I went into this book sure that I would come out with a ton of information grounded in reality, not solely western propaganda seeking to kick the Kim family around and exploit their suppressive ways.

Everything that Yeonmi Park has overcome and everything she has achieved since her escape is incredible. Thereafter, Park personalises the story to discuss her backstory, a life on the cusp of abject poverty and general servitude to the Great Country, which included a vignette about gathering an annual faeces quota to help with collective farming, alarming and yet somewhat humerous at times as well. Park is now studying criminal justice in South Korea and working as an activist, most recently speaking at the One Young World summit in Dublin and at the UN Human Rights session on North Korea.Three amazing courageous women who all should be proud of what they have had to overcome for something we take for granted at times, freedom. As someone who has experienced various forms of assault I also understand if some things have only recently come out because she was ashamed or uncomfortable talking about them. Desperation turns to flight, as Yeonmi and her mother are smuggled into China, and to perhaps an even worse fate than starvation as they soon become embroiled in the trafficking and raping of North Korean women to impoverished Chinese farmers. The utterly alien mindset caused by a very limited mental horizon is perhaps one of the hardest aspects for the Western reader to get his or her head round - for example when asked what her hobbies were: "I had no idea what a “hobby” was. Instead of helping Yeonmi and praising her for what she's doing for her country, people that have no idea about what she went through are lying telling the world that she is a fraud.

Following precarious years of hardship and malnutrition, Yeonmi at the age of only 13 escaped from her country with her mother in March 2007. That this is also a buddy read with a good friend of mine only adds to the interest when it was suggested I read this memoir by Yeonmi Park. I’d read previously of the struggles first encountered by North Koreans during their assimilation into South Korean life, however I wasn’t fully aware of the prejudices, and also the lack of understanding, that Yeonmi faces on encountering native South Koreans. However, I’m seriously disappointed with those who lowered their score because of the reason saying her stories are fakes and fabrications.

Small inconsistency in the book: On page 139 she says she has no pictures of her father with her, fifty pages later she says her mother goes to retrieve her father's ashes and and a small packet of family photos. Then, Park reaches South Korea where she manages to get from a second grade level to being admitted to a prestigious university in little less than two years.

Park Yeon-mi (Korean: 박연미) is a North Korean defector and human rights activist who escaped from North Korea to China in 2007 and settled in South Korea in 2009, before moving to the United States in 2014. com (though, it does use experts and other defectors to confirm her story is off, they also use a man who travelled there and explored "freely" while on business. This should be a red flag for all of us, since it shows that people look for personal heroes and inspiring success stories whatever the cost.

On a whim, though, I looked up the author and saw that she’s become a proponent of right-wing political ideology (e.