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Suki Kim

American writer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ7635852
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

“Suki Kim” enters the record as american writer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Suki, American and writer can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1970—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1970-09-19. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Suki, American and writer.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Suki Kim” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Suki, American and writer provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7635852. VIAF identifies the subject as 47005623. The Library of Congress control number is n2002027388. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Suki Kim”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Suki Kim primary sources, Suki Kim archive and Suki research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Suki Kim”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Suki Kim” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.