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A review by lighthousebooks
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Maryanne Vollers, Yeonmi Park
5.0
“North Koreans have two stories running in their heads at all times, like trains on parallel tracks. One is what you are taught to believe, the other is what you see with your own eyes.”
Yeonmi Park endured living with a lack of resources that we cannot even begin to fathom in our country, and did so with little thought that things could be different elsewhere beyond a greater abundance of food. In fact, she revered the supreme leader of her country despite the contradictions between what she was taught and what she witnessed in a practice called doublethink.
When she escaped to China with her mother, she found food, but little else to comfort her. In North Korea, she had witnessed and experienced terrible things that no child should ever see or endure, but she had a strong family bond that was a great comfort. In China, she lost what remained of her childhood.
“I was beginning to realize that all the food in the world, and all the running shoes, could not make me happy. The material things were worthless. I had lost my family. I wasn’t loved, I wasn’t free, I wasn’t safe. I was alive, but everything that made life worth living was gone.”
The truth about North Korea is revealed in this stunning memoir. If you want to understand what life is like in a socialist government where all religious beliefs are expunged, then you should read this book.
Yeonmi Park endured living with a lack of resources that we cannot even begin to fathom in our country, and did so with little thought that things could be different elsewhere beyond a greater abundance of food. In fact, she revered the supreme leader of her country despite the contradictions between what she was taught and what she witnessed in a practice called doublethink.
When she escaped to China with her mother, she found food, but little else to comfort her. In North Korea, she had witnessed and experienced terrible things that no child should ever see or endure, but she had a strong family bond that was a great comfort. In China, she lost what remained of her childhood.
“I was beginning to realize that all the food in the world, and all the running shoes, could not make me happy. The material things were worthless. I had lost my family. I wasn’t loved, I wasn’t free, I wasn’t safe. I was alive, but everything that made life worth living was gone.”
The truth about North Korea is revealed in this stunning memoir. If you want to understand what life is like in a socialist government where all religious beliefs are expunged, then you should read this book.