In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

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They need to control you through your emotions, making you a slave to the state by destroying your individuality, and your ability to react to situations based on your own experience of the world.” and I particularly loved biographies because they were about people who had to overcome obstacles or prejudices to get ahead. They made me think I could make it when nobody else believed in me, when even I didn’t believe in myself.” But there was human intimacy and connection, something that is hard to find in the modern world I inhabit today.” One man, in particular, stands out – Hongwei. He’s a violent gangster, but he also clearly loved you. Do you have mixed emotions about him now? He, after all, helped you escape.

Later, I could understand him in some ways. I thought about this a lot. I was going to kill him. I said I’d never forgive him, that there was nothing he could do to make me feel that he could justify what he did. But people can make mistakes. He’d lost his own parents, he knew what it was to live without your parents, so he knew what I was going through. So I cannot hate him any more, but everything is very complex; I cannot say exactly what I feel. It's not easy to give up a worldview that is built into your bones and imprinted on your brain like the sound of your own father's voice.” But when I was seven or eight years old, the film that changed my life was Titanic. It amazed me that it was a story that took place a hundred years ago. Those people living in 1912 had better technology than most North Koreans! But mostly I couldn’t believe how someone could make a movie out of such a shameful love story. In North Korea, the filmmakers would have been executed. No real human stories were allowed, nothing but propaganda about the Leader. But in Titanic, the characters talked about love and humanity. I was amazed that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were willing to die for love, not just for the regime, as we were. The idea that people could choose their own destinies fascinated me. This pirated Hollywood movie gave me my first small taste of freedom.”It must be a sign that you’re doing something right that the Kim regime feels the need to spread malicious propaganda about you? In the free world, children dream about what they want to be when they grow up and how they can use their talents. When I was four and five years old, my only adult ambition was to buy as much bread as I liked and eat all of it.” Family are everything; everyone understands the strength of family. For me, they were the reason that I managed to get by while I was in captivity and now they are the reason to live in freedom. They are the biggest blessing I have in the world.

I’m still scared about food. In North Korea, hunger means death. Here, hunger just means you go to the corner to buy something. I worry about food. I eat a lot – too much. But one day I will be fully adapted to the free world. We all have our own deserts. They may not be the same as my desert, but we all have to cross them to find a purpose in life and be free.” There are thousands of people who are going through this and their stories cannot be heard. If you can be more open about this, then it will help others talk about it. In North Korean society, for a woman to admit these kinds of things, it’s the end of the world. Our tradition is purity, virginity – for a woman, that is everything. A woman cannot talk about the bad things that happen to her. So writing this did feel like the end of the world for me. we all have our own deserts. Thet may not be the same as my desert, but we all have to cross them to find a purpose in life and be free.” I could not feel, smell, see, hear, or taste the world around me. If I had allowed myself to experience these things in all their intensity, I might have lost my mind. If I had allowed myself to cry, I might never have been able to stop. So I survived, but I never felt joy, never felt safe.”I understand that sometimes the only way we can survive our own memories is to shape them into a story that makes sense out of events that seem inexplicable.”