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

This was a dynamite read, though sometimes it was difficult, getting my head wrapped around a regime that allows its people to suffer and starve. Park decided to write the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and it has lent a great deal of power to the message that the North Korean government it a cruel and brutal machine, bent on breaking the backs of the very people keeping it afloat. I applaud Park--and she's a clear and terrific writer, too. As part of a family who once had risen in approval by the Kims, Park sees her father fall into disgrace, when he's arrested for his participation in the Black Market--a necessary, but illegal operation taking place daily in North Korea. When living alone with her mother and sister, Park is forced to live with relatives who dislike her family, due to her father's "behavior". When winter is too cold and food is scarce, Park's mother and sister agree it's time to flee to China. First, Eonmi, the sister, disappears and nothing more is heard of her. Desperate to locate her, Park and her mother set out, assured by their escape guides that they'll have work and a living waiting for them on the other side of the river. However, the "work" is nothing but grim human trafficking, and Park becomes enslaved as a mistress--at age THIRTEEN. When things in China become unbearable, she and her mother resort to yet another attempt at escaping; this time to South Korea, via the Gobi Desert. Successful, they must be debriefed in camps, set up to assist them in learning how to live in a free society. Park's tale is both poignant and masterfully organized. I highly recommend this book. It's informative and should remind everyone never to take for granted the freedoms we enjoy.

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.

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.

Story itself: WOW. One of so few that has come out of North Korea. I've read my fair share of books/stories about abusive regimes as a history teacher who is constantly trying to educate myself in the little details, but this particular regime is a whole new level of evil. This story in particular was eye opening because it was an overview of many different social situations in North Korea, all in one woman's personal experience. She experienced the highs and the lows: what it was like to be poor, then well-off, then the daughter of a criminal, and finally her escape. Writing style: not horrible, but not brilliant. If you're someone who really loves a well-written book, this isn't your book. The plot is great, it's a true story, no issues there. But everyone loves books for different reasons, and if writing style is one of the main reasons you love to read, this probably isn't your book. Age group: for sure a mature audience. The writing is pretty approachable for even a middle school level, but I would NOT hand this to anyone younger than college. It has multiple mentions of rape, horrific treatment of humans, bullying, starvation, dead bodies, etc. It's horrific. Rightly so, it's a true story about something horrific. But readers be aware.

This book is absolutely unforgettable. Yeonmi Park’s story of survival, courage, and the pursuit of freedom is both heartbreaking and incredibly inspiring. It provides a raw, eye-opening look at life in North Korea and the harrowing journey of a defector. It changed my perspective on the world and made me realize how much I take for granted. Every person should read this.

As I turned to the next page of this book, I thought it couldn't get worse. Learning the sacrifices Yeonmi and her family had to endure at a very early age made me truly appreciate the life that was built for me by my parents and made me realize how I might have taken for granted the simplest things in life.

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.

Loved this book. It makes u appreciate greatly the life you have .. and also gives you a stark realization of other peoples realities. Well written. Couldn’t put it down !

This is a memoir by a North Korean defector and now human rights activist. Following precarious years of hardship and malnutrition, Yeonmi at the age of only 13 escaped from her country with her mother in March 2007. Living in the northern border city of Hyesan, China was just across the frozen Yalu river and beckoned with its relative economic prosperity and comparative freedom. But Yeonmi's struggles were only just beginning as her mother was almost immediately raped and then they were bought and sold, and abused by successive waves of human traffickers. After two years in China, and searching for Yeonmi's sister who had defected separately at around the same time, they eventually made their way (counterintuitively from a geographical point of view) via Mongolia, to South Korea. She had been forced to grow up very quickly, having to make life-changing and potentially life-ending decisions, all before she was even 16 years old. But despite that enforced growing up, the very limited confines of her (and of course nearly all her fellow country people's) growing up and education in North Korea meant that she has no concept of freedom or democracy, or even, really tragically, of human love: "I wasn’t dreaming of freedom when I escaped from North Korea. I didn’t even know what it meant to be free. All I knew was that if my family stayed behind, we would probably die—from starvation, from disease, from the inhuman conditions of a prison labor camp. The hunger had become unbearable; I was willing to risk my life for the promise of a bowl of rice." As the bartering began for Yeonmi and her mother, she was "caught between fear and hope. We were numb, and our purpose was reduced to our immediate needs: Get away from the dangerous border. Get away from this terrible bald broker and his frightening wife. Get something to eat and figure out the rest of it later." But later on she was separated from her mother and "was beginning to realize that all the food in the world, and all the running shoes, could not make me happy. The material things were worthless. I had lost my family. I wasn’t loved, I wasn’t free, and I wasn’t safe. I was alive, but everything that made life worth living was gone." Even after Yeonmi and her mother escaped to South Korea, the process of getting used to life in a freer and much more prosperous society was very hard. The utterly alien mindset caused by a very limited mental horizon is perhaps one of the hardest aspects for the Western reader to get his or her head round - for example when asked what her hobbies were: "I had no idea what a “hobby” was. When it was explained that it was something I did that made me happy, I couldn’t conceive of such a thing. My only goal was supposed to be making the regime happy. And why would anyone care about what “I” wanted to be when I grew up? There was no “I” in North Korea—only we". She could not even name her favourite colour and until a teacher told her her own, which she then parroted: "It took me a long time to start thinking for myself and to understand why my own opinions mattered. But after five years of practicing being free, I know now that my favorite color is spring green and my hobby is reading books and watching documentaries." Until that time, Yeonmi "had always thought that being free meant being able to wear jeans and watch whatever movies I wanted without worrying about being arrested. Now I realized that I had to think all the time—and it was exhausting. There were times when I wondered whether, if it wasn’t for the constant hunger, I would be better off in North Korea, where all my thinking and all my choices were taken care of for me". Her journey to freedom and success has been a difficult one. She has been an activist speaking out against North Korea and in favour of freedom for nearly a decade and it is amazing to think she is still not yet 30. A remarkable journey by a remarkable individual.

Inspiring and motivating. Loved reading it.

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.