‘I see North Korea as one of the most evil, inhuman situations happening on earth’

Park Yeon-mi managed to escape from the hell of North Korea and is now an activist and student based in Seoul. She recently published a memoir of her harrowing journey to freedom

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North Korean human rights activist Park Yeon-mi, left, cries during a talk at the Women in the World Summit, with BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet, in London in October. Photo: AP

Adam Wright

Published: 8:00am, 9 Dec 2015Updated: 8:00am, 9 Dec 2015

As a teenager in 2007, Park Yeon-mi made the arduous journey from her homeland of North Korea to China, where she fell into the hands of human traffickers before escaping to South Korea. Today the 22-year-old is a student and human rights activist whose speech at the One Young World summit in Dublin attracted more than one million hits online. In September, Park published her harrowing memoir, In Order to Live. She talks about her life and her book.

What was it like growing up in North Korea?

Like living in a different universe. The oppression is like nothing imaginable – I literally believed that Kim Jong-il could read my mind. It was a religion to me, not just a regime, [Kim] was an almighty god who could do everything.

You have said you lived a “privileged” life. What do you mean?

That I could eat three times a day. Not having a car, not having 24-hour electricity, but having some candy or an apple once a month. Basically, I didn’t get killed by the [North Korean] famine so that means I was pretty lucky.

Did you lose any of your family in the 1994-98 famine?