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'North Koreans have no ounce of freedom'

Washington: North Koreans are raised to be soldiers and "have no ounce of freedom", according to a journalist who lived undercover in Pyongyang. "Their lives were completely mapped out according to the great leader," Suki Kim, who spent six months undercover in North Korea in 2011, told CNN on Saturday.

"Any information from outside is forbidden and not shown to them in any way. It's really a system of absolute control." Kim, author of "Without You There Is No Us", posed as a missionary and a teacher at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. She taught English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class, children expected to be the regime's future leaders.
She described the complex psychology of people there "being really lovely and absolutely human" but living in a bubble, emotionally and intellectually isolated. "To try to understand North Korea, it's basically a cult of the great leader," Kim told CNN.
"It's a military dictatorship with one of the largest armies in the world and also it's a place where communication is blocked. "If you block the rest of the world from your country entirely, then how can you actually have information to teach people that other things exist?"
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