marieclaire.com.au 49GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF YEONMI PARK
E
very New Year, Kim Jong-il
gave a statement that we all
had to memorise. In 2007,
it was more of the same:
the North Korean people
were stronger, our enemies would be
defeated, the economy was getting
better. But we could no longer believe
the propaganda because our lives were
just getting worse.
Maybe deep, deep inside me I knew
something was wrong. But we North
Koreans can be experts at lying, even
to ourselves. The frozen babies that
starving mothers abandoned in the
alleys did not fit into my world view,
so I couldn’t process what I saw. It was
normal to see bodies in the trash heaps
and floating in the river, normal to justFrom above: Park saw through
Kim Jong-il’s propaganda; a
soldier partrols the Yalu River
on the North Korean border;
Park with her mother and sister,
who also fled to China, in 2015.YEONMI PARK
In 2007, aged 13, Yeonmi
Park fled the famine and
brutality in North Korea with
her mother. She reveals the
hell she faced during her
terrifying escape to China.walk by and do nothing when a stranger
cried for help.
North Koreans have always been
told that the rest of the world is an
impure, disgusting, dangerous place.
Worst of all was South Korea, which
was a human cesspool, no more than an
impoverished colony of the American
bastards we were all taught to hate and
fear. My father had no desire to ever go
to South Korea, but China was different.
Maybe if we could find a way to get
across the river we might have a chance.
On the cold, black
night of March 31, 2007,
my mother and I scram-
bled down the steep,
rocky bank of the frozen
Yalu River that divides
North Korea and China.
There were patrols above
us and below, and guard
posts one hundred yards on either
side of us manned by soldiers ready
to shoot anyone attempting to cross
the border. We had no idea what
would come next, but we were desperate
to get to China, where there might be
a chance to survive.
I was 13 years old and weighed only
60 pounds (27kg).
There was no time to rest on
the other side of the river. We had made
it past the North Korean soldiers,
but Chinese patrols could still pick us
up at any time and send us back across
the border. Our guide told us to keep
moving, so my mother and I followed
him up the icy bank to a small unlit
shack. A bald, heavy-set man was wait-
ing for us there. Our North Korean
guide stayed with me while the bald
broker pulled my mother around to the
side of the building.
“Don’t worry,” the guide told me.
“Everything is OK.”
But it did not sound OK. I heard my
mother pleading with this man, and
then there were terrible noises I had
never heard before.
It wasn’t until later that I found out
what happened. The broker told my
mother that he wanted to have sex with
me. She had to think. He might send usback to be captured by those border
guards. So she explained to him I was
too sick, that I had just had an operation
and my stitches would tear.
“I’ll be gentle,” he said.
“No, you cannot!” my mother cried.
“What’s going on
here?” he said. “If you’re
going to be trouble, we’ll
just send you back to
North Korea and they’ll
arrest you.”
“We won’t cause any
trouble,” she said. “Take
me instead.”
He pushed my mother down on a
blanket in the dirt, one he had obviously
used before, and raped her.
A few minutes later, the broker
reappeared around the building with
my mother. Just then a car pulled up to
the shack. All of us climbed in with the
driver, my mother and I in the back seat.
I could sense something was badly
wrong, but I still had no idea what my
mother had done to protect me.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing, don’t worry,” she said, but
her voice was shaking.
I was not used to travelling in a car,
and I soon began to feel sick to my
stomach. My mother put my head in her
lap and held my hands tightly. But when
we rounded the bend in the river, she
told me to look up. From the window we
could see the dark buildings on the
North Korean side of the river.
“Look, Yeonmi-ya. That may be
the last you see of your home town,”
my mother said.“It was normal
to see bodies in
the trash heaps
and floating in
the river”This is an edited extract from
In Order to Live: A North
Korean Girl’s Journey to
Freedom by Yeonmi Park
(Penguin, $24.99), out now.WORLD REPORT