Book Review: In order to live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom
Ever been so hungry that you dream about bread? Ever been so scared that a mere knock on your door feels like something bad is going to happen? Ever think about a society where talking about certain things means prosecution? Ever imagine your neighbors snitching on every discussion you have with your family? Well a girl escaped from such a country beyond these thoughts and imaginations and wrote about her life. These are the basis of the book In order to live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom.
The book is very well written and was from the lens of that young girl. Those who grew up in Asia and experienced some form of poverty can easily relate to young Yeonmi Park’s accounts of her childhood. But the accounts were more of sadness than any other, her childhood consisted of waiting around in her house with her sister for her mother to come back from work and provide for her. They were used to wandering around and eating bugs and insects as it is fairly common for children in North Korea to experience hunger to that level. She talks about her father’s family and how they were once considered a privileged class and lived a fairly luxurious lifestyle. But the North Korean regime sees any crime of an individual as a crime against the state and three generation of that “criminal family experiences discrimination and prosecution, they can’t apply for the military or any government services, they can not own their own land and thus without any meaningful source of income they are made to experience the brutal form of poverty imaginable, Yeonmi’s family experienced similar fate.
She expressed her feelings being numb to the horrors of human suffering as she once watched children catch rats running around human bodies and not feeling a single ounce of fear or any other emotion towards that human being. Her father had a somewhat lucrative but dangerous business, he used to smuggle knock off bags from China and bring them to North Korea, along with these bags he would also smuggle cigarettes and other substances. The immense risk was the only way to ensure food for his family.
Yeonmi talked about the irony of living in a socialist country but being provided for through capitalism, this illegal act of capitalism made sure they had enough food for survival but also put them in the greater harm, she also expressed how her father’s specialty was sales, he could persuade anyone with his words, this is what kept him from being caught, as he would bribe the police and guards with cigarettes and offer them products smuggled from China. In any other country his father would’ve been a successful businessman but unfortunately here, he was a criminal acting against his own nation.
Business wasn’t always booming, her father would be away from home for months on end, her mother would go out in the morning for work gathering woods and doing manual labor and come back at night, Yeonmi and her sister would go to school and come back and wait for her mother to come home, this is where the most emotional parts of the book is found, where Yoenmi shared stories of what she and her sisters would dream about, they would brag about the amount of bread or noodles they could consume at one sitting, they would make clay pots and pans and they would be scared at night patiently waiting in the darkness for their mother’s return. Electricity was not sufficient in North Korea, and still isn’t. The power outage would last for days and when power returned it was like a festival for all the villagers.
Life was somewhat good because they didn’t know what a good life was, they would stare at the Chinese border and wonder what life would look like beyond those lights. The tragedy came when his father finally got caught, he was sentenced to six years in prison and after serving his sentence he was bed ridden, the pressure on her mother was unbearable and the inevitable thought of leaving Korea started to be discussed.
It wasn’t easy, the struggles, the accounts of her life, as a slave, brutally beaten and raped, loosing her sister and the redemption phase of building back her life in South Korea, all of these stories takes you through an emotional roller coaster and is not for the faint of heart. But through all this brutality she always remembered her father’s words of wisdom, sadly his dad died after they escaped, She got to spend some time with him in China when she was subjected to slavery. Her father always wanted to go back home, as he had his roots back in North Korea. But sadly his dream was just that, a dream.
The story is about the greater flaw in human nature, the flaw of not having empathy towards your fellow human beings, the flaw of poverty. You would be horrified to learn that slavery still is in full effect in the 21st century. In that region of China and the North Korean border, nothing seems to have changed. The Chinese treat the defectors as slaves and atrocities of child abuse and human rights violations takes place there. The life of a defector isn’t great even if somehow they get to South Korea, they are seen as second class citizens even though they share the same language and culture.
The story of Yeonmi’s life is tragic but not without the glimmers of triumph, the incredible brilliance of this woman is evident from the start, after living through that much hell she completed her GEDs while living in South Korea and working a full time job. She devoured books and literature and got the honor to study in Colombia University. But the American culture of “wokeness” and leftist sympathy was a bit disappointing and she expressed her views briefly. You can easily go through this book knowing that it would be one of the most fascinating stories you’ll ever hear.
