Yeonmi Park, a young woman who fled North Korea after seeing friends and family tortured and killed, tells her harrowing story. Defector Yeonmi Park, 22, author of new book In Order to Live, lays her bravery bare. As a child in North Korea, the most isolated nation on the planet, Yeonmi Park knew nothing of the outside world. She learned only what her teachers taught: Americans were enemies and "bastards." At times, she and her classmates punched and kicked dummies dressed as U.S. soldiers. Food and electricity were scarce. Foreign films, illegal.
Park's father spent years in a labor camp for starting a business, which was not allowed by the government. When he got out, his bones protruding from hunger, the family decided to escape across the border to China. In 2007, with the help of smugglers, her older sister fled first, followed by Park and her mother, with her father due to come later. That's when their real problems began.
In North Korea, we never learned to think critically. There is no concept of individualism. The government treated us as less valuable than animals. You can't even stay overnight at someone's house without permission from the police. My mother warned me not to say—or even think—anything bad about our "dear leader," Kim Jong Il, because "even the birds and mice can hear you whisper."
Under the rule of Kim Jong-Un, North Korea remains among the world’s most repressive countries. All basic freedoms have been severely restricted under the Kim family’s political dynasty. A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry found that abuses in North Korea were without parallel in the contemporary world. North Korea operates secretive prison camps where perceived opponents of the government are sent to face abuse, starvation rations, and forced labor. Fear of collective punishment is used to silence dissent. There is no independent media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom.
