Human rights activist
Park, who fled North Korea with her mother in 2007 at age 13 and
eventually made it to South Korea two years later after a harrowing
ordeal, recognized that in order to be "completely free," she had to
confront the truth of her past. It is an ugly, shameful story of being
sold with her mother into slave marriages by Chinese brokers, and
although she at first tried to hide the painful details when blending
into South Korean society, she realized how her survival story could
inspire others. Moreover, her sister had also escaped earlier and had
vanished into China for years, prompting the author to go public with
her story in the hope of finding her sister.
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’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.
273 pages (September 2015)
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
Yeonmi Park: ‘I hope my book will shine a light on the darkest place in the world’ (Author Interview) from The Guardian
Yeonmi Park's North Korean Defector Story (ReasonTV):
This title is available for download as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
Title Read-alikes: A River in Darkness: one man's escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa; Dear Leader: poet, spy, escapee-- a look inside North Korea by Jin-sung Jang; Escaping North Korea: defiance and hope in the world's most repressive country by Mike Kim; The Girl with Seven Names: a North Korean defector's story by Hyeonseo Lee; The Last Girl: my story of captivity, and my fight against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad; Stars Between the Sun and Moon: one woman's life in North Korea and escape to freedom by Lucia Jang; Escape from Camp 14: one man's remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the West by Blaine Harden; The Prisoner by Hwang Sok-yong; Refugee by Emmanuel Mbolela; A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea by Eunsun Kim; Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim; Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor by Yong Kim; and Raif Badawi, The Voice of Freedom: My Husband, Our Story by Ensaf Haidar.
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