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

Chapter 1 begins with a description of Hyesan, the rural town Park considers home. It is situated on the border between North Korea and China, separated by the Yalu river. There are many ethnic Koreans living on the Chinese side, and trading has been practiced across the river for many generations.

Park’s earliest memories of Hyesan are “of the dark and the cold” (17). Her account of life in Hyesan is one of poverty. The walls of her childhood home are thin, and her family can hear the people next door and the mice in the ceiling. Electricity can be cut out for months, plunging the town into darkness at night. Winters are especially harsh due to the extremely cold weather.

Park did not grow up with the noise of machinery such as cars and other electric appliances, but she believes human connection was stronger in Hyesan as a result of this lack of technology. In her hometown, the smallest pleasures are celebrated—such as the short periods when they receive electricity—because everything is scarce.

The chapter concludes with an anecdote that illustrates the extent of state surveillance. When Park’s mother returns from publicly mourning the death of Kim Il Sung, she is told by her husband’s visiting Chinese relative that their leader did not die of a heart attack like the state media reported. Although Park’s mother does not believe him, she repeats the lie to a friend and is immediately visited by the bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency). After being interrogated and covertly threatened, Park’s mother learns her lesson and raises her daughters to watch what they say, even when they are alone, because the “birds and mice can hear you whisper” (23).

The bulk of Chapter 2 focuses on Park’s father, Jin Sik. It explores his family history through the framework of the North Korean caste system, songbun. This system divides citizens into three main categories: the “elite” class of honorary revolutionaries and peasants; the “basic” or “wavering” class comprising people the government does not completely trust; and the “hostile” class, which includes former landowners, capitalists, religious followers, and former South Korean soldiers (24). A family’s affluence is dictated by its songbun status, and while moving up is incredibly difficult, ranking down is very easy.

Jin Sik is the third son of Chang Gyu Park, and his family enjoys a good social status because Chang Gyu joined the People’s Army during the Korean War. However, in 1980, Jin Sik’s eldest brother, Park Dong Il, is accused of rape and attempted murder and sent to prison. This plunges the family into disfavor with the government. Chang Gyu loses his job at Hyesan’s administrative office, and Jin Sik’s fate soon mirrors his father’s: His family’s poor songbun status costs him his job at Hyesan city hall’s financial office.

Without recourse, Jin Sik joins the Workers’ Party to prove his loyalty to the government. He has an entrepreneurial mind, and instead of working full-time at a labor-intensive job, he resorts to starting a smuggling business. Trading is illegal in North Korea’s centrally planned economy, but Hyesan has a long history of commercial exchange with China, so black markets abound. Jin Sik purchases imported goods and sells them at a premium inland. Along the way, he uses cigarettes to bribe the police. The business is risky, and Park believes her father chose this path as a means to survive.

Chapter 3 explores Park’s mother, Keum Sook Byeon, including her family history and her marriage to Jin Sik. Keum Sook is the youngest of four children, and her parents are of poor songbun status. Her father, Ung Rook Byeon, was born into a family that had just enough land to be considered a landowner during the Japanese occupation. Although Ung Rook’s family moved to the Chinese side of the border, travel was not completely restricted, so he visited his homeland often. Immediately before the start of the Korean War, Ung Rook loses an arm and a leg in an accident, and he remains in North Korea to recover. He meets Hwang Ok Soon, Keum Sook’s future mother, in a nursing center for the disabled. Ok Soon is an orphan from a South Korean rural town who lost a leg in a bombing raid during the Korean War.

After they wed, Ung Rook takes his wife to live in Hunchun, China, but she soon misses her home and convinces her husband to return to North Korea with her. They are devout followers of Kim Il Sung, so they decide to settle in Kowon, a village in the countryside away from the corrupt border towns and port cities. At the time, Kim Il Sung is running a campaign dedicated to purging class traitors, and Ung Rook’s ancestral connection with owning land garners him a bad songbun that prevents him from getting ahead in life.

Keum Sook grows up in an environment that teaches her not to question the North Korean leadership. Having grown up in Kowon, she is never exposed to the foreign ideas that circulate in border regions. Even though she is a clever student with a degree in inorganic chemistry, she nonetheless panics after Kim Il Sung’s death and wonders how the Earth can still spin. She meets Jin Sik through her brother. Their parents deem the match suitable, and they are wed without a ceremony. Park notes that romance is learned, not innate.