Imagine if everything you thought you knew turned out to be false. I don’t mean your genetics or a maths problem. I mean absolutely everything you thought you knew about the world, from how the economy works, to how people on the outside world relate to each other, whether there is even an outside world, and who or what makes the world go round.
Yeonmi Park is one of over 31,000 registered North Korean defectors registered in South Korea. For the first 13 years of her life, Yeonmi lived in North Korea. A hermit country cut off from the outside world including its rival South Korea, whose capital Seoul is located just 30 miles from the border, North Korean life is a far cry from anywhere else in the world.
In her book, In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park tells of life with her mother, father and older sister Eunmi. Yeonmi’s father worked in the nation capital: Pyongyang, while the family home was located in the town of Hyesan near the Yale River which separated North Korea and China.
The Yalu River, where Yeonmi and her family crossed into China. Notice the difference between North Korea on the left and China on the right.
Yeonmi tells of a life of brainwashing, propaganda, and grinding poverty under the rule of the Kim family. When she was little, she was told by her mother, “…not to even whisper, because even the birds and mice could hear me.” The rulers are like gods to the North Korean people, who believe they can control the weather, protect them from the outside world, and even read their minds.
Yeonmi and her family lived through the famine of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, where she would see starving children dying on the street. Meanwhile, her own family were struggling Yeonmi recalls going to the fields with her sister Eunmi and eating dragonflies; she loved the aroma when you first lit them and cooked them. During this time, her parents were forced to sell goods on the black market smuggled in from China. Yeonmi revealed that she was fascinated by the smuggled South Korean sitcoms she used to watch, and how different their lives appeared to be. However, she also recalled the execution of the mother of a girl she was friends with. Her crime, you ask. Watching a Hollywood film.
Things took a turn for the worst when Yeonmi’s father was arrested for smuggling banned goods in from China and was tortured for information before being sentenced to hard labour in a concentration camp. After much begging and bribery, he was eventually released conditionally on the grounds of his deteriorating health.
It was at this moment that Eunmi told the family of a broker who could smuggle them into China. From there, as illegal immigrants, they would need to somehow cross the border into Mongolia, where they could visit the South Korean embassy and obtain status as refugees. As the family of an ex-con, and now no economic or social standing, Yeonmi’s family had no way of getting work, and were now destined to starve.
With Eunmi crossing the frozen Yale River with her friend into China mere weeks ahead of Yeunmi and her mother, they had no choice but to follow her. The family agreed that after they were settled they would send for her father.
On 31st March 2007, Yeunmi and her mother crossed the border into China and began a two year life as victims of human trafficking, rape, emotional and physical abuse knowing that the slightest form of protest could lead to their traffickers alerting the Chinese authorities, and being deported to North Korea. Eventually, Yeunmi’s father made it to China, but sadly died months after being diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer.
Eventually, after a freezing cold five day trek through the Gobi Desert, Yeonmi and her mother made it to the South Korean embassy in Mongolia, and in April 2009 were flown to Seoul, where they were finally reunited with Eunmi, who had fled China via Thailand.
Yeonmi described the de-programming she and the other defectors received before they could be integrated into South Korean life. She spoke of the new concepts she never knew existed: bathrooms, daily showers, soap, shampoo, head lice treatment, the exchange of money for goods and services. It was a completely strange and new life.
Yeonmi found her new life in South Korea anything but smooth sailing!
Yeonmi was under the impression that once she arrived in South Korea, all her troubles would be over. Now, she was to face life in South Korea as a North Korean defector. Here, defectors are discriminated against in schools and workplaces, even on the street, treated as a drain on the South Korean system. Meanwhile, the now fifteen-year-old was to study and receive an education in South Korea with the literacy skills of a small child.
Worse still, after agreeing to appear on television shows telling her story of life in North Korea, Yeonmi has received threats, and has even seen news bulletins from back home, portraying her as a liar and a traitor. Be sure to check out the clip below of Yeonmi Park on This Morning.
Despite the stigma and the constant battles in her new home, Yeonmi is determined to raise awareness and tell the truth about the oppression, brainwashing and total lack of human rights in her home country. Her ultimate wish is to see Korea unified once again.
“That was my Grandma’s dream, to see a reunified Korea, and it was my father’s dream and now it is mine.”
Yeonmi also hopes for the day when she can return to Hyesan, see all her old friends and relatives again, and give her father a proper burial.
What strikes me most about Yeonmi’s story, apart from her desperation, and huge courage to find happiness in a new and foreign land, is the enormous hold that North Korea still holds over defectors who fled it. Many other North Korean defectors have even expressed their desire to return to their home country, despite the consequences it would carry. For some, it is for family, for others, it is the way of life they know best, and no matter how hard they try, they just cannot adapt to their new life.
In conclusion, this book was impossible to put down and I cannot recommend it enough. It definitely puts into perspective just how much freedom we actually have, just with everyday things like choosing what career path we want to take, and who we want to marry. I consider myself very lucky. While I find myself constantly trying not to shake my head at politicians and the policies they’re trying to put in place, I also remind myself that I am living in a country where it is compulsory for me to vote. I have a choice where in the country I will live, and I have a choice what career path I am to take. I know what freedom is.
