In Order to Live
by Yeonmi Park
Escaped North Korea at thirteen. Almost didn't make it.
For you if
you want to understand what it costs a young woman to cross the border and what waits on the other side
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
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Park fled North Korea with her mother at thirteen, crossing the frozen Yalu River into China — where she was sold into trafficking before eventually reaching South Korea and then the West. Her memoir is the dispatch from inside a journey that most accounts of North Korean defection skip over: the dangerous years in China, the exploitation, the second survival. Controversial in some details but the emotional truth is undeniable. A young woman's account of what it actually takes to get out.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- North Korea • East Asia
- Voice
- Written by a North Korean author
- Topics
- north korean defection
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
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✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
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Sold
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The Librarian of Auschwitz
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Flip the lens
Same country. Now hear it from the other side.
North Korea Journal
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What a visitor is allowed to see, honestly reported.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Without You There Is No Us
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Teaching English to Pyongyang's elite. Undercover.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Nothing to Envy
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Six ordinary North Koreans, looked at very closely.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
