park, yeonmi

"Park has told the harrowing story of her escape from North Korea as a child many times, but never before [now] has she revealed the most intimate and devastating details of the repressive society she was raised in and the enormous price she paid to escape"--Amazon.com.

"After defecting from North Korea, Yeonmi Park found liberty and freedom in America. But she also found a chilling crackdown on self-expression and thought that reminded her of the brutal regime she risked her life to escape. When she spoke out about the mass political indoctrination she saw around her in the United States, Park faced censorship and even death threats. In While Time Remains, Park sounds the alarm for Americans by highlighting the dangerous hypocrisies, mob tactics, and authoritarian tendencies that speak in the name of wokeness and social justice. No one is spared in her eye-opening account, including the elites who claim to care for the poor and working classes but turn their backs on anyone who dares to think independently. Park arrived in America eight years ago with no preconceptions, no political aims, and no partisan agenda. With urgency and unique insight, the bestselling author and human rights activist reminds us of the fragility of freedom, and what we must do to preserve it"--Provided by publisher.

"Park has told the harrowing story of her escape from North Korea as a child many times, but never before [now] has she revealed the most intimate and devastating details of the repressive society she was raised in and the enormous price she paid to escape"--Amazon.com.

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.".