In order to live

Yeonmi Park's family was loving and close-knit, but life in North Korea was brutal and practically medieval. Regularly without food, Park was led to believe that Kim Jong II, the country's dictator, could read her mind. After her father was imprisoned and tortured by the regime for trading on the black market, a risk he took in order to provide for his wife and two young daughters, the family was branded as criminals and forced to the cruel margins of society. Park and her mother were smuggled across the border into China after she suffered a botched appendectomy. By the time she and her mother made their way into South Korea two years later, Park had lost her childhood and nearly lost her life. Her father was dead and her sister was missing. Before this book, only her mother knew what really happened between the time they crossed the Yalu River into China and when they followed the stars through the frigid Gobi Desert to freedom. Park says "I convinced myself that a lot of what I had experienced never happened. I taught myself to forget the rest.".