July 25, 2007). "Suki Kim - Asia's Apostles". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  27. ↑ Kim, Suki (April 24, 2007). "Globalizing Grief". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  28. ↑ Kim, Suki (2008). "A really big show" (PDF). Harper's.
  29. ↑ "Opinion | Notes From Another Credit Card Crisis (Published 2009)". www.nytimes.com. May 18, 2009. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
  30. ↑ Kim, Suki (July 1, 2010). "[Article] The system of defecting, By Suki Kim". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  31. ↑ EDT, Suki Kim On 6/25/10 at 8:45 AM (June 25, 2010). "North Korean Fans Attend the World Cup". Newsweek. Retrieved December 4, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  32. ↑ Kim, Suki (February 25, 2013). "Opinion | Shared Wounds in Korea (Published 2013)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  33. ↑ Kim, Suki (December 16, 2013). "Opinion | The Dear Leader's Heinous Act (Published 2013)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  34. ↑ Kim, Suki (October 31, 2014). "The Good Student in North Korea (Published 2014)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  35. ↑ Kim, Suki (September 17, 2015). "North Korea's Real Hunger". Foreign Affairs: America and the World. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  36. ↑ Kim, Suki (December 2, 2014). "I Asked My North Korean Students to Write Critical Essays. They All Chose America as Their Topic". Slate Magazine. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  37. ↑ Kim, Suki (December 22, 2014). "The Sony Hack Is North Korea's Biggest Victory in a Long Time". Slate Magazine. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  38. ↑ "Suki Kim: Dear Leader's great victory". National Post. December 29, 2014. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  39. ↑ EST, Suki Kim On 12/4/14 at 12:33 PM (December 4, 2014). "The Secret Shame of North Korea's Slave Workers". Newsweek. Retrieved December 4, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  40. ↑ Kim, Suki (January 16, 2015). "What 'The Interview' Gets Right—and Wrong—About US Policy Toward North Korea". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  41. ↑ Kim, Suki (January 11, 2016). "Is it Time to Intervene in North Korea?". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  42. ↑ Kim, Suki (November 18, 2016). "Why South Koreans Are So Enraged by Their President's Bizarre Scandal". Slate Magazine. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  43. ↑ Kim, Suki (May 9, 2016). "Across the Broken Bridge". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  44. ↑ Kim, Suki (December 21, 2016). "Korean Reporters Got Fired, Got Active, and Got The President". Foreign Policy. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  45. ↑ Kim, Suki (February 24, 2017). "The Meaning of Kim Jong Nam's Murder". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  46. ↑ Kim, Suki (March 20, 2017). "An Extraordinary Statement from a North Korean Prince". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  47. ↑ Kim, Suki. "Opinion | Is Christian evangelicals' money helping to prop up North Korea's regime?". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  48. ↑ Kim, Suki. "Opinion | Tourism to North Korea isn't about engagement. It's torture porn". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  49. ↑ "My two messed-up countries: an immigrant's dilemma". the Guardian. May 8, 2017. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  50. ↑ Kim, Suki (May 8, 2017). "South Korea Is More Worried About Donald Trump Than Kim Jong Un". Foreign Policy. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  51. ↑ Kim, Suki (October 22, 2018). "The Dealmaker". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  52. ↑ Kim, Suki (June 13, 2018). "Covering the North Korea Summit While Trapped in a Warehouse in Singapore". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  53. ↑ "Opinion | North Korea's Lipstick Diplomacy (Published 2018)". www.nytimes.com. February 9, 2018. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  54. ↑ Kim, Suki (March 4, 2020). "How South Korea Lost Control of Its Coronavirus Outbreak". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  55. ↑ Kim, Suki (November 13, 2020). "The Underground Movement Trying to Topple the North Korean Regime". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  56. ↑ "NEW YORK OBSERVED; Translating Poverty and Pain (Published 2003)". www.nytimes.com. March 2, 2003. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
  57. ↑ "NEW YORK OBSERVED; Marriage of Inconvenience? (Published 2003)". www.nytimes.com. June 22, 2003. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
  58. ↑ "'Facing Poverty With a Rich Girl's Habits' (Published 2004)". www.nytimes.com. November 21, 2004. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
  59. ↑ Kim, Suki (September 24, 2006). "Our Affair Was One Long Lesson in How to Break Up (Published 2006)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  60. ↑ "Forced From Home Yet Never Free of It (Published 2010)". www.nytimes.com. December 8, 2010. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
  61. ↑ Kim, Suki (February 8, 2015). "Love Stories: Why I Flew to Beijing in Search of the Perfect Dress". Vogue. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  62. ↑ Kim, Suki (March 7, 2016). "Mr. Rubio's Neighborhood". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  63. ↑ Kim, Suki (June 27, 2016). "The Reluctant Memoirist". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  64. ↑ Kim, Suki (September 15, 2016). "What Happened in Brisbane". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  65. ↑ "Land of Darkness | Suki Kim". Lapham’s Quarterly. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  66. ↑ Kim, Suki (December 1, 2017). "Public-Radio Icon John Hockenberry Accused of Harassing Female Colleagues". The Cut. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  67. ↑ "Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award". web.mnstate.edu. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  68. ↑ "List of PEN/Hemingway Winners | The Hemingway Society". www.hemingwaysociety.org. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  69. ↑ "PEN Open Book Award Winners". PEN America. April 29, 2016. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  70. ↑ "Suki Kim". American Academy. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  71. ↑ "ALUMNI". Millay Colony for the Arts. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
  72. ↑ "Ucross Foundation". July 25, 2004. Archived from the original on July 25, 2004. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
  73. ↑ "Ragdale". Archived from the original on February 14, 2014.
  74. ↑ "Former Fellows 1999". The Edward F. Albee Foundation. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
  75. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Suki Kim - Artist". MacDowell. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  76. ↑ "Santa Maddalena Foundation | The Fellows". Santa Maddalena Foundation. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
  77. ↑ "Ucross Foundation Newsletter" (PDF).
  78. ↑ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Suki Kim". Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  79. ↑ "Fellows News | Bogliasco Foundation". www.bfny.org. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
  80. ↑ "Open Society Fellowship". www.opensocietyfoundations.org. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  81. ↑ "NYFA Proudly Announces the 2014 Artists' Fellowships Awardees". NYFA. January 23, 2015. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  82. ↑ "Suki Kim — Journalism". journalism.princeton.edu. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  83. ↑ "Ucross Foundation - Literature Alumni". UCROSS. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
  84. 1 2 "Center on the Future of War fellow Suki Kim wins prestigious Berlin Prize". ASU Now: Access, Excellence, Impact. May 23, 2019. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  85. ↑ "Suki Kim - Schloss Wiepersdorf (en)". www.schloss-wiepersdorf.de. Retrieved December 4, 2020.