Review - In Order to Live

Original Title: In Order to Live: a North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
Series: -
Author: Yeonmi Park, Maryanne Vollers
Published: September 29th, 2015
Publisher: Penguin Press

I will start by saying that this was a hard book to rate. The five stars I gave it are not for the writing or the engaging aspects of it. It’s for the author’s courage to speak out, and expose the grim realities of a world that, for many of us, it’s too far away. Something that happens “to others”.

This story is not like Hyeonseo Lee’s. The Girl with Seven Names is a fantastic account of the hardships a North Korean defector has to go through as a consequence of deciding to leave the country. But Hyeonseo Lee, even though she went through a terrible journey to find freedom, was older than Yeonmi Park when she defected, she had a strong willpower and a rebel streak, and her wit, her resourcefulness and her contacts on the other side helped her to survive. Yeonmi Park, instead, was just a child when she left North Korea with her mother.

“Maybe deep, deep inside me I knew something was wrong. But we North Koreans can be experts at lying, even to ourselves.”

There was a moment in which I considered leaving this book unfinished. The account of Yeonmi’s experience in the terrible, soulless world of human trafficking, was becoming more than I could take. Women sold as a piece of property. Yeonmi’s mother raped twice in front of her. Yeonmi herself abused by her so called Chinese husband. The need to shut off her heart to survive. Her father’s illness after his arrest, and his death before reaching true freedom. Her missing sister, who left for China alone and they spent years without a word from her. The terrible choices she had to make, between she and other women being trafficked, or being returned to North Korea to a fate worse than death. The separation from her family. She saw and experienced things no one should. And much less a child. 

But it’s not enough that she was a child. She was a child from North Korea, no less. Innocence and ignorance are a bad combination, but in this case, no North Koreans are prepared for the world beyond their borders. And human traffickers take advantage of it.

There was so much in this book I wanted to quote. The narration is not meant to be gripping like a thriller book, but it is engaging, raw and honest, like saying “this is reality, and there’s no way around it”. She doesn’t get graphic, but it’s not necessary for us to understand what’s happening.

“There were so many desperate people on the streets crying for help that you had to shut off your heart or the pain would be too much. After a while you can’t care anymore. And that is what hell is like.”

I can’t picture a world in which everything is forbidden. No movies. No music. No phone calls. No education, only indoctrination. And for that, I’m lucky. My country may not be perfect, but it’s free, and sometimes we forget the true value of that. Having grown up with a mind of my own is invaluable. North Korea’s slavery system works through ignorance. Keeping their population utterly oblivious to the world beyond their borders is a part of their strategy to keep them subdued. The only possible love they can feel has to be for the Dear Leader.

“I had a warm, holy feeling being in Pyongyang, where the Great Leader once walked, and where his son, Kim Jong Il, now lived. Just knowing he breathed the same air made me feel so proud and special—which is exactly how I was supposed to feel.”

And yet, they manage to use love as a weapon. If you slip, if you say or do the wrong thing, not only you will be punished, but also your family. If you love them, you’ll do as you are told, and keep your mouth shut.

This has to be the plot for a dystopian novel. This can’t be real. I refuse to believe it.

In this country, people are indoctrinated and brainwashed from their early life, but reality takes over at some point. And that is when they make the decision to defect. Yeonmi says that everything needs to be taught, and she is right, but some things are just pure survival instinct. There’s a point in which North Koreans realize that something is wrong about everything they were taught since they were kids.  After all, love for the Dear Leader and hate towards the Japanese, Americans and South Koreans won’t fill their bellies. They will not light the fire that will prevent them and their families from freezing to death during the terrible North Korean winters. They will not give them the treatment or the medicines they need to avoid dying from diseases that the most of the countries have already eradicated.

But leaving is illegal. You are not the owner of your own fate. You have to settle for a life without future, and just survive. People are born, and immediately stripped of things they don’t even know or have yet. You grow up in complete darkness when it comes to your own worth, and your rights.

My heart weeps for North Korea.

I noticed that the first part of the book is narrated through the eyes of a child. A child who has seen a lot, yet some of her innocence remains. There’s mention of the regime but it’s not the main focus in Yeonmi’s description of life in her hometown. There is a focus on the people, on the bonds of friendship and family, and how people are what truly makes a country. Yes, there is an iron fist; yes, there is an authoritarian regime. But the first part of the book is focused on daily life, on the comings and goings of her neighbors in the different places she was in, like Hyesan, the frontier town that allowed her access to her first tastes of freedom, through smuggled goods from China. This first part is focused on how people, including her own father, worked and traded to survive, showing a life that the so called leaders of the country will never understand. It depicted Yeonmi’s family life, with their internal struggles and their relationship with each other, and with their neighbors. It showed the authentic North Korea.

The second part of the book is absolutely heartbreaking, and not for the faint of heart. It tells us about the terrible experiences she and her mother went through once they managed to cross into China, at the hands of human traffickers. They wouldn’t have imagined that what was coming was worse than their life in North Korea. Most female defectors have to endure this, brokers take advantage of their vulnerability and their need to survive, and buy and sell them as if they were cattle. Yeonmi herself was trafficked and took part on the business because of the man she was given to, and later in life, she says she considered herself beyond forgiveness, even God’s, because of the things she did to survive. But it was wrong from one of those missionaries in Qingdao to tell her so, after she confessed her work in the Chinese chatroom. Obviously these people don’t know the harrowing pain she and her mother went through, the despair they felt and their willingness to do whatever it takes to protect each other, and stay alive. God loves us no matter what, and if we truly want to be with Him, He accept us.

The trek through the Gobi Desert at night is worthy of a movie. Not only they had to endure the freezing temperatures and the danger of walking past wild animals, finding guidance in their compasses, and when they could not see them anymore, in the stars. They had to hide from any lights that could give away their position, because being arrested in China means going back to North Korea, and to a certain death. And this is why both Yeonmi and her mother started this part of their journey armed with knives, not for self-defense, but to put an end to their own lives in case they were caught. This is the kind of thing that you can only understand if you go through a similar experience. It’s complete and utter despair. And these are the lengths North Koreans defectors are willing to go just to be free and not go back to the hell they left behind.

If you don’t feel anything with this, your heart is stone.

Ultimately, Yeonmi and the other defectors who crossed to Mongolia through the Gobi Desert, are taken by Mongolian soldiers, and eventually go to Seoul with the help of the South Korean embassy. South Korea doesn’t return defectors; they act with understanding and care, and help them resettle, in a process that involves medical treatment, basic school education, learning to use new technologies and new language forms, and basically, unlearning all the pernicious habits and conceptions drilled into their heads through the overwhelming propaganda of the regime. This is all new for Yeonmi and her companions.

“I had no idea what a “hobby” was. When it was explained that it was something I did that made me happy, I couldn’t conceive of such a thing. My only goal was supposed to be making the regime happy. And why would anyone care about what “I” wanted to be when I grew up? There was no “I” in North Korea—only “we.””

Yet, when you have been a slave your entire life, freedom can be overwhelming, and even scary.

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

A passport, a new house, and eating every day, are just the beginning. Suddenly your mind is yours, and you feel utterly lost, because now you have a new responsibility.

“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. There were times when I wondered whether, if it wasn’t for the constant hunger, I would be better off in North Korea, where all my thinking and all my choices were taken care of for me.”

South Korea’s educational system is not easy. There’s a lot of content, insanely long hours of study, and a fierce competition to get to the best universities. But Yeonmi didn’t give up, and started reading all those books and novels she could have never found in North Korea, like, for example, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, an account, though fictional, of her country’s reality. Thinking for yourself brings new opportunities, and an entire world to discover, but also requires that you shake off all the lies that you bought your entire life. But living in South Korea, for a defector, means not only the need to settle to a new universe, it also means dealing with prejudice and not exactly a quick acceptance from South Koreans. Yet Yeonmi kept going, and through studying she did her best to be a better person, and most of all, to protect her mother, and find her sister.

There’s not much else I can say, except that just as Hyeonseo Lee, Yeonmi Park went through hell, but she didn’t turn her back to North Korea, and is now an activist for human rights. As for her sister Eunmi’s story, even though I think we all wanted to know what had happened to her after she crossed the border into China, it’s good that Yeonmi decided to let her story belong only to her. If Eunmi wants to tell it someday, it will be her decision alone, and that’s fine.

Yeonmi Park’s story is heartbreaking and terrible, but stories like hers are worth being written down and registered. North Korea is stuck in time, and sometimes, it’s hard to believe that this place, so brutal and ruthless, is real, and that there’s still people in the world stuck in a mostly rural country, who don’t know everyday technology, and live where the law of survival of the fittest prevails. It’s only through people like Yeonmi Park and Hyeonseo Lee (and many others, of course) that we can get to know about what really happens inside the most authoritarian regime in the world, but also, what it means to think for yourself, to make your own decisions, and not to buy every single lie that is thrown your way. Basically, to be free, and not taking it for granted. 

***

Thank you for reading! 

See you soon.

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Review - The Girl with Seven Names

Original Title: The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story
Series: -
Author: Hyeonseo Lee, David John (primary contributor)
Published: October 14th, 2014
Publisher: William Collins

I don’t know much about South Korea, but recently, I discovered, to my great joy, a YouTuber whose parents were South Korean immigrants in my country, Argentina. Her name is Liliana Song, and her channel is LiryOnni. Her entire content, naturally, is about South Korea, where she’s living now, after living her whole life in Argentina. She is a fantastic bridge between Spanish speaking people and South Korean content, like k-pop, k-dramas, and occasionally, history. I will leave her link here, if anyone wants to check her out, but you should know, it’s all in Spanish. So in case you speak or understand the language, I strongly recommend her. And if not you can always activate subtitles.

 - Liry Onni

It is thanks to her that I have learned about the Korean War after the end of World War II, called sometimes the Forgotten War, and the ensuing division that made the Korean Peninsula the way it is today, with the Demilitarized Zone next to the 38th parallel north. This is not exactly something you learn about in school, but it is incredibly interesting, the start of the separation into capitalist South Korea, and communist North Korea. And if we get down to the details, technically this war is not over. Only the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, but there was no formal peace treaty. And so, the 38th parallel north became a line dividing two vastly different worlds.

I learned a lot through LiryOnni, and this lead me to wonder about South Korea’s maligned neighbour. Like a sibling they had turned their backs to. I started watching TedxTalks by North Korean defectors, and reading their stories. Hyeonseo Lee and Yeonmi Park were the first results. And one thing is knowing that a certain place is terrible, but another thing, completely different, is listening first person accounts of what it is like to live there. A life that is tied to an oppressive regime and overwhelming propaganda, where you can’t think or speak for yourself, and even basic human rights, like food and healthcare, are denied.

This is Hyeonseo Lee’s story. She was born in North Korea in 1980 to a loving family, with an stepfather in the military that led to a life of constant moving and settling in new cities, but never outside the country. Her memoir, from time to time, reads like a thriller novel. It is written to be engaging, of course, yet knowing this is real takes it to a whole other level. It’s a story of bravery and hardship, but her courage is also in the decision of telling the world about her experience. Her life in North Korea, and her subsequent escape to China, are deeply distinctive because of her survival instinct. It’s the story of a woman who suddenly found herself alone in an unknown world, and had to be cunning, resourceful and smart enough to fend for herself, and forge her own path, in a country in which she was not even supposed to be in the first place.

I cannot describe it all. From time to time I forgot this was nonfiction. Every word seemed to depict a world we can only imagine in a dystopian sci fi novel. You know, a work of fiction. And after a while, you wish it was. Because the things she explains… They simply can’t be real. 

This is the kind of story that makes me feel guilty for complaining about my own country’s situation. Because it reminds us that even though all nations have ups and downs, we still have freedom, and we can’t take it for granted. The Girl with Seven Names opens a window for us to see inside the most oppressive, secretive and hermetic state in the world, and shed some light on its true reality. Hyeonseo Lee doesn’t soften the blow, or sugar-coates the story. It’s an account of reality. About suffering, slavery, indoctrination, hunger and corruption. The North Korean system is ruthless, we all know that (or else you have been living under a rock). But it’s not the only one. The way refugees are treated in the neighbour countries like China and Laos for illegal border crossing, it’s the testament of a world that cries for help. 

The stories around the 90s famine are truly harrowing. I can’t even explain it. It shows how people were driven by their most basic instincts to find food, reduced to their most animalistic version. Desperation. Bribing. Eating grass, bugs… Anything they could find. There are things I can’t even describe. Read the book to find out more. I’ll warn you, it’s horrifying. But it was through this that the image of “the greatest nation on Earth” began to crumble for their population. How is it that we are so great that we don’t even have food?

Both Hyeonseo Lee and Yeonmi Park come from Hyesan, a border town right next to China, where, with the right bribe, border guards turn a blind eye to the illegal trading that takes place there, where only a river, frozen in winter, separates North Korea from China. Hyeonseo Lee’s mother was an expert in this. She fed her family through illegal trading and bribing, and her name was well known in Hyesan.

“Perhaps it would be even harder for them to understand that I still love my country and miss it very much. I miss its snowy mountains in winter, the smell of kerosene and burning coal. I miss my childhood there, the safety of my father’s embrace, and sleeping on the heated floor. I should be comfortable with my new life, but I’m still the girl from Hyesan who longs to eat noodles with her family at their favourite restaurant. I miss my bicycle and the view across the river into China.”

There is no mention of the regime here. It’s sensory memory, it’s what’s familiar and close to her, what she grew up with. The fond memories of childhood before being aware of the hell you are really in. The loving family that never left you, and in despite of the many problems and hardships they had to endure, remained tight knit.

Life in North Korea isn’t easy. But it’s simple. You are told what to think, how to dress, how to cut your hair, how your house should be, who to love and who to hate, and what it is right, and what is wrong. If you tread carefully, nothing will happen to you. If you know your place, you’ll be safe.

Yeonmi Park, in her TEDxTalk, asks the audience “If you don’t know you are a slave, if you don’t you are isolated or oppressed, how do you fight to be free?”

It’s slavery through ignorance. Keeping people in the dark sustains the regime. Because, how do you know it is dark, if you never saw what light looks like? It’s easy not to fight for freedom, when you are not even aware of your chains. 

“The images conjured for us of tanks rolling across the border and slaughtering our people in their homes moved us all to floods of tears. The South Koreans had made victims of us. I burned with thoughts of vengeance and righting injustice. All the children felt the same. We talked afterwards of what we would do to a South Korean if we ever saw one.”

Propaganda is everywhere, at all times. From the early school days, kids learn to hate South Korea, Japan and the United States. And even though the situation is changing a little through the introduction (illegal, of course) of international content (like k-pop, k-dramas, and Hollywood movies), and the small opening of the country to tourists (as long as they don’t have South Korean or American passports), there’s still a lot that remains unchanged.

If you can’t relate to Hyeonseo Lee’s story, consider yourself lucky. I myself was born free, with the possibility of education through school, but also through reading books for my own entertainment, listening to music and watching as many movies as I want. And it’s enough for me to feel a renewed love for my country. It’s not perfect, of course. None is. But here, I don’t know the hardships of war. Here, no one will publicly execute me for prioritizing my life over the president’s portrait, or send me and my family to a prison labor camp simply for using the Internet, watching an international movie or listening to foreign music. I won’t starve, because I have access to food, and I’m healthy enough to work for it. I don’t have to fear a nuclear war. I can leave the country whenever I want without recurring to corrupt brokers, fake IDs, bribing or illegal border crossing. I can access higher education and learn languages if I want to. And so much more.

And if the fact that it is North Korea’s reality isn’t the testimony of a rotten system, then I don’t know what it is.

Yet in this dark place, in which love, as Yeonmi Park says, has the one and only meaning of “love for the Dear Leader”, Hyeonseo Lee’s motivation was love. Love for her family, for the need we can all understand of having them by your side. As much as the government tries to stifle it, twisting it to turn it into their own version of what it should mean, love is ever present in the stories told by North Korean defectors. Love for their parents, their siblings, their aunts and uncles, their children… A love that we can all understand, in despite of living in a vastly different reality. A love that makes them assume terrible dangers to take their families to safety, willing to do anything to give them a chance to truly live. And that is something not even this regime could stifle. There’s still hope. 

 It reminds me a quote by Aphrodite, that I read in Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero.

“My point is that love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest, bravest acts are done for love.”

People are brainwashed in North Korea, and that’s just reality. But the fact that there are so many defectors tells that they are not stupid. Defecting is way more complicated now than it used to be, mostly after COVID-19; the border is even more watched than before. But people still find ways to leave and reach South Korea, where they want to go not only for safety, but because of their shared language. And now, you would think that crossing the border into China, as most North Korean defectors do, it’s all that’s needed for them to be free. Well. Wrong. It’s just the beginning of a journey that, like in this case, can take years, with countless dangers along the way, from prison and deportation, to human trafficking, and a death sentence in a prison camp, in which not only you will be punished, but also three generations of your family, for daring to defy the regime. This, of course, if you don’t drown or die of hypothermia while crossing the frozen Yalu River, or are discovered by the border patrols and shot to death. Chinese, Vietnamese, and Laotian authorities are perfectly aware that there are North Koreans among them. But also human traffickers are, and they can spot them quickly, offering them jobs and basically taking them as slaves, a terrible fate, especially for women. I don’t have to tell you why. You know what I mean.

Again, I wish I could be talking about a work of fiction.

If they are fortunate enough to get to South Korea, they won’t be sent back. They are taken to places like Hanawon, where they have access to food, medical attention, and training to start a new life. South Korea may not be perfect, as it is a place with a lot of competition, social pressure, and insanely long work hours. But it’s not the hell North Korea led their people to believe it is. And it’s a free country. Hyeonseo Lee’s story is a testament to this hardship. Of doing anything in your power to survive. Running. Lying. Deceiving. But also learning, and growing. Changing her name seven times was, in her case, the way she found to survive in a world in which she was unwelcome, hiding her true nationality in a country in which she was an illegal migrant and, if discovered, could be sent back to her country, to a horrible fate, if she couldn't pay for the silence on the matter. Each of her names mean something different. The girl who crossed the river at night to get to the lights in China. The girl who escaped her fate as a forced bride. The girl who learned Chinese as she could, without formal education, to open her own path in a world in which she was an intruder… Each of them is a piece in the puzzle of her identity, meaning something different, a distinct part of her life that, put together, show the whole picture of her journey, her struggle, her love and loss… Her life, basically. But also shows that we are not just us alone. Our identity is also shaped by the people around us and the moments we live with them.

That is why I say that even though her bravery is unmatched, there’s also a huge courage in the decision of sharing her story with the world, to expose the long, harrowing journey she went through, and the struggle to find her family and bring them through such dangers to freedom. Her story sheds a much necessary light on the world of not only North Koreans, but also on the way the world sees them. It’s an ideology devastated country. It’s a real life dystopia.

I think it is necessary for us to know about stories like Hyeonseo Lee’s. Because even her journey had silver linings. The kindness showed to her by a stranger in Laos who paid for her family’s fine to get them out of jail was not only life-saving, it was also unexpected. After a life of hearing that people from outside North Korea were not to be trusted, and a decade of lying about herself, learning the hard way that she could trust no one, this man, by the name Dick Stolp and from Australia, showed her that there’s still people who care for her country’s situation, and even though it strikes fear in everyone, there’s still people who want to help, even through small acts of kindness. There is compassion in this world, even when it’s hard to find. People like him, from time to time, restore my faith in humanity.

This book is a message for all of us, but also for the powerful men that lead the world. Because they don’t starve. They will not suffer deportation and imprisonment in a labor camp along with their families. They won’t have to see their families die after days of starvation. They will not be detained for illegal border crossing, making international phone calls, using the internet, or listening to music. As long as they keep power, they will never truly understand what their people go through. They play their games, and, as always, the people living under their thumb are the target of the consequences of their decisions. People who have to do whatever they can to survive, and are punished for it. It’s good that Hyeonseo Lee decided to tell us her story, not just because it’s remarkable, but also because it’s necessary to register it. Her experience is harrowing and terrible, painful, and intricate, but it has a happy ending. And even though she got to be free, she hasn’t turned her back to North Korea, and keeps working as an activist for human rights.

She has seen hell, and yet, it didn’t kill her kindness, her compassion, and her loving spirit. And for that, she deserves respect.

Thank you for reading. Be sure to check the videos and YouTube channels I put here.

***

See you next time! 

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