We all know about North Korea (at least, we think we do).
North Korea is a giant police state, and it is a giant authoritarian, and totalitarian regime.
It’s a place where you can’t have your own thoughts.
It’s a place where you can’t be an individual, (instead, you’re basically a clone).
It’s a place where every single day, you struggle each and everyday to survive.
Yeonmi Park is a human rights activist, who fled North Korea at a very young age. And… (the North Korean regime doesn’t like her very much, in fact, Kim Jong Un hates her with a burning passion because she exposes what it’s ACTUALLY like to live in North Korea).
Yeonmi has a YouTube channel, a place where she discusses the TRUE and REAL North Korea.
But, her book, “In Order To Live” is even more detailed. It sheds real light on what her experience was like (from birth), up until what her life was like in North Korea before she escaped.
There were many heartbreaking parts of this book that I won’t share (because I think that everyone should read this book).
But, what I will tell you is that freedom is not free. It is something that is continuously earned.
Yeonmi is strongly against big government. In a TED Talk she gave, she explains what she learned.
As soon as I read the last page of this book, a quote from my all time favorite president Ronald Reagan came to mind, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed down for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children what it was once like in the United States where men were free”.
So, in order to live, we must be free.