Book review and thoughts on In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom, by Yeonmi Park and Maryanne Vollers
The first time I heard of Yeonmi Park was from this 2019 TED Talk:
After watching her speak I purchased her book, but it was a while before I could bring myself to pick it up and read it. I already knew some of the stories within its pages and I felt like I had to be in the right headspace to go into it.
Last month I finally picked it up. I tore through it, reading in any spare moment I had. It is, no surprise, a harrowing and horrifying tale of life in North Korea from the ’90s into the 2000s, along with insights into the country’s history and how it was shaped into the hermit kingdom it is today.
This is one girl’s story, going back to her earliest childhood memories (her mother telling her “even the birds and mice can hear you”) to adolescence, when she escapes at 13 years old, to her time in China, Mongolia, South Korea, and, eventually, the U.S.
There are endless stories of the horrors of daily life in North Korea but of course some of them stick to memory more than others. Things like the hospital only having one syringe and having to reuse it from patient to patient. The fact that when you went to someone’s house and they fed you, you’d never finish the meal (though you’d be famished) because you knew they’d eat whatever leftovers remained as soon as you were gone. Or the government requiring an annual household quota of 1 ton of shit – human, animal, whatever – to use as fertilizer. There’s more, and there’s worse, and there’s beyond heartbreaking stories, but you should read it for yourself.
The book was published in 2015. The author, Yeonmi Park, escaped from North Korea in 2007. It’s now been 10 years since the book came out and a lot has happened – like a global pandemic and the election of Donald Trump as the U.S. president, twice.
I wanted to know more about Yeonmi Park so after reading this book I listened to her interview on the Joe Rogan podcast. (The only other time I’ve ever listened to the Joe Rogan podcast was for some episodes with Maynard James Keenan from Tool – because I love Tool and am interested in farming lol).
This interview is long as hell lol (3+ hours). The first half goes over a lot that’s covered in the book plus other interesting tidbits and stories from life in North Korean. Then we get into an interesting portion where I learned that Yeonmi Park is a conservative Republican. I guess she doesn’t come out and say it that explicitly on the podcast but… you hear it.
So this was an interesting revelation. But I thought about it, and I can understand it. Yeonmi Park grew up in one of the most repressed societies in the world (maybe the most repressed). So when she comes to a country like the U.S. which is extremely progressive in ways that she literally couldn’t understand just years prior, some things simply wouldn’t make sense to her. Gay rights? What is “gay”? Black lives matter? Compared to North Korea, everyone in the U.S. has it great – what’s the complaint? Animal rights? Why do people care more about animals than the millions who are starving in North Korea?
It was disappointing as I’d expected Yeonmi Park, as a North Korean defector, to recognize the oppressed party in any situation and empathize with them. But that’s too simplistic a view. And that’s not even the way it plays out for most North Korean defectors.
Several prominent North Korean defectors have aligned themselves with conservative parties of their new countries (like Jihyun Park in the U.K. or Ji Seong-ho in South Korea). To put it in the most basic terms, a lot of North Korean defectors have had the very worst experience of communist, socialist living; so, as a reaction to their past, they often lean harder toward conservative, anti-socialist, right-wing movements… like the one being led by the Republican party in the United States.
Which ties in to another more recent update – Yeonmi Park has a new(ish) book! Published in January of 2024, it’s titled What Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America. I actually do believe in trying to understand people with opposing viewpoints to mine and so I do try to seek out what they say, firsthand. But I don’t know if I’ll purchase this as it makes me feel a little 🥴 lol. Here’s the blurb from the Amazon listing:
The North Korean defector, human rights advocate, and bestselling author of In Order to Live sounds the alarm on the culture wars, identity politics, and authoritarian tendencies tearing America apart.
I mean, if you watch her Joe Rogan episode I think you’ll get a sense of where this book is headed.
But let’s end on a palette cleanser!
I recently came across a video on YouTube titled How I Escaped MAGA! Critical thinking woke me up. 🦋🩵 It’s from Jennie Gage, an ex-Mormon, ex-MAGA creator who now mostly shares content about her old life in the church and Republican party and explaining it to outsiders. She does a great job explaining what her mindset and beliefs were growing up, and clearly explains how her consciousness was shaped by the pervasiveness of conservative, patriarchal, white-supremacist thinking in her community from birth to adulthood. (To be fair, I want to point out that we’re all embedded in certain systems with specific ways of thinking from the moment we’re born; it does everyone good to learn how to think critically, question things, and form your own opinions and beliefs.)
She comes across and highly intelligent, sharp, and insightful. Which, I want to say, is how I see Yeonmi Park, too. While at first I was going to write about Jennie Gage to include her as a foil to Yeonmi Park, I realized while writing this that I actually see these women as going on parallel journeys. Both women have gone through their own versions of hell. Both grew up in repressive societies that told them things were a certain way; what to believe, how to behave, who to associate with, and so on. Both had their lifelong worldview completely shattered, leading to a radical transformation after their awakenings and literal escapes. And both women have forged new worldviews based on all that they’ve learned and experienced, and what they now believe and value.
As long as people are thinking for themselves, truly questioning what they are presented, and coming to their own conclusions – I respect it. We have the resources to educate ourselves and form our own opinions on how things are and how we think things should be. And while we will certainly not all agree, we should be able to communicate respectfully and effectively with one another, regardless of our positions.
In an ideal world we would seek out our common ground and seek to understand where others come from, because when it really comes down to it we’d realize that we want the same things: safety, comfort, access to resources, a good life. (And possibly that we’re not even on opposite sides of the table; but rather that we’re on the same side of the table against greater challenges… like global warming, let’s say.)
And while it may be daunting in today’s day and age to reach out across the divide and try to have a conversation with the “other,” books and videos can do a lot to open up other people’s worlds to us. (That’s why repressive societies so often restrict people’s access to the Internet – exactly how Yeonmi Park and Jennie Gage’s live were pre-awakening.) That being said – in a long-winded way – I’d recommend reading In Order to Live. Read it to enter someone else’s radically different world and learn about their experiences. What would you do? How would you think? And what would you think about your current life and world? If nothing else, this read should give you a new perspective on your own life.
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