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

by Yeonmi Park

I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.

I know that it is possible to lose part of your humanity in order to survive. But I also know that the spark of human dignity is never completely extinguished, and that given the oxygen of freedom and the power of love, it can grow again.

I never knew freedom could be such a cruel and difficult thing. Until now, I 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.

In North Korea, we don’t have words for “depression” or “post-traumatic stress,” so I had no idea what those things were or whether I might be suffering because of them.

I was starting to realize that you can’t really grow and learn unless you have a language to grow within. I could literally feel my brain coming to life, as if new pathways were firing up in places that had been dark and barren. Reading was teaching me what it meant to be alive, to be human.