Yeonmi Park was not dreaming of freedom when she escaped from North Korea. She didn't even know what it meant to be free. All she knew was that she was running for her life, that if she and her family stayed behind they would die - from starvation, or disease, or even execution.
This book is the story of Park's struggle to survive in the darkest, most repressive country on earth; her harrowing escape to South Korea through China's underworld of smugglers and human traffickers; and her emergence as a leading human rights activist - all before her 21st birthday.
Untitled
In Order To Live is the highly emotional autobiography of Yeonmi Park, a young North Korean defector. This book is split into three parts; a part set in North Korea, then China, and finally South Korea where she finally finds safety.
This book is as equally heartbreaking as it is beautiful as we learn much about the truth of the North Korean regime ventuing through this journey of hope with Yeonmi and her family. In North Korean she suffers things such as starvation, abuse and the loss of her family home.Through this first third of the book the reader gains a huge insight into the extent of the propaganda in the country and the dire effects that has on its people.
At just 13 years old Yeonmi and her mother escape to China where they are both sold into sex slavery. During their flight from China, Yeonmi recounts the utter loneliness she felt whilst crossing the Gobi
Desert saying 'I felt only the stars were with us.'
The biography ends with Yeonmi's re-education in South Korea where Western readers can see the biggest contrast between Yeonmi's world in North Korea and the new western world of freedom and technology.
This book was life-changing and completely insipiring. I'd recommend this to anyone who liked books such as 'The Kite Runner', 'Mao's Last Dancer' and 'The Happiest Refugee'. I honestly doubt I will find another book that effects and inspires me the way this one did! - Eleanor (QBD)
Guest, 12/03/2017
