In Order To Live by Yeonmi Park: 4&1/2 stars

This memoir written by a young North Korean defector tells the tale of a harrowing life of starvation and deprivation in the Hermit Kingdom and the heroine’s escape first to China and then to Seoul.  This autobiographical account dovetails nicely with The Orphan Master’s Son, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel set in North Korea.  Yeonmi at the age of 13 takes her mother by the hand and insistently leads her across the border with China believing they are following her older sister Euemni.  The year is 2007 and no one in their family of four can envision survival under the current conditions.  It is post famine, but the famine appears to continue.  The entire population except for the few wealthy and politically powerful is starving.  Only those who can pay can attend a real school.  The school that does exist organizes children in work brigades to scour the land for every last piece of edible grain.  Often children are reduced to eating weeds and grass to fill their bellies.  Children and adults fall asleep with hunger pangs, malnutrition and diseases like TB which plague the perpetually starving and underfed population.  Lice is a common parasite that plagues the entire population.  Delicacies include grass hoppers which mothers fry up to feed their families.  Yeonmi’s family’s fortunes have fallen on hard times.  Her father was imprisoned for one of the many crimes available for those engaged in the black market.  He has just been let out of prison and the family lives with 2 other families in a one room apartment on the 8^th floor of a building that has no elevators.  Her father is in bad condition physically and has been let out of prison for a home visit.  He never returns.  Yeonmi has an appendicitis and her family cannot afford the costs for all the medicine so she awakens before the entire operation is over.  Her mother could not pay enough for all the needed anesthesia.  She slept on a mat on the floor.  Her mother seated by her side took care of her since they could not afford to pay for the nursing care.  When she was discharged, a friend brought around a motorcycle to take her home.  She had to walk up to the 8^th floor.  The out house was on the 1^st floor.  Shortly after that and following in her sister’s footsteps, they connect with a smuggler whom they  must compensate to bring them across the Yalo river which separates China and North Korea, evade the Chinese police and troops and hide in the countryside.  There they are trafficked. That is how the smugglers are compensated. Yeonmi’s mother manages to subject herself to the rapes in order to protect 13 year old Yeonmi.  However, they have told the smugglers that Yeonmi is 18 and her mother is 34.  Because of the shortage of females in China many single men without prospects are willing to pay for a bride.  Most are poor farmers.  Yeonmi and her mother’s main goal is to get enough to eat.  In China which is also a poor country, they cannot believe the amount of bounty available to them.  They eat eggs, fruit and even meat.  What the Chinese throw away as garbage would have fed a family of 4 for a week in North Korea.  Medicine is available from time to time.  Yeonmi is a beautiful and bright girl.  Thus, every smuggler who meets her wants to take her as his own mate often gifting her with clothing and jewelry.  Still her main concern is to reunite with her sister, bring her father from North Korea and support her mother.  Yeonmi tries very hard to learn Chinese and she has value b/c she can translate between the North Korean defectors and their Chinese captors. Yeonmi and her mother are able to communicate by cell phone.  Most of the smugglers are solely interested in themselves, but some are kinder and try to help her.  They are constantly evading the Chinese soldiers and police whose goal is to repatriate escaped North Koreans.  Since they do not have any official documentation, they are often in hiding.  They try to eke out a living without being raped constantly.  Eventually, they find jobs as phone sex workers which is a great improvement over a bordello.  They save as much money as they can and bring Yeomi’s father across.  He is very ill and the Chinese doctors diagnose him with widely spread and metastasized colon cancer.  Their current goal is to keep him comfortable while he dies.  They do not always have enough money for all the pain killers he needs.   Their own goals are put on hold until he passes away.

Once he dies, they cremate him and bury his ashes.  Then they connect with a semi-legal missionary group whose goal is to bring these North Korean defectors to South Korea.  There they may openly practice Christianity.  Yeonmi and her mother pretend they are devout Christians and they pray up a storm waiting to be smuggled to Mongolia where they can practice Christianity openly and then to Seoul.

In Seoul, they are aided by the government which has a program for North Korean defectors.  Yeonmi continues her education eventually graduating from college. She becomes a public speaker who is highly in demand.  She was the featured speaker at the One World conference.  She gives Ted talks, and speaks English.  She has a flair for languages.  Thus, she also speaks well in English.  Eventually she finds her sister who escaped about two years after she and her mother did.

In 2016, Yeonmi moved to New York where she wrote her memoir and entered Columbia majoring in economics.  She is married and has a son.  She continues to be an activist for human rights.  She makes public speeches about her experiences in North Korea and has a successful and productive life.