"A ... memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign"--Amazon.com It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields-- except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively...

One of the few Westerners granted access to North Korea documents his observations of the secretive society in this graphic travelogue that depicts the cultural alienation, boredom, and desires of ordinary North Koreans.