While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America

by Yeonmi Park

SPEAKING TRUTH to power is as old as America itself. The United States might have been born as a reaction to monarchical tyranny in the late eighteenth century, but its deepest roots reach back a century and a half earlier. The English religious exiles who chose to make the difficult and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the New World did so in search of greater individual and communal liberty—it was an exodus in search of truth and freedom. The sacrifices they made for the sake of that search were almost unfathomable. They left behind everything they ever knew and embarked on an entirely uncertain path. When they arrived in Massachusetts, the winter was unimaginably harsh, and the landscape of thick woods and forests was unforgiving. There was no obvious source of food or shelter; there were no authorities and there was no security. Everything had to be built from scratch. Our forefathers in America were willing to undergo such extreme conditions and assume such dangers—all for the sake of freedom of religion. That’s how precious they considered the basic freedoms of speech, expression, and conscience. They were willing to risk everything for it. This value was, of course, eventually enshrined into law in the form of the First Amendment to the Constitution in 1791. And for the vast majority of American history, it performed its function well.