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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Yeonmi Park
Read between
October 19 - October 30, 2023
Ordinary schools in North Korea did not have such things.
wish I’d known at the time what that light really meant to North Koreans like
North Koreans have always been told that the rest of the world was an impure, disgusting, and dangerous place. Worst of all was South Korea,
But in a place without an Internet or an outside newspaper, it was impossible to get reliable information. If you asked too many questions, you could be reported.
When women escaped to China, the government didn’t get all that upset about it, and their relatives were usually not punished.
And we weren’t really capable of critical thinking because we had been trained not to ask questions.
Usually young men go into the army for ten years.
Even though we were supposed to have free medical care, the doctors expected us to pay them for the surgery.
The hospital was poorly equipped and filthy.
The whole time I was staying there, several bodies were stacked like wood between my room and the outhouse.
“The government won’t come and collect the bodies until there are seven of them.
Even though my mother worked in the black market, she trusted people.
It’s still hard to fathom why we went along with all of this, except that we were caught between fear and hope.
At home, eating all your food is rude and shameful, because you know your host will eat what you have left.
In North Korea we lived in a haze of dust and burning trash. But in China the world seemed cleaner and you could smell wonderful things cooking everywhere.
Virtually all defectors in China live in constant fear.
Not only is North Korea a trading partner, but it’s a nuclear power perched right on its border, and an important buffer between China and the American presence in the South.
The ratio of male to female was especially unbalanced in the rural areas, where many local young women were lured to the big cities for jobs and a better life.
We didn’t have traffic lights in Hyesan, and there were very few cars anyway.
Back in North Korea, we just used a thin cloth that we had to wash, so I had been confined to the house for days every month.
Everybody in North Korea had lice, and there was no way to get rid of them.
but I had never seen such luxury items, so I tried to tell him I didn’t need anything.
Now that dream had come true and I was still miserable.
I was alive, but everything that made life worth living was gone.
if I refused to sleep with him, he was going to sell me off to a farmer. He wanted me to understand that he was offering me a much better alternative.
Usually when North Korean slave-brides run away from their brokers, they are badly beaten or even killed.
In North Korea, we worshipped only the Kim dictators, and our faith was in juche, the doctrine of nationalistic self-determination created by Kim Il Sung.
But I was just going through the motions of being alive while watching myself from a distance, like I was playing a role in a movie that never seemed to end.
It was better than dying in North Korea.
August 15 is a big holiday in North Korea because it celebrates the day in 1945 that Japan surrendered.
My job was to translate for them, buy tickets or hire taxis to bring them back to Hongwei, and persuade them to cooperate if they wanted to stay in China.
If the Chinese government would end its heartless policy of sending refugees back to North Korea, then the brokers would lose all their power to exploit and enslave these women. But of course if North Korea wasn’t such a hell on earth, there wouldn’t be a need for the women to flee in the first place.
But whenever human beings are thrown together, no matter what the circumstances, we find ways to connect with one another.
There were even worse stories about women carrying half-Chinese babies who were forced to abort them, or being executed if the North Koreans found them trying to defect to South Korea.
didn’t know anything about cancer because it is so uncommon in North Korea. This wasn’t to say the disease didn’t exist; it probably just went undiagnosed. Most people didn’t die of cancer because other things killed them first.
According to news reports that we never heard, Beijing responded by rounding up anybody who might embarrass the government and ruin China’s great international triumph.
Mostly he spoke about his childhood with a warm nostalgia. When he was young, he said, the public distribution system was so great that he and his friends would get candy every month.
It was impossible to accept that the strongest man I had ever known could just die and there was nothing I could do.
Even in death we had to hide from the authorities.
In China there are medicines you can swallow to stop what
have known better, but somehow I still had trust in people. I had been taught to believe lies all my life, and it had become a dangerous habit.
had never even heard of a webcam before; to my mother and me, this seemed like a very strange way to make a living.
Looking for work in China was a crime, but escaping to South Korea was high treason, and you would either be sent to a political prison camp, from which there is no escape, or maybe just executed.
who could get you through China to Mongolia, which was supposed to welcome North Korean refugees. Once you got to Mongolia, the South Korean embassy would take care of you.
but I knew I would rather die than live like this anymore—I knew in my heart that I deserved to be treated like a person, not a hunted animal.
Good for you!
North Korea is an atheistic country, so this was the first time we had heard anything about this Christian God.
because despite everything that has happened to me, I have been very lucky in my life.
The People’s Republic of China has had a complicated, often violent relationship with organized religion.
It was a lot like what we had been taught in North Korea about our Dear Leader, who knew everything and would take care of everything for us if we were loyal to him.
How could I tell him that all I wanted was to live and be free?
