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

Really enjoyed this glimpse into a North Korean escapee's survival. Her story is riveting, and a testament to her force of will. Well written and nicely paced. Highly recommend.

This is a personal memoir of the author’s journey to freedom. It begins by recounting her early life under tyrannical rule in North Korea, providing one of the most personal and depressing portraits of life under that regime I’ve ever read. Presumably other readers will be as shocked and horrified as I was to learn about activities we would find unthinkable but North Koreans are forced to accept as just a part of daily life. Even linguistic repressions are in equal parts fascinating and terrifying. But the book then goes on to describe the author’s escape from that hell on earth at the of only thirteen years (and at the weight of only sixty pounds!). Unfortunately the journey through hell wasn’t over as she’d escaped one hell directly into the hands of human traffickers in China. It was only after a period of more years, fully detailed in these pages, that she eventually made her way to freedom first in South Korea and eventually in the United States.Though the book is undeniably a fascinating and harrowing read, some have raised questions of its accuracy, and I think that’s an issue that should be addressed. This book is not a work of academic scholarship, but a personal memoir, and should be read as such. Minor errors of fact and slight inconsistencies do exist, as the book’s coauthor freely acknowledges and attributes to the author’s imperfect recollection of childhood memories and (at the time of the book’s publication) relatively weak English. If you’re planning to use the book for academic purposes, claims should be verified against independent sources, but if you’re reading the book to get a personal look into the life of one North Korean defector, you’ll find the book both useful and accurate on all points where it counts. With regard to more aggressive critics who try to call the entire story into question, coauthor Maryanne Vollers attributes those claims to an organized effort by the North Korean regime to discredit her claims.Regardless of what one thinks of the accuracy of some of the book’s claims—and I am not expert enough to validate every line of the book—it’s undoubtedly one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time because it provides a portrait of a country into which most of us have few opportunities to peer and helps us to understand not only abstractly or academically but personally what it’s like to live under the kind of repressive regime most of us are fortunate enough to have never individually witnessed.

Before I read this book I had only the slightest awareness of anything about North Korea. This book was a huge eye opener and Ms Park has made herself vulnerable to open many eyes. Her story is remarkable and all through it I kept wondering if I would have been as brave as she was under the same circumstances. My answer over and over again is no. I could not have been nearly so brave. This is an amazing story told by an amazing young woman.

This was interesting to me. Gave me a more picture of life in North Korea.

This is a heart wrenching story showing the strength of the human spirit against the sad backdrop of human cruelty.

Review of IN ORDER TO LIVE By Yeonmi ParkThe 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.