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168 reviews for:
While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America
Yeonmi Park
3.38 AVERAGE
168 reviews for:
While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America
Yeonmi Park
3.38 AVERAGE
challenging
medium-paced
DNF at 40%. Ugh this is so painful. In Order to Live has been on of my favorite books for years, and such a huge inspiration and reminder to be grateful everyday. In the book…Yenomi really goes in a different direction. It’s basically a book about her political options regarding the US. Opinions that in my opinion, she does not have enough background or context to share. I deeply disagree with almost everything she says…and it’s downright insulting how she compares one persons suffering to another’s so many times. You can’t compare suffering! Just because people in North Korea suffer does not mean people in the US do not. Very saddened and disappointed by this book.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Cancer, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Police brutality, Trafficking, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Abortion, Death of parent, Murder
Memorable Quote:
"When people become untethered from history, when they become unshackled from reality, when they lose the ability to understand cause and effect, they become ripe for exploitation from those who hold real power." ~Yeonmi Park
"When people become untethered from history, when they become unshackled from reality, when they lose the ability to understand cause and effect, they become ripe for exploitation from those who hold real power." ~Yeonmi Park
informative
reflective
dark
sad
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
What in the right wing priveleged hell is this?!?
It’s bad. Her first one is amazing! But this one is a “you Americans are brainwashed” and “you’re not allowed to have trauma unless your experience was just like mine”. Honestly, it is a cringy take.
I picked this book up because I hoped to learn something about North Korea. Having never heard of Yeonmi Park, I was curious to see what dangers she saw in American society that remind her of her birth country.
When I realized that the forward was written by Jordan Peterson, I started to get some idea of where the book would go.
The tone of this book is very condescending. The reader is ignorant of the true problems in America and needs Park to detail them for them. Many times she basically says, "Be grateful you weren't born in North Korea!", as though we can't recognize the atrocities in that country while also trying to fix the inequalities in our own.
Park (or her ghostwriter) also sets out to point out the hypocrisies of the American elite, constantly equating them with "the Left," while failing to recognize where those same hypocrisies are also visible on the Right. I agree with many of the points Park makes, but was irked by her constant complaints about Democrats. She often criticizes "the Left" or Democrats for doing many of the same things Republicans themselves do, without ever mentioning "the Right" or Republicans. Book bans? Cancel culture? Doing business with China? (Who wants to tell her about the Trump family's business ventures in China?)
Park seems to be swinging like a pendulum through American society. She began (by her own account) as a liberal, and is now a fairly right-wing conservative. Perhaps in time she might finally find herself in the middle.
Ultimately, this book does very little to inspire any sort of real change. Its tone only serves to reinforce the views of the Right and further alternate them from the Left. It won't change any attitudes or minds, let alone hearts.
When I realized that the forward was written by Jordan Peterson, I started to get some idea of where the book would go.
The tone of this book is very condescending. The reader is ignorant of the true problems in America and needs Park to detail them for them. Many times she basically says, "Be grateful you weren't born in North Korea!", as though we can't recognize the atrocities in that country while also trying to fix the inequalities in our own.
Park (or her ghostwriter) also sets out to point out the hypocrisies of the American elite, constantly equating them with "the Left," while failing to recognize where those same hypocrisies are also visible on the Right. I agree with many of the points Park makes, but was irked by her constant complaints about Democrats. She often criticizes "the Left" or Democrats for doing many of the same things Republicans themselves do, without ever mentioning "the Right" or Republicans. Book bans? Cancel culture? Doing business with China? (Who wants to tell her about the Trump family's business ventures in China?)
Park seems to be swinging like a pendulum through American society. She began (by her own account) as a liberal, and is now a fairly right-wing conservative. Perhaps in time she might finally find herself in the middle.
Ultimately, this book does very little to inspire any sort of real change. Its tone only serves to reinforce the views of the Right and further alternate them from the Left. It won't change any attitudes or minds, let alone hearts.
dark
informative
inspiring