68 pages • 2 hours read
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom
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Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “The Freedom Birds”
Park and her group are caught by the Mongolian police, and she at first believes they are saved. However, the policemen threaten to send them back to China. Both Yeonmi and her mother hid blades in their clothes, ready to die before they are sent back. However, they are escorted past the Chinese border post, and Yeonmi wonders if this was the Mongolian officer’s idea of a cruel joke.
Yeonmi’s group is sent to a military base in Ulan Bator to await their departure for South Korea. During their stay, they are fed and lodged in groups but are treated like criminals rather than refugees. Park later learned her group was among the last to leave successfully, as the Qingdao mission was shut down and their guides arrested by Chinese authorities.
On April 20, 2009, Yeonmi and her mother meet a representative from South Korea who arranges their departure. On the plane, Yeonmi hopes for the future and struggles with survivor’s guilt. After they land, Yeonmi marvels at the display of technology she can glimpse from Seoul’s airport alone. They are escorted from the plane by an agent from the National Intelligence Service and are subsequently searched, questioned, and sent for a medical examination. Once the checkpoints are cleared and they are deemed to be legitimate refugees and not North Korean spies, they are transferred to a group quarantine facility with other defectors. Two weeks later, Yeonmi and her mother are brought in for questioning and asked about their living conditions in China. When questioned about her plans in South Korea, Yeonmi replies that she wants to go to university. The officer doubts she will be able to accomplish such a task in a competitive environment like South Korea, a reaction that demoralizes Yeonmi. At the end of June, Yeonmi and her mother are sent to the Hanawon Resettlement Center and taught about life in South Korea.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Dreams and Nightmares”
At the Hanawon Resettlement Center, Yeonmi is taught the South Korean national anthem and about modern life. Their living conditions are cramped: The Center was designed to welcome 200 people but is currently hosting over 600. Yeonmi learns for the first time that democracies around the world do not live in impoverished conditions like in North Korean propaganda. Although eager to learn, she cannot always believe everything she is told. Yeonmi has the most difficulty with her self-introduction. When asked about her favorite color or her hobbies, she cannot answer. She was never taught to think critically and begins to understand the price of independence and freedom.
At the Hanawon Resettlement Center, Yeonmi is warned about the competitiveness of South Korean schools. Her instructors do not expect her to be able to catch up or perform well. When the subject of her time in China or human trafficking comes up, Yeonmi pretends not to understand. At night, she has nightmares about her torturous experiences in China, and she is afraid of others finding out about her being a victim of trafficking. In the end, Yeonmi has difficulty moving on and suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress. After graduating from the Hanawon Resettlement Center, Yeonmi and her mother are sent to live in Asan with a small stipend to rebuild their lives.
Chapter 21 Summary: “A Hungry Mind”
Chapter 21 marks the beginning of Yeonmi’s life in South Korea. Her first experience visiting an internet café turns sour when the owner realizes she is a foreigner through her spoken accent and forbids her from using his facility. Yeonmi is devastated and runs to hide at home.
Yeonmi’s mother encourages her to return to school in September. Instead of attending a private school for defectors, Yeonmi elects to join the public middle school in her local area to fit into South Korean society. The school administrator questions her ability to catch up with schoolwork, and her classmates gossip about her to her face. In the end, Yeonmi gives up attending the school and becomes anxious about leaving her apartment and socializing with others.
After a month holed up, Yeonmi finds determination again when she is reminded of her father. He always wished she would excel at school, and Yeonmi was told at the Hanawon Resettlement Center that hard work is rewarded in democracies. Hoping for a world where she is judged by her efforts rather than her songbun status, Yeonmi enrolls at the Heavenly Dream School, a Christian boarding school for North Koreans, in November 2009. She pours so much effort into studying she is nicknamed the “Learning Machine.”
That same month, Yeonmi’s mother decides to visit China in search of Eunmi. Although she is unsuccessful, she reconnects with Myung Ok and convinces her to defect to South Korea. When Yeonmi’s mother returns to South Korea, Yeonmi immediately drops out of school to move back home. She is not pious and finds that she learns best reading at home by herself. With no knowledge of the existence of public libraries, Yeonmi spends all her allowance on buying books to drown out the bad memories. However, she soon realizes that reading expands her mind and gives meaning to her experiences. She finds George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and reading about the horrors she endured in North Korea as an allegory becomes cathartic and frees her from the shackles of her past.
Yeonmi wishes to assimilate to South Korean culture and bury her memories of the past. She loses her accent, learns to dress like locals, and consumes South Korean media. She succeeds at school and earns a high school general equivalency diploma (GED) in April 2011.
When her mother’s new boyfriend brutalizes her, Yeonmi decides to enroll in Dongguk University to become part of the police force.
Chapters 19-21 Analysis
In Chapters 19-21, Park demonstrates how difficult it is for a victim of abuse to adapt and heal. In Mongolia, she lives in constant fear of being deported; her fate is contingent upon Mongolia’s international relations with North Korea, China, and the rest of the world. In South Korea, she is subjected to searches and questioning by the National Intelligence Service trying to weed out North Korean spies disguised as defectors. Her time at the Hanawon Resettlement Center is not always pleasant: Due to her identity as a North Korean, she is not expected to catch up to the rest of modern society. The officer who interrogates her speaks of her time in South Korea as a “second chance,” implying she has committed some wrongdoing, when in fact Park was a victim of trafficking. She is afraid of being seen as a criminal and is eager to forge herself into a model South Korean.
In these chapters, Park shows that healing takes time and effort. Life in a democratic country like South Korea is not without hardships, and being free did not magically erase her past. Although Park can pursue education and find employment without living with the fear of being oppressed by the authorities, she still faces judgment and discrimination in society. Her accent is North Korean, and her education is severely lacking compared to other girls her age. As a result, Park is constantly looked down upon; due to her humble beginnings, she is not expected to be able to compete with her peers. Park works very hard to bury her past and conceal her identity. However, she soon becomes afraid to interact with others and suffers from anxiety and depression.
Although these chapters show Park at an emotional low point, they end on a positive note: Park has rediscovered her passion for reading and is determined to succeed academically. Reading on her own means she can learn about the world without immediately interacting with it. It has the dual purpose of drowning out her bad memories and improving her mind. Park learns of new words, ideas, and concepts that help her order her thoughts. The more she reads, the more complex her vocabulary becomes, and the better she can make sense of her experiences. Park realizes that the capacity to analyze the past gives meaning to the present. She points out that North Korea did not teach her the necessary vocabulary to think critically, and this form of oppression keeps other North Koreans from fully assessing the horrors they go through.
In this segment, Park also struggles with self-identity. She thinks others will always reduce her individuality to her identity as a North Korean and works hard to hide her origins. She attempts to assimilate to South Korean culture and even loses her accent, but in the end it is her academic success that allows her to find her individuality. In her first two years in South Korea, she has taken the time to improve her mind and prove to herself that hard work can indeed be rewarded in a democratic society. She finally gains confidence and finds a new purpose for living. Without needing to worry for her immediate survival, she learns to dream for the future.
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