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Escaping the Darkness: A North Korean's Journey to Freedom
In 2007, thirteen-year-old Yeonmi Park crossed the frozen Yalu River from North Korea into China, desperate to survive. Her story has since captivated millions worldwide, with her memoir "In Order to Live" becoming a New York Times bestseller and her viral 2014 Dublin speech garnering over 80 million views. What makes Park's account so powerful is its raw honesty about the horrors of North Korea's regime and the human trafficking networks that prey on escapees. Even as the North Korean government launched propaganda campaigns to discredit her, calling her "the poisonous mushroom that grew from garbage," Park's testimony has become one of the most influential voices exposing the hidden brutality of life under the Kim dynasty. Through her journey from starvation to sexual slavery to eventual freedom, Park reveals not just what it means to survive, but what it means to truly live.
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A Childhood Without Words for Freedom
In North Korea, we had no words for "shopping malls," "liberty," or even "love" as the world knows it. My small drafty house in Hyesan felt like paradise simply because our family was together. During winter blackouts, we huddled by the fireplace playing games, while my sister Eunmi carried me up snowy hills to slide down together. We made paper dolls and mud animals, celebrating briefly when electricity returned.
But beneath this childhood simplicity lay a suffocating reality. I was taught never to express opinions or question anything, believing Kim Jong Il could read my mind. When Kim Il Sung died in 1994, my mother joined thousands mourning at monuments. Yet when she repeated a rumor about the Leader's death to a friend, security agents interrogated her. This taught me why she always warned that "even when you think you're alone, the birds and mice can hear you whisper."
Our rigid social hierarchy, called songbun, determined everything about our lives. Though my grandfather had been a respected military financial officer, giving our family good status initially, everything changed when my father's brother was imprisoned. Our family's songbun plummeted, with my grandfather losing his job and my father's career prospects vanishing.
To survive, my father joined the Workers' Party and began illegal black market trading. Despite his entrepreneurial talents, in North Korea this made him an outlaw rather than a businessman. My mother, despite being an excellent student and talented musician, found her opportunities limited by her own "hostile class" songbun because her grandfather had owned land during Japanese colonial rule.
Living near the Chinese border, we could sometimes see the lights across the river-a tantalizing glimpse of another world. Yet we were taught that we lived in a socialist paradise while half the population lived in extreme poverty. This contradiction shaped my earliest understanding of reality, creating the foundation for the painful awakenings that would follow.
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The Collapse of Everything We Knew
The economic collapse of the 1990s disrupted every level of North Korean society. With the government no longer providing basic needs after Communist allies abandoned us, everyone had to learn to trade or risk starvation. When foreign aid arrived, most went to the military or was sold on the black market. Kim Jong Il eventually allowed state-managed marketplaces called jangmadangs, but this new reality devastated my father's business due to increased competition.
My parents fell deeper into debt despite attempts to adapt. My mother sewed children's clothing from old fabric scraps while my father explored different ventures. Sometimes they had to leave my sister and me alone for hours, bolting the door to keep us safe. As a small child, my only ambition was to eat as much bread as I wanted.
Between 1998 and 2002, my father spent most of his time in Pyongyang running his smuggling business, returning only briefly when transporting metal shipments to Hyesan. My mother managed operations locally, collecting packages and delivering them to border smugglers. When business was good, we had enough to eat and my father entertained local officials with lavish meals to ensure they overlooked his absences from his official workplace.
Despite being the smallest and academically weakest in my class, I was determined to learn reading. The only available books were government propaganda-stories about homeless children in "South Korea" and biographies of our Leaders. Every subject in school incorporated political indoctrination, teaching us that Kim Jong Il had mystical powers and worked tirelessly for the people.
This "emotional dictatorship" controlled not just our actions but our feelings. We were taught to address friends as "comrades," memorize the regime's 10 Principles, and passionately hate Americans. Even math problems involved killing "American bastards." Any mention of the Kims required respectful titles showing infinite love.
Public executions taught us loyalty to the regime. I witnessed a young tuberculosis-stricken man executed for killing a cow-government property too valuable to eat. Foreign media was forbidden, though many risked severe punishment to watch smuggled films and shows. When I was young, watching the movie Titanic gave me my first taste of freedom-I was amazed people could choose their destinies and die for love rather than the regime.
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The Doublethink of Daily Survival
North Koreans practice what I later learned was "doublethink"-holding contradictory ideas simultaneously. We'd denounce capitalism while buying smuggled goods, believe North Korea was paradise while seeing starvation everywhere. I saw frozen abandoned babies, bodies in trash heaps and floating in rivers. My mother occasionally helped starving beggars, but most people shut off their hearts-that's what hell is like.
By 2000, when I turned seven, my father's business was thriving. Back in Hyesan after my grandmother's funeral, we lived luxuriously by North Korean standards-rice three times daily, meat several times monthly, and money for necessities like shampoo and medical emergencies. Father returned from business trips bearing gifts-clothes, books, perfume for mother, and even a 1980s Nintendo system.
When I was eight, I visited Pyongyang with my father. The capital seemed magical-clean streets, neon signs, restaurants with chairs instead of floor seating. I saw monuments like the unfinished Ryugyong Hotel and the giant bronze statue of Kim Il Sung. I rode elevators, visited a zoo, and attended the spectacular Arirang Festival performances.
Our relative prosperity ended abruptly in October 2002 when my father was arrested for smuggling. Detectives had been watching after receiving a tip from another smuggler. They arrested my father and his business partner Wan Sun separately. She received six months in a labor camp, but my father faced much worse.
When my mother learned of his arrest, she left for Pyongyang, leaving eight-year-old me and my sister Eunmi with just rice, cooking oil, and 200 won. We immediately spent all our money on cookies and sunflower seeds. For over a month, we struggled alone-unable to properly heat our house, nearly suffocating from smoke, and slowly starving. Our neighbor Jong Ae once brought us a bowl of steaming rice-the most delicious meal I've ever had.
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When Survival Means Breaking Every Rule
Mother returned briefly in January with food and terrible news: father had been tortured during interrogation and sent to Camp 11, a "reeducation" labor camp. Shortly after, police took my mother for questioning but released her. She had to return to Pyongyang repeatedly over the next seven months, leaving us alone for weeks. We dropped out of school, spent our days gathering water and struggling to survive while other children mocked us as a "family of criminals."
I developed pellagra from malnutrition. In North Korea, spring isn't renewal-it's death season, when food stores are depleted before crops grow. We survived by eating bugs, wild plants, and even dragonflies. We caught dragonflies and roasted their heads over flames-they smelled like meat and tasted delicious. Later in summer, we roasted cicadas, considered a gourmet treat.
In August 2003, my mother sold our house and moved us to her hometown of Kowon. Though I thrived in my aunt's village with proper food and rural work, devastating news came in early 2004: my father had been sentenced to hard labor in a prison camp, possibly for ten years. These camps were notorious death sentences where prisoners were worked to exhaustion and barely fed.
At eleven, I started my own business with seed money from mother. I bribed an orchard guard to let us pick persimmons, which I then sold at the market. Though short-lived, this venture taught me something crucial: once you start trading for yourself, you start thinking for yourself. The markets took away the government's control over who would survive and who would starve. My small transactions gave me some control over my own fate-another tiny taste of freedom.
By winter 2006, our family situation grew desperate again. The train from Pyongyang stopped running, cutting off my parents' metal business. My father collected wood from mountains daily, eating snow to fill his stomach while my mother made small deals for corn or potatoes. We were constantly hungry, eating only with the animal instinct to survive. My parents lay awake at night, fearing they might not wake up, leaving their children to starve.
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The Decision That Changed Everything
During Lunar New Year 2007, the reversal of our family's fortune became painfully clear when we celebrated at my uncle Park Jin's house. Once, my father had been the wealthy host; now my uncle treated him like a servant. My father's criminal status had damaged the family's songbun, and even his former friends kept their distance. Prison had broken his spirit-the brilliant, irreverent man I knew was gone, replaced by someone who feared police and refused to listen to South Korean music.
Walking home along the dark river after the humiliating celebration, I watched fireworks illuminate the Chinese sky across the border. I felt desperate envy for those living where there was light and food, drawn to it instinctively without understanding why. Following that light would eventually cost me my innocence and temporarily, my humanity.
My parents finally decided we had no future in North Korea and began discussing escape. We knew people who had gone abroad for work-one to Russia, another to Libya where he marveled at the abundance of chicken wings. My father considered China our best option, though we had no reliable information about life there in a country without outside news.
We'd heard rumors that young North Korean women could find jobs in China, and that my sister and I might even find adoptive families since China had "not enough children." My parents asked us to discreetly investigate how other girls were crossing the border. My father would stay behind to protect his extended family from punishment, but promised to meet us at the river during future New Years if we escaped.
Just as Eunmi thought she'd found a broker to help us escape to China, I fell desperately ill with a high fever, red splotches covering my body, and terrible stomach pain. The doctors determined I needed an appendix removal. Though healthcare was supposedly free, my parents had to borrow money to bribe the doctors and buy anesthetics and antibiotics on the black market.
The hospital was horrifically filthy. Between my room and the outhouse lay several corpses stacked like wood, with rats feasting on their eyes. When my mother demanded they bury the bodies, a nurse casually explained they wouldn't collect them until there were seven. This final cruelty convinced my mother we needed to escape immediately.
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Into the Unknown: Crossing the Border
While I was still recovering, sixteen-year-old Eunmi announced she was leaving that night with a broker. Though my mother begged her to wait, Eunmi insisted she couldn't miss this opportunity. The next evening, dressed in thin black clothes with her hair tied back, she left without a proper goodbye-my mother simply said "You'll be back," never imagining she wouldn't see her daughter again.
When Eunmi didn't return home, my parents frantically checked me out of the hospital. I discovered a note under my pillow with the address of a broker who could take us to China. My parents visited the address but the woman denied knowing anything about Eunmi.
Days later, visiting Eunmi's friend's family revealed they too were devastated by their daughter's disappearance. Desperate for information, my mother had me return to the broker's house alone, pretending I wanted to go to China. When the woman became friendly, I called my mother over. The broker introduced us to a pregnant woman who offered to help us cross that very night.
On March 31, 2007, my mother and I scrambled down the frozen Yalu River, following our guide to a small shack where a bald, heavyset broker waited. He made us change into Chinese clothes, then took my mother aside. I heard terrible noises but didn't understand what was happening-he had raped her after she offered herself to protect me when he demanded to have sex with me.
We were driven along the river, passing my hometown where I imagined seeing a light from our apartment where Father waited. At the broker's apartment in Chaingbai, his paralyzed wife explained the horrifying truth: we had to be "sold" to get married if we wanted to stay in China. I couldn't comprehend how humans could sell other humans, but facing starvation and capture, I chose to stay rather than return to North Korea.
The broker negotiated our prices right in front of us-my mother sold for $650, me for nearly $2,000-the humiliation burned deep. Before leaving the next morning, the broker raped my mother again in front of me, my first terrifying introduction to sex.
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The Darkest Days: Human Trafficking and Survival
After my mother was sold separately, I was tricked by a North Korean girl who promised to help me escape but instead stole me to sell me themselves. They hid me in the mountains and tried convincing me to accept being sold to "a rich young husband" rather than a farmer. I refused completely.
Meanwhile, Hongwei mobilized his gangster network to find me, eventually tracking me down and buying me back a second time. When he tried to rape me again, I grabbed a knife and threatened suicide on the balcony. Seeing my determination to die, Hongwei offered a bargain: if I became his "little wife," he would find my mother, rescue my father from North Korea, and help locate my sister.
Facing this impossible choice at just thirteen years old, I accepted his deal to save my family. The sexual violence that followed was traumatic-I dissociated, couldn't eat, and scrubbed my skin until it bled. I became numb, watching myself from a distance while harboring hatred for Hongwei.
Within two months, I began helping Hongwei with his trafficking business, preparing North Korean girls for sale. He kept his promise to buy back my mother for about $2,000, and our reunion brought my first smile in weeks. Though I still hated Hongwei, I learned to live with him as he arranged contact with my father through brokers who smuggled phones across the border.
On August 15, 2007-North Korea's liberation day from Japan-I finally spoke with my father by phone after five months of separation. The emotional call was brief to avoid police detection, but I promised to bring him to China. He had been searching desperately for us since our escape, learning only that the trafficker Jo Yong Ae had sent us to China but claiming to know nothing about Eunmi.
My father finally escaped to China on October 4, 2007-my fourteenth birthday-after a failed first attempt. Hongwei paid $1,300 for his passage and was shocked to find him so weak and sick. We had an emotional reunion and celebration, though my father was too ill to eat the feast Hongwei prepared. He showed us the opium he'd brought to kill himself if captured. Though grateful to Hongwei for reuniting us, my father was heartbroken seeing me transformed into a made-up young woman bearing adult responsibilities.
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Finding Freedom Through the Desert
When doctors diagnosed my father with terminal cancer, my mother and I arranged for a photographer to capture one last family portrait. My father, skeletal and weak, managed a thin smile while propped between us. I appeared much older than my fourteen years, heavily made up and draped in gold jewelry Hongwei had bought me.
In my father's final moments, I clipped his nails and held his hand, promising to finish the other hand tomorrow. I woke to find he had died with his eyes open-in Korea, this means he left something unfulfilled in this world. I believe he was still searching for my sister Eunmi.
After my father's death, Hongwei's human trafficking business was destroyed by Chinese government crackdowns before the 2008 Olympics. When Hongwei became obsessed with gambling and I was trapped with a wealthy antiques dealer who kept me under constant surveillance, I knew we needed to escape China completely.
My mother and I found hope in a North Korean woman named Hae Soon who told us about missionaries in Qingdao who could help us escape to South Korea through Mongolia. Despite my mother's fears about leaving our relative stability in Shenyang, I insisted we take this chance at true freedom, refusing to live as a hunted animal any longer.
Our escape through the Gobi Desert was the most terrifying night of my life. With only flashlights, compasses and the stars to guide us, our small group of North Korean refugees trudged through freezing darkness toward Mongolia. Our Chinese guide showed us how to follow the brightest star northward and pointed toward distant lights marking the Mongolian border.
The journey was brutal-bone-chilling cold, wild animals circling in the darkness, and constant fear of border patrols. After crossing five barbed-wire fences, we became disoriented when clouds covered the stars. I began hallucinating, seeing fences that weren't there. When I could walk no further, ready to give up and die alone in the desert, we finally spotted the border fence at dawn. As we scrambled through holes in the wire, I realized it was my father's birthday-March 4th.
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Learning to Live in Freedom
Arriving in South Korea felt like landing on another planet. The gleaming airport with its moving walkways, fashionable people, and incomprehensible modern facilities immediately made me feel inadequate. Despite a friendly welcome from handsome National Intelligence Service agents, we were soon taken to a heavily secured facility where we were strip-searched, interrogated, and essentially imprisoned.
At Hanawon Resettlement Center, we faced enormous educational gaps. At fifteen, I tested at second-grade math level and worse in reading and writing. The classroom experience itself was disorienting-sitting still felt unnatural, and learning multiplication with "apples and oranges" instead of "American bastards" was jarring. The English alphabet seemed overwhelming.
Most challenging was unlearning propaganda. While I could accept that Kim Jong Il lived luxuriously while citizens starved, I struggled to believe that Kim Il Sung started the Korean War. Learning about personal freedoms was equally disorienting-the concept of having hobbies or favorite colors baffled me, as North Korea had taught us only collective thinking with single "correct" answers. Critical thinking was an entirely foreign concept.
Freedom proved unexpectedly exhausting. Having to think constantly for myself felt like a burden after a lifetime of having choices made for me. I felt ancient inside despite attempts to act like a normal teenager. The nightmares were relentless-always being chased, trying to escape across a river, waking up screaming. Even during the day, I'd pinch myself until I bled, needing to verify this new reality was real.
I was consumed by learning, earning the nickname "Learning Machine" at Heavenly Dream School. Rather than socializing or participating in religious activities, I devoted myself entirely to reading-consuming books on history, mythology, biographies, and classics. Reading transformed me, expanding my vocabulary and ability to think complex thoughts beyond North Korea's black-and-white worldview.
I discovered new emotional concepts like different forms of love, which didn't exist in North Korean language. Books like Orwell's "Animal Farm" profoundly affected me, helping me process my experiences through allegory. I studied South Korean pop culture to blend in, perfecting the Seoul accent and distancing myself from my past.
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Finding My Voice and Purpose
Despite teachers' doubts, I earned my high school GED just two years after arriving in South Korea. When questioned about my lack of formal education and English skills during my university interview, I emphasized my life experiences as valuable assets. In August, I was accepted into Dongguk University's criminal justice department, bringing me to tears.
Before starting classes in March 2012, I worked part-time jobs while hiding my North Korean identity. When approached by a TV producer to appear on "Now on My Way to Meet You," a show featuring North Korean defectors, I initially refused. However, realizing the show might help me find my missing sister Eunmi, I agreed to participate, becoming a regular guest who was portrayed as the "Paris Hilton of North Korea."
Eventually Eunmi discovered an escape route through Southeast Asia and made it to South Korea on her own. After graduating from Hanawon, she moved in with me near Dongguk, found part-time work, and quickly earned her GED. Though initially distant, she gradually made room in her heart for us again.
The New Year of 2014 marked a turning point-with Eunmi safe, I was full of plans. I intended to finish my degree and study law, never expecting I'd soon become an international advocate for North Koreans. My journey began with a New Year's resolution to improve my English, enrolling in intensive tutoring while consuming American TV shows and audiobooks.
In October 2014, I represented North Korea at the One Young World Summit in Dublin, wearing a traditional pink and white hanbok. When British journalist James Chau introduced me, he broke down in tears describing my story, and I abandoned my prepared speech. "North Korea is an unimaginable country," I began, revealing how my mother was raped by a Chinese broker and how 70 percent of North Korean women and girls are victimized after escaping. "When I was crossing the Gobi Desert, I wasn't really afraid of dying as much as I was afraid of being forgotten," I confessed. The audience stood crying with me, and I felt justice was alive in that room.
After Dublin, I was overwhelmed with interview requests. I began writing my memoir, realizing I could no longer hide my secret. My mother, sister and I stayed up all night discussing whether to reveal everything that happened in China. "You have to tell the world that North Korea is like one big prison camp," my mother urged. "If you don't speak up for them, Yeonmi-ya, who will?" By morning, I decided to tell my full story of trafficking. As soon as I made that choice, I felt truly free.
Months later, North Korea's propaganda machine targeted me directly. They uploaded videos calling me "The Poisonous Mushroom That Grew from a Pile of Garbage" and a "human rights propaganda puppet." They scrutinized my interviews for inconsistencies, invented lies about my family, and even claimed my father had died in North Korea, not China. Most painfully, they forced my relatives and former friends to denounce me on camera. Though heartbreaking to watch, at least I knew they were still alive.
In early 2015, I reconnected with my childhood best friend Yong Ja from Hyesan through Facebook. She had escaped to South Korea through Southeast Asia and found me through social media after learning I was alive during her intelligence center interrogation. I keep hoping more friends will find freedom, though some stories are tragic. Though I've moved on, I hope all 25 million North Koreans I left behind find their way to freedom someday.
