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 15-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Dust and Bones”
After her father leaves the hospital, Yeonmi is confronted with the task of telling him he does not have much longer to live. She learns that after he defected, his family was interrogated and some were tortured. He expresses the wish to go back to North Korea so as not to become a financial burden to his young daughter, but she refuses to send him back.
In 2008, Yeonmi’s financial situation takes another turn for the worse. With the onset of the Beijing Olympics and increasing international pressure to improve human rights, the Chinese government starts a crackdown on the bride trafficking business. Hongwei has an increasingly difficult time turning a profit and occasionally takes out his anger on Yeonmi. He laments that he must take care of not only her, but also her mother and her sick father. Yeonmi is stuck between helping him conduct his business and staying home to take care of her dying father. They gather the money to take one final family picture together. When Yeonmi’s father dies, his eyes remain open, which, according to North Korean custom, means he has unfinished business in this world. Yeonmi believes this to be a result of her sister’s disappearance and is filled with determination to find Eunmi once more. Hongwei cremates Jin Sik’s body in secret to avoid being detected by the authorities. Yeonmi and her mother bury his ashes in a secret location in the town of Yangshanzhen.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Kidnapped”
As the bride trafficking business worsens, Hongwei begins to gamble away his money, and Yeonmi finds her monthly stipend reduced so significantly that she cannot not continue without another source of income. Yeonmi deals with the guilt of taking medicines to abort her rapist’s child at the first sign of pregnancy. Now, she is faced with the prospect of having to sell her mother once again to survive.
In the end, Yeonmi makes the difficult decision to sell her mother to another Chinese farmer. However, when she presents Hongwei with the money, he gambles it away. Yeonmi feels so miserable she begins to search for a way out. Although she had no concept of dignity at the time, Park believes in retrospect that she had hit her breaking point.
Yeonmi asks Hongwei’s gangster friends for a fake ID so she can find work. She is led to a man named Huang, who takes a liking to her and locks her away in his apartment. He attempts to rape her, but Yeonmi fights him off. Eventually, Hongwei’s men find her, but Huang still refuses to hand her back. Hongwei threatens to engage in an all-out war with Huang, surprising himself in his fervor to bring Yeonmi back. In the end, Yeonmi tricks Huang into believing she will abandon Hongwei if she is given the opportunity to see her mother again.
As soon as Huang allows her to leave, Yeonmi contacts Hongwei and reunites with her mother. The farmers that bought Yeonmi’s mother are now contemplating returning her because of increased police surveillance. Her mother has resumed contact with Myung Ok, who is working in Shenyang and can help them find employment. Yeonmi convinces Hongwei to let them leave to fend for themselves. He agrees because he has had recurring nightmares about Yeonmi’s father and thinks he is being haunted by his ghost. Yeonmi returns the jewelry Hongwei bought for her and leaves with her mother for Shenyang.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Like Bread From the Sky”
Once in Shenyang, Yeonmi and her mother reunite with Myung Ok. She explains that she works for a Chinese boss in the adult chat-room industry. Her job is to keep men engaged in their online meeting rooms, and it can involve sexual acts. Yeonmi at first tries to find other types of work, but without an ID card, her options are limited. She decides she will try chatting online until she earns enough money to purchase a fake ID card.
Myung Ok cleverly buys her own chat-room franchise shortly thereafter and offers Yeonmi and her mother a better salary. Soon, they can make enough to eat and do not live in constant fear of being raped. However, Yeonmi does not believe they are free; they do not possess ID cards and face the risk of deportation every day.
Everything changes when Yeonmi’s mother meets a North Korean woman by the name of Hae Soon. She informs them about Christian missionaries in Qingdao who are known to help North Korean refugees escape to South Korea through Mongolia. Although the trip is dangerous, Yeonmi once again convinces her mother to take the risk. Yeonmi desires to be treated with dignity, and escaping to South Korea would grant her citizenship and freedom. Once the decision is made, Yeonmi begins saving money for the trip. One of her regular online clients, a South Korean man, learns of her situation and offers to help her financially. With his help, Yeonmi and her mother leave for Qingdao.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Following the Stars”
The missionary in charge of helping North Korean defectors escape China through Mongolia is a South Korean pastor. He is aided by an ethnic Korean woman and a Chinese Christian man. Due to the Chinese government’s hostility toward organized religion, Park never learned the true name of her rescuers. They are taught about Jesus Christ as they wait for their turn to escape. Yeonmi, who grew up in atheistic North Korea, does not understand the Christian faith at first.
Coincidentally, Yeonmi and her mother are moved to a group scheduled to depart soon. The pastor calls for one final prayer meeting before the big day and asks everyone to confess their sins and repent. When Yeonmi does not elaborate on her time as a sex worker, the pastor insists she verbalize it publicly or he will not allow them safe passage to Mongolia. In the end, he does not force the matter, but Yeonmi leaves “feeling dirty and ashamed for what [she] had done to survive” (157).
The group of defectors are tasked with crossing the freezing Gobi desert at night without getting caught. Yeonmi calls Hongwei one last time to let him know of her plans, and he wishes her luck. The Christian missionary guides them up to the Chinese side of the border and prays for their safety. Yeonmi is moved to tears that a stranger could care so much about them. The trip is arduous and bitterly cold, but Yeonmi and her group are found by the Mongolian patrol. They arrive in Mongolia on March 4, 2008—her father’s birth date.
Chapters 15-18 Analysis
Chapters 15-18 reflect a period of financial decline for Park. Her time in China began in material wealth due to Hongwei’s influence, but the 2008 crackdown on bride trafficking has a significant impact on his business, and Park can only partake in Hongwei’s financial downfall. However, these chapters also mark the start of Park’s journey toward independence. Whereas she was previously at the mercy of Hongwei, she has now learned enough Chinese to navigate the underground world without his constant surveillance. Park hits an emotional breaking point when Hongwei gambles away the money she earned selling her mother. For the first time, the threat of going hungry and being treated as less than human does not leave Park feeling helpless but pushes her toward seeking employment. Although she made the hard decision to sell her mother again, Park had enough resources this time to find her mother a kind husband and ensure her material well-being.
In these chapters, Park demonstrates how the wish to seek employment and financial stability allowed her to gain a degree of independence. She makes the decision to buy a fake ID to work, and she is ultimately her own savior after Huang kidnaps her. When she and her mother leave for Shenyang to work for Myung Ok, they are freed from the threat of being raped every night and achieve a degree of independence. However, even with the capacity to earn her own keep, Park knows she is not truly free. North Korean defectors in China are at the mercy of the government the same way they were victims in the Hermit Kingdom. The threat of deportation looms large, and they must remain undercover to prevent detection. Although Park and her mother no longer have to endure the threat of rape and physical violence, they live in fear of the authorities and are treated like criminals.
Park finds a new purpose after learning about how to escape to South Korea. Holding the wish of her dying father close to heart, she decides to risk her life once more in the hopes of finding her sister and living truly free. Fleeing to South Korea is considered high treason in the North, and any captured defectors can expect the worst outcome. However, Park stands firm in her decision to leave China and even prepares a blade to kill herself should she or her mother be intercepted by authorities.
Park also expresses gratitude toward her saviors, the volunteers at the Christian mission in Qingdao. Although her experience with them is not always positive—especially when the pastor tries to make her publicly confess to being raped—they teach her to find solace in believing in a higher power for good. Whereas she previously only knew to worship the Kims, she has now learned about an alternate explanation to the meaning of life. Finally, in surviving the Gobi desert, Park has achieved another milestone and is one step closer toward freedom.
