68 pages • 2 hours read
Yeonmi Park, Maryanne VollersIn Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 12-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Other Side of Darkness”
China is not the deliverance Yeonmi envisioned. Upon arriving on the other side of the shore in Chaingbai, their broker, a bald man of Korean descent, rapes Yeonmi’s mother when she refuses to let him touch her daughter. They are driven to the broker’s house, where his Korean wife reveals they are to be sold separately as brides. Yeonmi and her mother resist, but when faced with the prospect of being sent back to North Korea, Yeonmi makes the decision to stay in China.
They are soon purchased by a man named Zhifang, a Chinese mid-level broker in the bride trafficking business. Yeonmi and her mother now realize why they were told to lie about their age and relationship: A mother and daughter will fetch a much lower price than two young adults. Both feel thoroughly humiliated at being treated like objects but are given no other option. Before they leave for Changchun with Zhifang and his wife, Young Sun, the bald broker rapes Yeonmi’s mother right in front of her.
In Changchun, Zhifang treats them to a lavish meal and tells them another man will soon come to match them with their future husbands. When Yeonmi’s mother protests and reveals Yeonmi’s true age, Zhifang agrees to keep her until she is older. Yeonmi’s mother is purchased by Hongwei, the man at the top of the bride trafficking network, and sent to marry a Chinese farmer. She is expected to do labor while being treated as less than human. The cell phone she was given by Zhifang is confiscated, and Yeonmi loses contact with her for many months.
Chapter 13 Summary: “A Deal with the Devil”
Three days after Yeonmi’s mother is sold off, Zhifang tries to rape Yeonmi, but she fights back and refuses to yield. Annoyed, Zhifang gets rid of her by selling her as a bride to Hongwei, saying she is 16 to fetch a higher price. Hongwei takes Yeonmi to Jinzhou and treats her to food and luxury goods to win her over. In the following weeks, he repeatedly tries to persuade her to sleep with him, but Yeonmi fights back. Being Han Chinese, Hongwei does not speak Korean, and Yeonmi does not know Chinese. Eventually, Hongwei takes her to a North Korean girl he previously sold so she can translate for them. Yeonmi begs the Korean girl to help her escape, and she accepts to hide her. However, Yeonmi soon realizes she was tricked: The Korean girl only helped her so she could sell her back to Hongwei for a price.
With a solid network of connections in the underworld, Hongwei inevitably finds Yeonmi a week later. As he escorts her back to his apartment, she decides to kill herself. Hongwei sees her determination and offers a bargain. If she sleeps with him and becomes his bride, he will bring her mother and father back. Yeonmi accepts the deal and is forced to sleep with Hongwei. She thinks of it as a business transaction as a means to cope. She throws up every night she is with him until she eventually becomes numb to it.
Two months after her arrival in China, Yeonmi begins to work for Hongwei. She has picked up Chinese and is now acting as a translator for newly trafficked North Korean women. Her first transaction is to buy back her mother. Determined to reunite with her family, Yeonmi becomes insensitive to the act of trafficking girls like herself. Eventually, Yeonmi learns to live with Hongwei, who, upon learning she is only 13, begins treating her more gently.
Chapter 14 Summary: “A Birthday Gift”
On August 14, 2007, Hongwei’s men locate Yeonmi’s father in his apartment in Hyesan. He is lent a phone to speak with his wife and daughter. Upon learning that he is not doing well, Yeonmi promises to help him escape and take care of him once they are reunited in China.
Meanwhile, Yeonmi begins adapting to her new life. Whereas her mother stays home to take care of household chores, Yeonmi travels across the countryside with illegal brides to help Hongwei’s business. She is tasked with translating and persuading the brides to cooperate if they do not want to return to North Korea.
Yeonmi learns about the reality of prostitution when Hongwei takes her to Huludao, a port city visited by foreigners interested in sex tourism. Her mother befriends a North Korean refugee named Myung Ok, who was repatriated and tortured before making her second escape. Yeonmi and her mother vow to die before being sent back to North Korea.
On October 4, 2007, Yeonmi’s 14th birthday, she is reunited with her father for the first time in six months. When he is checked in at a modern hospital in China, Yeonmi’s father is diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and given a few months to live.
Chapters 12-14 Analysis
Chapters 12-14 take place in the first six months of Park’s stay in China, and they illustrate how difficult survival remains for defectors even after escaping North Korea. Women like Park and her mother leave in the hopes of finding more sustainable and humane living conditions, but the cruel reality of human trafficking forces them into another type of suffering. Trading one darkness for another, Park contends with making decisions and shouldering responsibilities crucial to ensuring her and her mother’s survival. She can no longer rely on adults: Her father did not escape with her, and her mother does not pick up Chinese as quickly as she does. At 13 years old, Park has become responsible for her family’s welfare.
Although she is no longer hungry—which was one of the driving factors that compelled her to leave North Korea—she does not find happiness in this material gain due to the heavy price she has to pay. In these chapters, Park loses her innocence, her empathy, and her faith in humanity, but they also demonstrate her resourcefulness and her practical mind. Most importantly, they allow Park to shed light on the debasing conditions in which trafficked North Korean women live. Naive about the ways of the world and with little power to save themselves, these women are at the mercy of their abusers and reduced to their sexual capacity.
In sum, the conditions for survival in China are different but no less harsh than in North Korea. Park must sacrifice her humanity in order to make it out alive. Despite being trafficked and raped, she is forced to help her captor sell other girls for profit. Park cannot feel pity for the victims of Hongwei’s trafficking business and cannot think of herself as one of the victims because the reality is too painful for her to bear. Instead, she focuses on practical things, such as realizing her goals of reuniting with her family. The first months she spends in China forge Park into a pragmatic negotiator and a resilient young adult capable of making hard decisions. However, these are traits she forcibly acquired in extremely dire circumstances. Park reminds readers that in divulging her story, she hopes to inform readers about the inhumanity of human trafficking.
