分节阅读 Table of contents

• 1.Two Worlds Divided by a River

  • The Yalu River was frozen, as this was the coldest time of the year in North Korea. The important river also formed part of the border between North Korea and China.  A girl, standing on the North Korean shore of the river, looked toward the lights from the Chinese villages across the river. She saw beautiful fireworks erupting in the night sky. The Chinese people were celebrating their Lunar New Year. After a short while, the girl reluctantly turned around and walked home, disappearing into pitch-black darkness.
    
    Her name was Yeonmi Park. Born in 1993, she lived with her parents and elder sister in a small house in Hyesan, a small city in North Korea.
    
    After the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea lost lots of food supplies from abroad. The people were starving and the country was in a state of famine. For Yeonmi, a bite of white bread was the happiest thing, let alone eating meat.
    
    In North Korea, even though private markets were not allowed, many people had to smuggle products in to fill their stomachs and survive. Yeonmi’s father smuggled metal from Pyongyang to Hyesan. Her father’s hard work and smart risk-taking helped the family overcome their hunger. Sometimes, Yeonmi was even able to buy some smuggled DVDs to watch. Watching DVDs was the most exciting moment for her and her sister. They locked the door and windows tightly in case of spot checks by the police.
    
    There was no Internet and there were no private computers in North Korea. Watching foreign movies was forbidden and punishable. The people were brainwashed by being told that North Korea was the best place in the world, and outside of their country was full of hunger, poverty and impurity. They learned that all they had were given to them by their Great Leader. The huge contradiction between the idol they were forced to worship and the gnawing hunger in their stomachs made people depressed and numb. Watching illegal movies was their way to relieve their feelings of hopelessness and despair
    
    Yeonmi liked watching Chinese food ads and South Korean romantic dramas. What shocked her most was the love story in the movie Titanic. In her limited world view, love could only exist for their Great Leader, and she was not allowed to have her personal feelings. She started to become curious about what life was like beyond the border, and what love and freedom meant outside her country.

• 2.Father’s Arrest

  • Yeonmi’s worst fears soon came true. In the winter of 2002, Yeonmi’s mother came back from the post office with tears. Yeonmi’s father had been arrested in  Pyongyang because of his illegal smuggling activities. Her mother decided to go to Pyongyang  to look for her father. She left soon, leaving behind a bag of rice, some cooking oil, and only 200 won.
    
    It was very cold that winter, and the food ran out quickly. The sisters could only survive by receiving help from their neighbors and friends. They hugged each other to stay warm and sang to keep their fears at bay, waiting patiently for their mother’s return.
    
    One day in January, their mother finally came home. The happiness of her return was quickly replaced by terrible news about Yeonmi’s father. He had been tortured in prison and brutally beaten. Then her father was sent to “reeducation” labor camp, where people had to do heavy labor but got little food. In the evening, the prisoners had to memorize the speeches of their Great Leader and do endless self-criticism.
    
    To help secure father’s release and also sell products for food, Yeonmi’s mother traveled to Pyongyang several times during the next seven months. Yeonmi didn’t know when she would see her mother again every time she left.
    
    The famine was severe. It was not rare to see dead bodies from starvation lying on the streets. Yeonmi and her sister often ate from the roots of trees to survive, and if they were lucky, they could capture dragonflies to cook with. Yeonmi had to grow quickly and act like an adult. She used the precious little money given by her mother and bribed the guards of fruit gardens. Then she and her sister picked as many fruits as possible to sell at the market. Yeonmi gradually understood that when she started to trade for herself, she started to think for herself.

• 3.Escape

  • After two and half years, Yeonmi’s father was released from prison because of his serious illness. She couldn’t believe her own eyes. Her father, who used to be strong, optimistic and confident, was now thin and bony, weak and full of fear in his voice. The family was lucky that four of them were now reunited,  except that their father’s health was steadily deteriorating and the doctors had not come up with a diagnosis.
    
    After her father’s imprisonment, her family was also blacklisted and labeled for those crimes, leaving a heavy shadow for the already burdened family. Yeonmi’s parents started to think about their children’s future. They heard that many women and children had successfully escaped to China through Yalu River, but they didn’t know how to do that.
    
    
    Yeonmi and her sister both longed to escape, and their independent desires became stronger day after day. Though they knew they would face unimaginable punishment if they were captured on the way, they were willing to take almost any risk for the chance of food and freedom.
    
    Without waiting for Yeonmi and her mother, Yeonmi’s sister planned an escape with the help of a broker. When she revealed the plan to her mother, her mother couldn’t believe that the 16-year-old girl would really escape by herself, without even hugging or say good-bye to her sister Yeonmi.
    
    However, that very night, Yeonmi’s sister left home just as she had planned. She had escaped by herself, and for Yeonmi and her mother, that night was the start of a long separation from her. Yeonmi’s sister didn’t return home.. She was officially missing.

• 4.Another Hell

  • One evening in 2007, Yeonmi and her mother began their escape from North Korea in search for freedom and to find Yeonmi’s sister. With the arrangement of a broker, they arrived at the shore of Yalu River. Across the river was China, their land of freedom. The broker told them that in order to live, they would have to lie about their real ages. They didn’t understand why but didn’t think too much of it.
    Under the cover of the darkness, they successfully crossed the river and entered China. Yeonmi was excited and relieved, without any idea that a darker world was awaiting her.
    
    Yeonmi and her mother soon found out that the broker had cheated them. Instead of a broker who helped North Koreans flee their country, he was just a human trafficker who sold people for profit. He trafficked women from North Korea and sold them to Chinese farmers who could not find wives. If the women did not agree, they would be immediately sent back to North Korea for punishment.
    
    Yeonmi and her mother had no choice but to agree on the arrangement. Mother and daughter were forced to go separate ways. Yeonmi followed a guy named Hongwei. He was involved in trafficking and real estate. Hongwei took Yeonmi shopping for clothes and necessities and brought her to good restaurants. But everything was just a lie. Hongwei demanded Yeonmi to be his mistress and to help him with the trafficking business. After suffering constant coercion, manipulation, and fighting,, Yeonmi reluctantly acquiesced when Hongwei promised her that  he would allow her mother to live together with her, and also help Yeonmi contact her father and find her sister.
    
    Yeonmi’s Chinese gradually got better, and she no longer needed to worry about hunger; but she felt more and more depressed. She and her mother did not dare to go out freely in the daytime, as she constantly feared that they would be captured and sent back to North Korea.  She depended on Hongwei to take care of daily matters, while she was responsible for hooking up human traffickers with North Korean women fleeing their country. When she looked at the North Korean women who were about to be sold to the Chinese, she knew her heart had turned stone-cold.

• 5.Time with Father

  • The dark and gloomy days seemed endless, but the hope of seeing her father and sister again gave Yeonmi and her mother with the will to live.
    
    One day, Hongwei kept his promise. He brought Yeonmi’s father into China. That day of reuniting with her father was Yeonmi’s fourteenth birthday. That was the best gift she had ever received.
    
    Yeonmi’s father quickly figured out the arrangement between Yeonmi and Hongwei. Like Yeonmi, her father had complex and conflicted feelings towards Hongwei. While he was grateful to Hongwei for taking care of Yeonmi, at the same time, he also hated Hongwei badly.
    
    Yeonmi was no longer the little girl hiding behind her father for protection. She had turned into a big girl who knew how to survive and how to take care of her mother. Her father hugged Yeonmi and took a deep breath. He said, “You’ve lost your sweet baby smell. I miss the way you smelled as a child.”
    
    Yeonmi’s father became extremely weak. At the risk of being captured, Yeonmi sent her father to a hospital. It turned out that her father was in the final stages of colon cancer and he had only six months left to live. Yeonmi wanted her father to spend the rest of his life in happiness and comfort. She played Chinese checkers with her father and laughed everyday with him. One day, her father pulled her in his arms and said, “Yeonmi, it’s you. I smell that baby smell again.”
    
    Soon, Yeonmi’s father passed away. Without legal identity papers in China, Yeonmi could not give her father a normal burial. At night, Hongwei’s two friends helped her burn her father in a secret place. Yeonmi would never forget the scene of her father burning into bones and ashes in a foreign land.

• 6.The Star to Freedom

  • The days passed by, and Yeonmi still did not know anything about her sister’s whereabouts. She heard that a Christian group could help defectors from North Korea escape to Mongolia. The South Korean embassy in Mongolia could then help them fly to South Korea and obtain legal status there. Yeonmi realized that this was a good way for her and her mother to obtain true freedom and also find her missing sister. Perhaps, Yeonmi’s sister was already in South Korea waiting for them.
    
    After a long trip, Yeonmi and her mother followed their rescue team to the Gobi Desert. What the whole team had were some food, water, clothes and a compass. Without knowing the correct direction, they could become easily lost in the desert. The Chinese team leader told them that if they did not know which direction they were heading to, they should just follow the way of the brightest star.
    
    That night in the endless, unforgiving Gobi desert was the longest night in Yeonmi’s life. Every time they observed lights or people approaching, they had to quickly hide. The temperature dropped below -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius). Coldness, hunger, and tiredness eroded Yeonmi’s spirit. But when she looked up at the brightest star leading to freedom, she was able to replenish her hope and energy to go on.
    
    When they were near the Mongolian border, the sun rose in front of them. Yeonmi saw her own shadow cast behind on the desert she had just bravely traveled across. That was the desert she had crossed to reach freedom.

• 7.Beyond Survival

  • Yeonmi and her mother finally arrived in South Korea with the help of the South Korean embassy. Yeonmi saw the tall buildings and the girls with fashionable clothes just like what she had seen in the smuggled movies she had enjoyed so much. Ironically, although they seemed a world apart, the girls shared the same ethnicity with her and spoke the same language.  To help all North Korean defectors like Yeonmi resettle in South Korea, the government of South Korea assembled them together in a big class, where they learned how to use digital devices and adapt to a new life.
    
    Yeonmi and her mother learned how to open a bank account, how to use an ATM machine, and even how to rent a house. For her, learning these skills was easy. What she hated most was to speak out and express her opinions. In one class, the teacher asked her what her favorite color was. She just did not know the answer. In her mind, she could not have her own opinions, and her opinions meant nothing to others. 
    
    Yeojin seemed to live in a totally different country, though she looked the same and spoke the same language with South Koreans. She was afraid that she could not engage with society and that she could not make friends. Fortunately, Yeonmi was a girl who never surrendered to fate. To adapt better to her new life, she imitated the accent of South Koreans to communicate better with them, she watched dramas so she could chat about them with her classmates, and she worked hard to learn English by watching American movies and listening to English radio stations. She was so hungry for knowledge that she read many books every day.
    
    She started to think seriously about human rights and freedom. She passed her school exams and went to Dongguk University to study law.

• 8.Reunion

  • Yeonmi’s mother worked in a small factory to support the two of them, and Yeonmi got better at her studies. The only thing they were worried about was Yeonmi’s missing sister. Yeonmi tried every possible way to find her sister.
    
    Not long after she landed in South Korea, Yeonmi accepted invitations from the media for broadcasting interviews. She thought this might be a good way to tell her sister where they were. To her disappointment, it did not work.
    
    At the end of 2013, when Yeonmi was in the United States to do some volunteer work, she received a call that ended her seven-year wait.
    
    Yeonmi’s sister had finally found her and their mother. She had endured her own long and complex ordeal. When Yeonmi and her mother were living in China, Yeonmi’s sister was only a few blocks away.  However, Yeonmi’s sister could not connect with them because they had concealed their identities and were living an isolated and hidden existence.
    It wasn’t until Yeonmi’s sister arrived in South Korea by crossing Southeast Asia that she discovered where her family was. The three women embraced each other, crying tears of joy. After an arduously long separation, they were together once again.

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