Park’s remarkable and inspiring story shines a light on a country whose inhabitants live in misery beyond comprehension. Park’s important memoir showcases the strength of the human spirit and one young woman’s incredible determination to never be hungry again.” —Publishers Weekly

One man, in particular, stands out – Hongwei. He’s a violent gangster, but he also clearly loved you. Do you have mixed emotions about him now? He, after all, helped you escape. I’m still scared about food. In North Korea, hunger means death. Here, hunger just means you go to the corner to buy something. I worry about food. I eat a lot – too much. But one day I will be fully adapted to the free world. There are thousands of people who are going through this and their stories cannot be heard. If you can be more open about this, then it will help others talk about it. In North Korean society, for a woman to admit these kinds of things, it’s the end of the world. Our tradition is purity, virginity – for a woman, that is everything. A woman cannot talk about the bad things that happen to her. So writing this did feel like the end of the world for me. Your mother and sister went through journeys as difficult as your own. What did this experience teach you about the importance of family? I really hope this book will shine a light on the darkest place in the world. We don’t feel like human beings: people don’t feel that they can connect with North Koreans, that we’re so different. People are making jokes about Kim Jong-un’s haircut, about how fat he is – this country is a joke, really. It is a joke, but it is a tragic joke, that this kind of thing can happen to 25 million people. These things shouldn’t be allowed to happen to anyone, because another Holocaust is happening and the west is saying: “It isn’t happening, it’s a joke, it’s funny – things can’t be that serious.” But we are repeating history – there are thousands of testimonies, you can see the concentration camps from satellite photos, so many people are dying. Just listen to my testimony, to the testimonies in front of the United Nations. I just hope people will read the book and will listen.It must be a sign that you’re doing something right that the Kim regime feels the need to spread malicious propaganda about you? Family are everything; everyone understands the strength of family. For me, they were the reason that I managed to get by while I was in captivity and now they are the reason to live in freedom. They are the biggest blessing I have in the world. Of course we won’t let that happen. I’m not going to let that happen. I’ll live longer than Kim Jong-un – he’s fatter than me. He doesn’t like me.

With a few notable exceptions, the men in your story are monsters, exploiting women for gain or pleasure. Later, I could understand him in some ways. I thought about this a lot. I was going to kill him. I said I’d never forgive him, that there was nothing he could do to make me feel that he could justify what he did. But people can make mistakes. He’d lost his own parents, he knew what it was to live without your parents, so he knew what I was going through. So I cannot hate him any more, but everything is very complex; I cannot say exactly what I feel. I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.”– Yeonmi Park