Scan barcode
A review by rbruehlman
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park
5.0
In Order to Live details Yeonmi Park's childhood growing up in North Korea, starting with her family's calamitous descent into political alienation and starvation during the North Korean famine, to her and her mother's escape to a heaven-that-was-actually-hell China, and eventual integration into a self-absorbed South Korean society that didn't even want her there. Through it all, she prevailed.
Yeonmi's writing style is choppy, not eloquent, oftentimes sterile. I struggled to emotionally engage with the book as she described her North Korean childhood--one that featured abject poverty, but the simple language made it feel like a recitation of facts, devoid of emotion. Things just were.
Her story broke me when she recounted her experience with human trafficking, however. No language barrier or writing style can abstract that horror away. I suppose you expect the North Korean government to be horrible--but to escape to China in search of a better life, only to be ensnared by sociopaths who rape women and sell them into "marriages", without any regard for humanity at all? It is horrifying. The evil of the North Korean government you can "rationalize" as being perpetrated by the Kims--surely, if Kim Jung Un was toppled, there would be more justice in North Korea. But the human trafficking--it is a web of horrible people, acting on their own accord, who have no incentive to be so evil other than their own complete moral hollowness. To think you have escaped the regime, only to be ensnared by base human evil.
Her experience in South Korea gave little room for respite, either. For as horrible a life as people in North Korea live, it hardly felt like the South Korean government was interested in helping. The "integration" services offered felt paltry--almost self-absorbed. I am not South Korean, nor do I know much about the culture, but it felt very much like many South Koreans had simply moved on. How? Perhaps it is benign ignorance, in which case a book like this is a good thing, to let such stories known.
I do not know how Yeonmi prevailed. So little good about humanity was shown to her along the way. How she does not resent her lot, or trust anyone, or have faith at all, I do not know. Her spirit is unbroken where many others' would have irreparably shattered.
Yeonmi's writing style is choppy, not eloquent, oftentimes sterile. I struggled to emotionally engage with the book as she described her North Korean childhood--one that featured abject poverty, but the simple language made it feel like a recitation of facts, devoid of emotion. Things just were.
Her story broke me when she recounted her experience with human trafficking, however. No language barrier or writing style can abstract that horror away. I suppose you expect the North Korean government to be horrible--but to escape to China in search of a better life, only to be ensnared by sociopaths who rape women and sell them into "marriages", without any regard for humanity at all? It is horrifying. The evil of the North Korean government you can "rationalize" as being perpetrated by the Kims--surely, if Kim Jung Un was toppled, there would be more justice in North Korea. But the human trafficking--it is a web of horrible people, acting on their own accord, who have no incentive to be so evil other than their own complete moral hollowness. To think you have escaped the regime, only to be ensnared by base human evil.
Her experience in South Korea gave little room for respite, either. For as horrible a life as people in North Korea live, it hardly felt like the South Korean government was interested in helping. The "integration" services offered felt paltry--almost self-absorbed. I am not South Korean, nor do I know much about the culture, but it felt very much like many South Koreans had simply moved on. How? Perhaps it is benign ignorance, in which case a book like this is a good thing, to let such stories known.
I do not know how Yeonmi prevailed. So little good about humanity was shown to her along the way. How she does not resent her lot, or trust anyone, or have faith at all, I do not know. Her spirit is unbroken where many others' would have irreparably shattered.