{"id":74221,"date":"2026-04-08T01:00:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=74221"},"modified":"2026-04-07T08:50:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T12:50:28","slug":"qotd-without-you-there-is-no-us-by-suki-kim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/04\/08\/qotd-without-you-there-is-no-us-by-suki-kim\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: <em>Without You, There is No Us<\/em>, by Suki Kim"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><em>Without You, There is No Us<\/em>, by Suki Kim. Aka <em>A Portrait of the Basic College Girl as a Young Woman<\/em>. Be advised: Be current on your blood pressure meds before you check this one out from the library. Maybe have one of those defibrillator kits on hand, because it&#8217;ll get your blood boiling like no other. Kim scams an American missionary organization into sending her to North Korea as an English teacher. She&#8217;s well aware that the organization will be destroyed when she&#8217;s exposed. She&#8217;s also well aware that the young boys she&#8217;s teaching \u2014 the sons of high Party officials \u2014 are going to face potentially lethal consequences, along with their entire families. None of that bothers her a bit. No, her main problem is that all those North Korean boys find Mx. Suki Kim so irresistibly sexy, OMG, she just can&#8217;t even.<\/p>\n<p>Also note the passages about Her Relationship. That&#8217;s how she refers to the poor bastard. It&#8217;s something along those lines, I forget \u2014 maybe it&#8217;s &#8220;My Ex&#8221; \u2014 but either way, he never even gets the goddamn common courtesy of being referred to by name &#8230; because to Mx. Kim, he really doesn&#8217;t have one. He&#8217;s just another interchangeable character in the all-encompassing soap opera that is her life.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <a href=\"https:\/\/foundingquestions.wordpress.com\/2022\/06\/09\/recommended-reading\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Recommended Reading&#8221;, <em>Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2022-06-09.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Without You, There is No Us, by Suki Kim. Aka A Portrait of the Basic College Girl as a Young Woman. Be advised: Be current on your blood pressure meds before you check this one out from the library. Maybe have one of those defibrillator kits on hand, because it&#8217;ll get your blood boiling like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,32,79,41],"tags":[86,279,139,1462,255,43],"class_list":["post-74221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-books","category-education","category-quotations","tag-criticism","tag-korea","tag-psychology","tag-severian","tag-sexuality","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-jj7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74221"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101754,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74221\/revisions\/101754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}