I could give examples but read a very well-respected journalist's ( Mary Ann Jolley's article in The Diplomat on all the discrepancies between the author's various retellings of her story. If someone really wants to read about the actual experiences of a female North Korean defector I would recommend the book The Girl With Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee. Eine Biographie, die man gelesen haben sollte, die aufklärt und meinen Blick auf die Welt nochmal ein bisschen geschärft hat.

To hear directly from one who has lived in these conditions and seen the horrors of starvation speaks volumes to me. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Everybody is more than ready to acknowledge and show their support for yet another hero overcoming all obstacles, but what about the half of the book that doesn't seem real at all? In the meantime, the love theme is casually inserted in the story, when a rich, smart, cool and older (I am running out of adjectives) kid falls for the 13 year Park, despite the social class gap. Here, Chinese brokers rape Korean women left and right, but they never manage to rape Park because she screams and kicks.

A powerful piece that pulls on the heartstrings of all but the most detached readers, Park provides a degree of determination that no obstacle is insurmountable. I’d read previously of the struggles first encountered by North Koreans during their assimilation into South Korean life, however I wasn’t fully aware of the prejudices, and also the lack of understanding, that Yeonmi faces on encountering native South Koreans. To see what they see and feel what they feel when they come into a completely new country with different language, customs, or even history, while still reeling with the trauma of their past and escape. This book is the story of Park's struggle to survive in the darkest, most repressive country on earth; her harrowing escape through China's underworld of smugglers and human traffickers; and then her escape from China across the Gobi desert to Mongolia, with only the stars to guide her way, and from there to South Korea and at last to freedom; and finally her emergence as a leading human rights activist - all before her 21st birthday. However, her father has a great sense for business, and starts smuggling gold and such out of North Korea.

It's a truly remarkable story, but more than that, it shows a truly remarkable young woman who is resilient and hopeful even in the bleakest of moments. Three amazing courageous women who all should be proud of what they have had to overcome for something we take for granted at times, freedom. She has been an activist speaking out against North Korea and in favour of freedom for nearly a decade and it is amazing to think she is still not yet 30.

com (though, it does use experts and other defectors to confirm her story is off, they also use a man who travelled there and explored "freely" while on business. There were times when I wondered whether, if it wasn’t for the constant hunger, I would be better off in North Korea, where all my thinking and all my choices were taken care of for me".

Never have I imagined what the truth is actually like for North Korean people, and it was devastating to read about famine, extreme poverty, and schools where even mathematics were turned into propaganda to enforce the North Korean regime and diminish the “nasty Yankees” from America. Beyond her support of oppressive ideologies, her logic is awful – like in the tweet about transphobia, of course you can care about humans rights abuses like murder and starvation and also care about trans rights? The utterly alien mindset caused by a very limited mental horizon is perhaps one of the hardest aspects for the Western reader to get his or her head round - for example when asked what her hobbies were: "I had no idea what a “hobby” was. When viewed in its entirety: escape, survival, and victory - this story definitely has a miraculous component.

But later on she was separated from her mother and "was beginning to realize that all the food in the world, and all the running shoes, could not make me happy. This deal naturally evolves in Park being the gangster's right arm in the human trafficking business.