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 thought about a society where talking about certain things means prosecution? Ever imagined 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 a live her life. In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom – this book is the tale of her life which crosses all the limits of reasoning.
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 generations of that criminal family experience discrimination and prosecution.
They can’t apply for the military or any government services, and they can not own their land thus without any meaningful source of income they are forced to experience the brutal form of poverty imaginable, Yeonmi’s family experienced a similar fate.
Yeomni 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 survival food but also put them in 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 nation.
The 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 wood and doing manual labor and come back at night, Yeomni and her sister would go to school and come back and wait for her mother to come home, this is the most emotional parts of the book, Yoemni 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 bedridden, the pressure on her mother was unbearable and the inevitable thought of leaving Korea started to creep in.
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 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 escaping hell she completed her GEDs while living in South Korea and working a full-time job. She devoured books of literature and got the honor to study at Colombia University. But the American culture of wokeness and leftist sympathy was a bit disappointing and she expressed her views with the same passion for freedom and justice. You can easily go through this book knowing that it would be one of the most fascinating stories you’ll ever hear.
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Writer,
Nazmul Haque Parthib
Intern,Content Writing Department YSSE