In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

I wonder from time to time I wonder if I would survive in a hostile environment with no support from anyone and no resources except what I could manufacture for myself. The author of this book and her mother were made of steel. They survived physical and emotional adversaries, such as I could not ever imagine. But they are only two people among the millions of others who are suffering also. Even when they reached their promised land of South Korea, they were not always welcomed with joy and respect. I think about the many people in refugee camps. The Somalians, who have suffered through horrible famine and oppression. The people of South Sudan. Most of all reading a book like this makes me feel like trying harder to help and yet feeling quite helpless in the face of all this misery. And yet if you look at the photos at the end of this narrative, you see how people find joy and happiness somewhere. They find community. The photos actually were taken during the time when her father was prospering, but even when they were starving and everything was going so wrong for the family, they found happiness in their love for each other. This is a book well worth reading.

One may think this book is just about how the author escaped North Korea when she was 13 years old, but it's SO MUCH more than that. There is history sprinkled throughout the overall tale of her life, but done so in a nonintrusive way. Never does it feel like the reader is cracking open a text books, as Park Yeonmi writes it in a way that the history you need to know for the certain events is explained while the event is going on. It's very clever, informative, and dare I say entertaining. While the main purpose is to get the word out about the horrors she experienced, Ms. Park (and her co-author) phrase it in a way where it's almost like a narrative so it's easier to read. I feel this a huge accomplishment given the heavy subject matter and compare it how Elie Wiesel wrote "Night". I shouldn't have to explain that this isn't light reading, as the events that take place in this book really happened and are STILL happening, but I let me warn you regardless. Ms. Park story is nothing short of a holocaust, one that's been going on for decades. So yes, while she is a good writer, this still is heavy reading. Even still: buy this. Read this. It's important to spread Park Yeonmi's message and help her in some small way in her human-rights efforts.

Review of IN ORDER TO LIVE By Yeonmi Park The key words or phrases appropriate here are starvation, disease, corruption, rape, connections, bribery (seemingly everywhere), propaganda, black market, jammed radio signals, human trafficking, frozen river, no electricity at times, clothing stolen from clotheslines, dogs not kept outdoors at night, mystical powers of leaders, etc. Are you still with me? Don't worry. There are some words they do not have, a list of no's. No words for shopping malls, liberty, or love (except for love or worship of the Kims). No tampons for women. No food and very little water during the 1990s famine, no state-controlled economy when Communist countries abandoned them, no business allowed legally outside of state control, no videos with foreign movies or SK TV shows except those smuggled in, no books except those printed by the government with political themes, no eating of cows without permission (one starving man was executed publicly for doing so), etc. This may seem more like a grade Z melodrama about an exaggerated empire in the Middle Ages than a view of a living hell on earth today, but this is life in North Korea as outlined by the very young author Yeonmi Park. Fortunately, she survived to tell the tale, and, fortunately, she found a worthy co-author Maryanne Vollers. Surviving, however, for this young lady meant knowing her mother was being raped to prevent her own rape (the second time even in front of her), listening to lies about the outside world, learning that one must put words like "demon," "bastards," "devil," or "big-nosed" before or after the name for Americans (as well as looking at images of grotesque GIs killing civilians and being killed by Korean children), learning to control your emotions and think with one mind, told to spy on neighbors and even fellow school children, learning that your Dear Leader could control the weather with his thoughts, and expressing enough visible grief when Kim Il Sung (thought to be immortal) passed away. She and her sister were supposed to bring food to school for the teacher, and when they could no longer do so, they dropped out of school. If neighbors learned that her family had rice cakes, they would show up and devour them until none were left for her family. Surprisingly, spring was the season of death -- when most people died of starvation and whose bodies were left on the streets -- because stores of food were depleted and new crops were just being planted. Children would even eat dragonflies. She realized later that her father was like Winston Smith in 1984, a man who was able to see through Big Brother’s propaganda and knew how things really worked in the country. Finally, Yeonmi and her mother were smuggled across the river into China by women at night, not knowing they were being rescued to become involved in human trafficking. Her sister had gone before them and had disappeared. Women were sold as wives to Chinese where birth rate of males was low. "Get sold or go back to NK." A broker wanted to have sex with her (at age 13), which is when her mother took her place. Her price would go up each time they were sold along the chain. Finally, eventually, she was allowed to eat a whole bowl of rice by herself. Changchun = capital of Jilin province – is where she saw small wonderful things, cooking everywhere, unrecognizable fruit sold on the streets, real toilets and showers, disposable pads for menstrual periods. Unfortunately, she also encountered a hierarchy of gangsters and barely escaped attempted rape several times. Eventually, she agreed to live with a particular influential broker because he promised to buy back her mother, bring her father to China, and help her find her sister. At 13 (she lied that she was 16), she became the xiao-xifu (little wife or mistress) of the broker. She even helped him with his business. All defectors lived in fear and stated that they would kill themselves before going back to NK. Some soldiers looked scared and took them to Seoul. South Korea was not the Emerald City for them, however. When she saw SK girls in miniskirts, she wanted to crawl into a mouse hole to hide her shabby tweed coat and mended jeans. In school, she couldn't catch up with SK middle school students, didn't know multiplication tables, only knew letters from the Russian alphabet, and had to endure comments like "What's that animal thing doing here?" and "Spy." She finally left school never to return. On her own, she became a learning machine – reading classics (at the university), reading books that were just about Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, reading Socrates and Nietzsche on her own. Finally, she took a risk to appear on national TV show. Her dread of evil Americans melted when she arrived in a Houston airport. She was amazed at how quickly a lie loses its power in the face of truth. She was impressed with the size of products in Walmart Superstore. (But did she go to Cosco?) She visited San Jose Costa Rica YOUTH WITH A MISSION and even worked with the homeless in Atlanta. She gave speeches and interviews from Australia to the US, became the face of human rights issues, and even brought a weeping audience to its feet in Dublin. All this time, of course, she was watched by the NK government and even had to watch her relatives back in NK denounce her and her family on TV, obviously not of their own free will (since such as concept is unknown there anyway). Media exposure by dictator demand. Lie or die. Now she doesn't have to and can even think for herself.

I am in awe of this woman and all others who made it. The book is perfectly written in my opinion, a fast, exiting and ultimately an inspiring and motivational read. So many real life lessons from someone so young. I recommend it highly.

Starving as a child in an utterly deprived society; crossing the Yalu river to reach China, only to be sold in sexual slavery there; inching through the Gobi desert barefoot towards freedom: still in her early twenties, Yaonmi Park has lived through harrowing experiences just "in order to know what it means to be free." I gave this book the highest mark, not only for the merits of such an epic journey, but because of the the abundance of concrete details it provides about everyday life in one of the most secluded societies in the world. I knew practically nothing about North Korea. Thanks to Yaonmi Park I can now vividly imagine what it takes to survive in such a an unforgiving environment where the struggle for life consumes every part of your energy. Yaonmi Park has become a proud freedom fighter. Her book might be the first nail in the coffin of an unsustainable communist regime.

Beautiful book. Such a great read. Thanks, Yeonmi.

The book came with a bent cover. This is the second time recently that a book comes with a damaged cover :(

As a non-asian, it gave me a huge insight of what’s really happening in north korea, and how much things we take granted in our lives..