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

Chapter 7 begins in October 2002 and reveals that detectives have been sent to find Wan Sun and her smuggling partner. A Pyongyang copper smuggler who was arrested tipped the police about Wan Sun and Jin Sik’s business operation. The police set up an ambush at her apartment, and when Park’s father goes to find her, he is arrested and sent to the Chungsan reeducation labor camp for criminals. Wan Sun’s sentence ends up being much lighter than Jin Sik’s, but Park does not begrudge this injustice and instead reasons that she was just trying to survive like her father.

Upon hearing the news of her husband’s arrest in November, Yeonmi’s mother travels to Pyongyang to help him. She is forced to leave her two young daughters alone in their Hyesan apartment for the entire month of December. Yeonmi and her sister temporarily drop out of school and struggle to survive the winter. They only survive with the help of their generous neighbor, Kim Jong Ae, and the companionship of Yong Ja, Yeonmi’s best friend.

Yeonmi’s mother returns briefly in January, but she informs the girls she has to leave again to help their father. She relays the torture their father endured since being arrested and leaves despite her daughters’ tears.