[REVIEW] In Order to Live

title: In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
author: Yeonmi Park; Maryanne Vollers
genre: non-fiction, autobiography
published: September 27, 2016 by Penguin Books (first published September 25, 2015)
format: paperback, 288 pages
purchase: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository
rating: 4.5 / 5 stars
goodreads

Yeonmi Park has told the harrowing story of her escape from North Korea as a child many times, but never before has she revealed the most intimate and devastating details of the repressive society she was raised in and the enormous price she paid to escape.  

Park’s family was loving and close-knit, but life in North Korea was brutal, practically medieval. Park would regularly go without food and was made to believe that, Kim Jong Il, the country’s dictator, could read her mind. After her father was imprisoned and tortured by the regime for trading on the black-market, a risk he took in order to provide for his wife and two young daughters, Yeonmi and her family were branded as criminals and forced to the cruel margins of North Korean society. With thirteen-year-old Park suffering from a botched appendectomy and weighing a mere sixty pounds, she and her mother were smuggled across the border into China. 

Park knew the journey would be difficult, but could not have imagined the extent of the hardship to come. Those years in China cost Park her childhood, and nearly her life.  By the time she and her mother made their way to South Korea two years later, her father was dead and her sister was still missing. Before now, only her mother knew what really happened between the time they crossed the Yalu river into China and when they followed the stars through the frigid Gobi Desert to freedom. As she writes, “I convinced myself that a lot of what I had experienced never happened. I taught myself to forget the rest.” 

In In Order to Live, Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea—and to freedom.  

a must read eye-opening memoir.

I picked this book up when I saw Yeonmi Park's speech somewhere in facebook. I know about the theories talked about North Korea and I never really bothered to search about it. But after that video I saw, I got interesting. And at that time, I thought Yeonmi Park was the first escapee from North Korea. However, as days past then, I saw other nonfiction regarding people who escaped from North Korea such as The Girl with Seven Names which I also hope to read.

This book started slow for me because I was expecting it to get right into Yeonmi Park's escape from North Korea. I thought it was just about her and her mother crossing the border, finding people on the other end and the two of them living off by themselves trying to find people who will save them. BUT I WAS WRONG! THIS BOOK IS SO MUCH MUCH MORE!

In Order to Live tells part of Yeonmi's life in North Korea, the day she and her mother escaped, and what comes right after that escape. I don't think I need to go through the details of her life because if you want to know that, you MUST read this book. All I'll say about it is that it's extremely hard and I know I don't relate to her story but at the end of this book, Yeonmi tells you that we go through our own 'deserts.'

I'm in love with the tone of this novel. It feels raw. I like how she admits her North Korean mentality. Towards the end of this book, I felt how difficult it is for her to write about all of these experiences. I'm sure it really is and I strongly commend her for doing so and being an eye-opener to us who do not know much about the things that goes on in North Korea and the human-trafficking they go along with the fears in it when they try to escape.

My fave part is her life AFTER her escape. Her adjustment was crazy difficult especially since they came out from a country where a lot of things were not introduced. 'Techie' life is difficult to grasp and while Yeonmi admits that she isn't the fastest learner, she's definitely a very persevering one. She's a very admirable woman for holding on to her dreams despite everything being against her.

OVERALL, In Order to Live is a powerful novel that opened my eyes to the difficulty and ignorance of the North Koreans. It showed me the difficulties of their escape from the tyranny of the Kims to Yeonmi's difficult adjustment to 'freedom.' Reading this was difficult and it felt powerful and raw.

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