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

by Yeonmi Park

To realize I was completely alone in this world was the scariest thing I’ve felt in my life, and the saddest.

finally allowed myself to think bad thoughts about him because even if he could read my mind, I was probably going to die out here anyway.

I was beyond the reach of his revenge, yet it felt like his hand was following me everywhere I went, trying to pull me back.

For North Koreans, this kind of place seemed normal, even luxurious, although South Koreans would probably call it a prison camp.

The ethnic Korean woman and our Han Chinese missionary guide were arrested and sent to Chinese prisons for the crime of helping North Koreans escape to freedom.

It was a gesture I had learned from South Korean movies, and I was ready to be a South Korean.

I felt the shame of the survivor who lives while so many friends and family members have died or are trapped in a living hell.

I thought I had seen modern toilets in China, but this was incomprehensible.

The purpose of the Center is to weed out imposters: ethnic Koreans from China trying to emigrate to South Korea, and North Korean agents disguised as defectors.

Each of us was given a pen and paper and told to write down everything about ourselves.

We were given a few hours each day to stretch and exercise, but other than that, we were held in isolation as people moved on to the next stage of their interrogation and new ones arrived to take their places.

She told us her husband had been arrested in China right in front of her, but she had to pretend she didn’t know him in order to save their children.

He started by questioning me about what I learned in school and other things that only North Korean children would know, like the Young Pioneer oath.

Prostitutes in China can often be identified by tattoos on their arms or backs.

I realized I had no hope in this place.

looked out the window at the country where I thought I would be free.

After all, this was the sort of skill we North Koreans had been perfecting all our lives.

In a way, Hanawon is like a boot camp for time travelers from the Korea of the 1950s

Other than Korean characters, the only alphabet I knew was the one we used to spell Russian words in North Korea. Learning a new one now seemed completely overwhelming.

Every day, the instructors challenged fundamental beliefs that had been drilled into our heads from birth.

Assuming that North Korea was always the victim of imperialist aggression was part of my identity.

It was impossible to trust anyone in authority.

So this legal system seemed very attractive to me because it protected weak people from those with more power.

but for me the most difficult part of the program was learning to introduce myself in class.

And why would anyone care about what “I” wanted to be when I grew up?

In North Korea, we are usually taught to memorize everything, and most of the time there is only one correct answer to each question.

It took me a long time to start thinking for myself and to understand why my own opinions mattered.

never knew freedom could be such a cruel and difficult thing.

Now I realized that I had to think all the time—and it was exhausting.

Group 129.

My favorite number, lol

Defectors have to work hard to catch up with average citizens, and many of them never do.

That happened a lot because newly arrived North Koreans were so innocent of the ways of the world.

In North Korea, oranges and apples were unimaginable luxuries, so here my mother loved buying them and slicing them for us to share.

That was not the way things happened in North Korea, where working hard was rewarded only if you had a good songbun and the right connections.

I remembered the old pleasure of reading books in North Korea, only now there was a lot more to read about than the adventures of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

But I found that as I read more, my thoughts were getting deeper, my vision wider, and my emotions less shallow.

when you have more words to describe the world, you increase your ability to think complex thoughts.

Also fits with Montessori

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.

Reducing the horror of North Korea into

simple allegory erased its power over me. It helped set me free.

Like all defectors, I was allowed to bypass South Korea’s notorious eight-hour-long College Scholastic Ability Test, but I still had to pass rigorous tests to enter the university, including an oral exam.

I had been raised without any religion except the worship of dictators, and my spirit was still searching for a place to rest.

When I was young, my dream was to have one bucket of bread. Now I started to dream great dreams.

Sometimes I wondered how there could be so many lights in this place when, just thirty-five miles north of here, a whole country was shrouded in darkness.

still had trouble trusting what I learned, although now some of it made more sense to me than believing that Kim Jong Il could control the weather with his mind.

What made this program different was that all the panelists were North Korean defectors.

South Koreans, who knew next to nothing about North Korea,

I don’t know if it was because I was still in denial about the wickedness of the Kims or about my own identity as a North Korean, but sometimes I thought my “sister” cast members were exaggerating their hardships.

Like witnesses taking the stand, one by one, my sisters made a case against the heartless regime that treated all of us as if we were trash to be discarded without a thought.

was finally living a life with no limits.