— A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom
Select Quotes
Part One: North Korea
One: Even The Birds And Mice Can Hear You Whisper
When you have so little, just the smallest thing can make you happy—and that is one of the very few features of life in North Korea that I actually miss. – Page 20
The country I grew up in was not like the one my parents had known as children in the 1960s and 1970s. When they were young, the state took care of everyone’s basic needs: clothes, medical care, food. After the Cold War ended, the Communist countries that had been propping up the North Korean regime all but abandoned it, and our state-controlled economy collapsed. North Koreans were suddenly on their own. – Page 22
Three: Swallows And Magpies
The laws of physics she had studied in college were overcome by the propaganda that was drilled into her all her life. – Page 41
Four: Tears Of Blood
They told us about the amazing items you could find in the trash in China, even perfectly good clothes. Nothing went to waste in North Korea, and we couldn’t imagine throwing anything out that could be used again, even empty plastic bottles, bags, and tin cans. Those were like gold to us. – Page 48
Five: The Dear Leader
Instead of scary fairy tales, we had stories set in a filthy and disgusting place called South Korea, where homeless children went barefoot and begged in the streets. It never occurred to me until after I arrived in Seoul that those books were really describing life in North Korea. – Page 53
That story inspired my classmates in Hyesan to play military games, too. But nobody ever wanted to be on the American imperialist team, because they would always have to lose the battle. – Page 54
North Koreans are raised to venerate our fathers and our elders; it’s part of the culture we inherited from Confucianism. And so in our collective minds, Kim Il Sung was our beloved grandfather and Kim Jong Il was our father. – Page 54
In North Korea, it’s not enough for the government to control where you go, what you learn, where you work, and what you say. They need to control you through your emotions, making you a slave to the state by destroying your individuality, and your ability to react to situations based on your own experience of the world. – Page 55
One time when my mother was preparing food in the kitchen and I grabbed a newspaper, I had to read it for a long time before I realized I had just finished the title of our Leader: “Our great comrade Kim Jong Il, the general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission, and the supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, said today . . – Page 56
She couldn’t believe that in her own country a human’s life had less value than an animal’s. – Page 58
I think it’s because people are so oppressed in North Korea, and daily life is so grim and colorless, that people are desperate for any kind of escape. When you watch a movie, your imagination can carry you away for two whole hours. – Page 59
Six: City Of Dreams
Most impressive were the thirty thousand to fifty thousand schoolchildren who had trained for many months to sit in the risers behind the stage, holding up colored squares like a living mural to create enormous, ever-changing scenes and slogans glorifying the regime. Only much later did I realize how abusive it was for these children to perform for hours and hours without even a small break to eat or use the bathroom. – Page 75
Seven: The Darkest Nights
We watched for a long time as the train pulled away. I was only eight years old, but I felt like my childhood was departing with her. – Page 81
Eight: A Song For Chosun
She was also engaged to a local policeman in an arranged marriage. I liked him because he brought home videos to watch that the police had confiscated in raids. – Page 91
After we had finished our public confessions, it was time to criticize others. I would always jump up and volunteer. I was really good at it. Usually I would pick one classmate who would then have to stand up and listen intently while I listed his or her transgressions: He was not following what our Leader taught us. Or she was not participating in the group mission. When I was finished, my victim would have to thank me and assure everyone that he or she would correct the behavior. Eventually it was my turn to be criticized. I hated it, of course, but I would never let it show in my face. – Page 94
In the morning, after we finished our collective labor cleaning the streets or polishing the monuments, the schoolchildren were expected to line up and march to class. We would swing our arms in unison, singing cheerful songs with lyrics like, “How bright is our socialist country! We are the new generation!” We usually did the same thing going home at the end of a day of study. – Page 95
The only time I was happy in the fields was when I found a mouse hole, because mice were doing the same kind of work. You could dig up their homes and find a couple of pounds of corn or beans they were storing for later. If we were lucky, we would catch the mice, too. – Page 96
One of the big problems in North Korea was a fertilizer shortage. When the economy collapsed in the 1990s, the Soviet Union stopped sending fertilizer to us and our own factories stopped producing it. Whatever was donated from other countries couldn’t get to the farms because the transportation system had also broken down. This led to crop failures that made the famine even worse. So the government came up with a campaign to fill the fertilizer gap with a local and renewable source: human and animal waste. Every worker and schoolchild had a quota to fill. You can imagine what kind of problems this created for our families. Every member of the household had a daily assignment, so when we got up in the morning, it was like a war. My aunts were the most competitive. “Remember not to poop in school!” my aunt in Kowon told me every day. “Wait to do it here!” Whenever my aunt in Songnam-ri traveled away from home and had to poop somewhere else, she loudly complained that she didn’t have a plastic bag with her to save it. “Next time I’ll remember!” she would say. Thankfully, she never actually did this. The big effort to collect waste peaked in January, so it could be ready for growing season. Our bathrooms in North Korea were usually far away from the house, so you had to be careful that the neighbors didn’t steal from you at night. Some people would lock up their outhouses to keep the poop thieves away. At school the teachers would send us out into the streets to find poop and carry it back to class. So if we saw a dog pooping in the street, it was like gold. My uncle in Kowon had a big dog who made a big poop—and everyone in the family would fight over it. This is not something you see every day in the West. – Page 96
But I still don’t like salad very much because it reminds me of those hard times. – Page 98
In fact, sometimes she would buy pelts from the school that she had just sold to customers looking to fill their quotas. This insane system was good for my mother, but hard on everybody else. – Page 98
Nine: Jangmadang Generation
Salted radishes are the poor person’s kimchi; we couldn’t afford the ingredients necessary to make the spicy sauce for the traditional pickled cabbage. – Page 104
Nobody had home computers, and there was, of course, no connection to the Internet to download illegal foreign media. Instead it was smuggled across the river from China every night. – Page 107
I knew a few boys who wanted to date me, and each tried climbing the stairs to our eighth-floor apartment and knocking on the door. My mother would get upset and yell through the closed door, “Get out! Go away!” She wouldn’t let me out. To get around her, the boys gave me a signal in school, and in the evening they would come by and stand outside the building, shouting the code name so that I could hear it and make an excuse to come down. Of course, my sister also had boys wanting to date her. And there were lots of other teenage girls in the apartment building, so after sunset it got very noisy out there. – Page 109
Ten: The Lights Of China
Looking back, I wonder how we all could have been so naïve. None of us even knew the concept of “human trafficking,” and couldn’t imagine anything so evil as selling other people. And we weren’t really capable of critical thinking because we had been trained not to ask questions. I actually thought that if we could just cross that river without being arrested or shot by the soldiers, Eunmi and I would be okay. But then, when you are so hungry and desperate, you are willing to take any risk in order to live. – Page 117
But the small amount of anesthetic they gave me did not last long enough, and I woke up before the surgery was finished. I can’t even describe the pain. They had to hold me down because I was screaming so much. I thought I would lose my mind, but they finished the surgery anyway. Later my mother brought me some painkillers and I finally passed out. – Page 119
“Why can’t you take these people away and bury them!” she demanded when a nurse walked by. The nurse shrugged. “The government won’t come and collect the bodies until there are seven of them. That’s only five,” – Page 121
Part Two: China
Twelve: The Other Side Of Darkness
Then he threw my mother to the ground and raped her right in front of me, like an animal. I saw such fear in her eyes, but there was nothing I could do except stand there and shiver, begging silently for it to end. That was my introduction to sex. – Page 136
Thirteen: A Deal With The Devil
I was beginning to realize that all the food in the world, and all the running shoes, could not make me happy. The material things were worthless. I had lost my family. I wasn’t loved, I wasn’t free, and I wasn’t safe. I was alive, but everything that made life worth living was gone. – Page 147
As we walked from the bus station to the apartment, I was feeling very strong and calm, because I had already made the decision to kill myself instead of accepting this life. I had lost control of everything else, but this was one last choice I could make. I had cried every single day since I left North Korea, so much that I couldn’t believe I had that many tears inside of me. But on the last day of my life, there would be no more crying. – Page 150
I discovered that physical pain helped me feel less pain inside, and for a while pinching and scratching myself with a rough cloth became a habit. Sometimes it was the only way to escape the aching in my heart. – Page 152
Fourteen: A Birthday Gift
I was so thankful that he treated me like an adult. But I could also tell he was crushed to see me robbed of my childhood. – Page 165
Fifteen: Dust And Bones
I didn’t know anything about cancer because it is so uncommon in North Korea. This wasn’t to say the disease didn’t exist; it probably just went undiagnosed. Most people didn’t die of cancer because other things killed them first. – Page 168
Sixteen: Kidnapped
But as depressed as I was, I realized that there was a force inside me that would not give up. Maybe it was just anger, or maybe it was an inexplicable sense that my life might mean something someday. – Page 177
I felt as trapped as I had ever been in my life. Just like in North Korea, I lived with a fear so deep and heavy that it could fill up the night sky and pin my soul to the ground with its weight. – Page 182
It occurred to me that Hongwei missed me only when I had been stolen from him. – Page 185
Seventeen: Like Bread From The Sky
My chat room got very popular, and sometimes I had men from six or seven Web sites calling in to my screen at the same time. I had to try not to mix them up and answer the wrong man’s questions. – Page 188
And maybe that old fortune-teller was right, because despite everything that has happened to me, I have been very lucky in my life. – Page 191
Eighteen: Following The Stars
When we arrived, my mother and I had never heard of Jesus Christ. We got some help from one of the other defectors who explained it this way: “Just think of God as Kim Il Sung and Jesus as Kim Jong Il. Then it makes more sense.” – Page 194
This is where we praised the Lord and repented our sins, which seemed like a familiar ritual to anyone from North Korea. We sat in a circle and criticized ourselves and begged God for forgiveness for all we had done wrong. – Page 196
The pastor shook his head gravely. “No, you are sinners. And I cannot allow you to go to Mongolia in a sinful state. You will put all the innocent ones at risk.” – Page 197
The parents of the little boy had spoken to him to make sure he didn’t cry and give away our position as he was carried through the desert. Luckily, he was a good child and didn’t make a sound, although we had sedatives ready if he needed them. – Page 200
Minutes later, the big border fence took shape in the half-light just ahead of us. I thought it was another mirage, but then we saw the holes in the wire and bits of cloth snagged where others had crossed before us. This was it! As we scrambled through one of the holes, the heavy barbs ripped at my pants and my coat as if they were trying to rake me back into China. – Page 203
Part Three: South Korea
Nineteen: The Freedom Birds
restroom. I thought I had seen modern toilets in China, but this was incomprehensible. The bowls were so shiny and clean, I thought that was where you washed your hands. – Page 213
But the strangest thing was being asked to pee into a cup. What? I had no idea how to do that. And they gave me such an awesome cup, I didn’t want to use it for that! – Page 213
Without hesitating, I said, “I want to study and go to university.” He snorted with surprise and said, “Oh, I don’t think you can do that.” Then he added, “But I suppose everybody should get a second chance.” A second chance? I thought. A second chance is what criminals get. I knew I wasn’t a criminal; I did what I had to do to survive and save my family. But now my heart sank. I realized I had no hope in this place. I felt dirty and lost, just like I had when the pastor was lecturing me about sin. If this was the way people were going to treat me when they found out who I was, then I would have to become somebody else. Somebody who could be accepted and succeed in South Korea. – Page 216
Twenty: Dreams And Nightmares
In a way, Hanawon is like a boot camp for time travelers from the Korea of the 1950s and ’60s who grew up in a world without ATMs, shopping malls, credit cards, or the Internet. – Page 219
Our schoolbooks no longer used “American bastards” as units for addition and subtraction—now we had cute, colorful things like apples and oranges. – Page 220
Until now, I had always thought that being free meant being able to wear jeans and watch whatever movies I wanted without worrying about being arrested. Now I realized that I had to think all the time—and it was exhausting. There were times when I wondered whether, if it wasn’t for the constant hunger, I would be better off in North Korea, where all my thinking and all my choices were taken care of for me. – Page 223
Twenty-One: A Hungry Mind
I read to fill my mind and to block out the bad memories. But I found that as I read more, my thoughts were getting deeper, my vision wider, and my emotions less shallow. The vocabulary in South Korea was so much richer than the one I had known, and when you have more words to describe the world, you increase your ability to think complex thoughts. – Page 236
Twenty-Two: Now On My Way To Meet You
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I believed in a benevolent power guiding the universe, a loving force that somehow nudged us in the direction of good instead of evil. – Page 242
Twenty-Three: Amazing Grace
I was suddenly in enemy territory. As we filed off the plane, my head was filled with images of big-nosed Yankee soldiers driving bayonets into helpless North Korean mothers. Propaganda from my childhood was still embedded in my brain, and the feelings I was trained to feel could still pop up without warning. – Page 255
I was surprised that he cried when I was finished with my story. I told him that all I wanted was a chance for freedom, just as he had here in America. The man’s emotional response opened my mind to the power of my own story. It gave me hope for my own life. By simply telling my story, I had something to offer, too. – Page 258
Twenty-Four: Homecoming
I worry that when I start to cry, I may never be able to stop. So I always have to keep these feelings deep down inside me. People who meet me think I’m the most upbeat and positive person they have ever met. My wounds are well hidden. – Page 268
It’s an odd thing for someone who has just turned twenty-one to be writing the story of her life, especially someone with a secret she has been trying to hide for years. – Page 270