In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom

Chapter 5 is mainly an introspection on the concept of “doublethink,” a term coined by George Orwell that Park describes as “the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time--and somehow not go crazy” (49). This concept characterizes the lives of North Korean people, who seek out imported consumer products and ideas for entertainment and emotional escape, without using them as a tool to critically assess their own destitution.

The chapter starts with a description of Yeonmi’s difficult experience at elementary school. All subjects taught at school are “delivered with a dose of propaganda” and reinforces the Kims’ status as gods (44). This narrative of worship is reinforced in people’s daily lives through cultural channels such as documentaries and movies. Park quotes Jang Jin Sung, another North Korea defector, in coining this phenomenon an “emotional dictatorship.”

North Koreans are exposed to this indoctrination from infancy when they are carried by their mother to their local inminban (neighborhood “People’s units”) meetings once a week. Public executions are performed to reinforce the regime’s legal power and dissuade people from disobedience. Radio and television are wired to only broadcast state-sanctioned programs, and tampering can be punished through imprisonment in labor camps.

Nevertheless, illegal TV programs and VCR cassettes are sold as luxuries and find their way into the hands of North Koreans, especially in border regions like Hyesan. Park believes people who are oppressed seek these products as a way to escape from their difficult lives for a short while. Her father’s business in trade allows her to watch Disney and Hollywood movies, giving her a “first small taste of freedom” (49). While she marvels at their lives, Yeonmi never believes she can emulate the people on screen.

The chapter ends on a memory of Hwang Ok Soon, Park’s maternal grandmother. Despite being poor, she helped and fed neighborhood children by eating very little herself. Park remembers her fondly because she was knowledgeable about the world outside North Korea. Having lived in the South prior to the Korean War, she dreams of a unified Chosun. The famine of the 1990s hits her family hard, so she takes an abundance of sleeping pills one day to stop being an economic burden to them. The chaos caused by her death is a memory Park wishes to but cannot forget.

The focus of Chapter 6 is Park’s first visit to Pyongyang in 2002, through which she comments on her parents’ complicated marital relationship. The chapter begins at the turn of the century, which marks an economic high point for Park’s family. Her father’s metal smuggling business in Pyongyang is doing well, and for a time, her family lives in abundance.

However, Park’s father becomes entangled with his Pyongyang business partner, a young woman named Wan Sun. Park explains that North Korean society favors men over women, so it is not unusual for husbands to beat their wives and entertain relations with other women. Wan Sun works as Jin Sik’s assistant, and he rents a room in her apartment where she lived with her family. In 2001, she convinces him that his wife is cheating on him, which upsets Keum Sook so much she asks for a divorce. Park’s parents end up reconciling when Keum Sook’s brother refuses to let her keep her children if she divorces her husband.

In the summer of 2002, Yeonmi visits her father in Pyongyang for the first time. Park describes the experience as magical because to the people living in the countryside, visiting North Korea’s capital in their lifetime is like fulfilling a dream. Yeonmi resides with her father in Wan Sun’s apartment and overhears her one night asking her father to divorce her mother, but she is young to understand their relationship. Instead, she focuses on the night lights illuminating the city, goes to the zoo for the first time, and tries her first fizzy drink. She later realizes that her father was not fooled by North Korea’s propaganda.

The chapter concludes with Yeonmi’s train ride home, where she observes the cityscape gradually disappear, replaced by dirt and poverty. When her father returns to Pyongyang, he receives a phone call about Wan Sun, who has been maintaining a side business with another smuggler and has come under the scrutiny of the police. Yeonmi’s mother warns him to stay away from Wan Sun, but he ignores her advice.