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Time did not favor Park Seong-il. Weak, emaciated, and recovering from his third heart attack, he had just witnessed his brother pass away in his arms, and the famine destroying Kim Il-North sung’s Korea now threatened to take his life as well.
Ro-Eun sook, his wife, was being pursued by creditors and had completely vanished, while his son was wanted by the military for desertion. If one of them was apprehended or arrested, they would all share the same destiny.
Seong-il pleaded with Jiyhun, his daughter and full-time carer, to flee, despite the fact that it would mean leaving him behind.
In “The Hard Road Out: One Woman’s Escape From North Korea,” Jihyun Park writes, “there was silence” (Harper North). Long duration of intolerable quiet that no one dared to interrupt. Prior to departing, Jihyun Park sent a letter to her father, which she still remembers verbatim: “Dearest Father, whom I have loved more than anything in the world, I must depart.”
In the book, Park recounts her twice-attempted escape from one of the most secretive and authoritarian regimes in the world.
Jihyun Park was born on July 30, 1968 in Chonjin, an east coast city of North Korea. Similar to the majority of her compatriots, she was born into abject poverty. She lived with her family in a 170-square-foot, two-room apartment with only one blanket to share and a single light bulb that was used sparingly. She recalls that light bulbs were scarce, a gift from Kim Il-sung, and not available to everyone.
At school, students would learn about the life of the nation’s leader, the “Beloved Father,” and sing songs in his honor. Children were prohibited from celebrating their birthdays because “only Kim Il-birthday sung’s on April 15 is celebrated
Park was then inducted into the Corps of Young Pioneers and forced to swear allegiance to Kim Il-sung (“‘Down with the Americans, Korea’s destroyers!’ was the refrain”).
Then, when she came home, she and her younger brother Jeong-ho would play “Kill the Americans” and, when it snowed, they would make American snowmen before throwing hot water over them and giggling as they melted. Park writes, “We were the exalted heroes of the glorious battle.”
Children were occasionally removed from school to see public executions.
In the 1990s, North Korea was devastated by a famine that resulted in shortages, blackouts, and a lack of running water, as well as the deaths of up to three million people.
She adds, “It occurred to me that anyone could be executed, including myself.” “Back at home, even though they had just returned from viewing the same sight, none of our parents said. As usual, my mother prepared dinner, after which we all retired to bed.
We never discussed what we had just witnessed.
While childhood was all she had ever known, adulthood brought tremendous difficulties. In the 1990s, North Korea was devastated by a famine, dubbed the “Arduous March” by official propaganda, which resulted in shortages, blackouts, and the absence of running water, as well as up to 3 million deaths.
As individuals perished in the streets, the military was sent in to execute food thieves. Park, who is now a teacher, would also discover one of her students, Lee Seung-chul, 13, dead against a wall at the local market. He is “the small barefoot boy who continues to haunt me,” she writes.
Another victim was the uncle of Park. “We told anyone who inquired that my uncle died of measles, having contracted the childhood disease in adulthood,” writes Park. “Hunger is not a cause of death in socialist nations.”
Park never again saw her.
As her father’s health deteriorated, Park quit her profession as a teacher to care for him, but the future seemed dismal because she had neither food nor money. She adds, “The thought of abandoning the children broke my heart, but the thought of having to beg for food was even worse.”
And Park consistently blamed the West for her predicament. She reflects, “No matter how hard I tried to resist, I was brainwashed.”
By 1997, Park was solely responsible for her father’s care. Her mother had taken out loans, but was unable to repay them. As a result, debt collectors had begun to remove furniture and kitchen appliances from their home. She ran to China in an attempt to escape, claiming Park she was going to visit a cousin and earn money.
The 18th of February, 1997, Jihyun Park escaped North Korea and traveled over the mountains and crossed the border into China. She was taken to Heilongjiang, a region in northern China, and sold into a forced marriage for 5,000 yuan (about $700) despite assurances from an intermediary that she would find well-paying job upon arrival.
Her new spouse, Seong-ho Kim, was a Chinese of North Korean origin who was 46 years old and a farmer. Additionally, he was an alcoholic and a gambler. He put her to work in the fields, paid her with rice, and forbade her to communicate with the other North Korean women in the village.
Work, cleaning, and sex were all he wanted from her, and she fell pregnant in the summer of 1998. Park was ordered to have an abortion, however, due to the baby’s lack of legal status and the fact that the parents could not afford to feed another mouth.
Instead, Park concealed her pregnancy by wearing increasingly baggy apparel.
On April 20, 1999, Park delivered a son. “I gave the baby boy the name Chul. The word means iron; you must be as tough as iron to survive in this cruel world,” she adds. “From that point on, he was my only reason to continue living.”
Her spouse proposed selling the infant in order to settle his gambling debts.
With no money, a young child, and a husband in name only, Jihyun Park’s life had become terrible.
But on April 21, 2004, the situation worsened. At 10:00 p.m., she was removed from her residence by ten Chinese police officers. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will now deport her back to North Korea after a neighbor informed the authorities of her illegal status in the country.
She had options.
She could leave Chul, age 5, in China and risk never seeing him again, or she could take him with her and, in all likelihood, abandon him to die of starvation while she spent the rest of her life in prison. She left him in Seong-care. ho’s She writes: “I have never in my life felt such despair.”
Park was sent to a work camp in her homeland, Chongjin, after spending two weeks in a high-security jail on Tumen on the Chinese-North Korean border. Each day began at 4:30 a.m. and concluded at 11 p.m., with Park carrying a plough laden with fertilizer across arid fields in her bare feet.
At school, youngsters would learn about the life of the country’s leader, the “Beloved Father” (portrayed here as Kim Il-sung), and sing songs in his honor.
However, in 2004, a cut on her foot became septic and eventually gangrenous. “My leg became progressively darker over time, until it was nearly black,” she recounts. The guards informed me that my death was imminent.
A prisoner who could not work was worthless, therefore Park was released to perish on the streets. She took refuge in a local orphanage, where the director assisted her in regaining her health. She reports that he applied a white powder to her leg daily. I still do not know what the powder was, but it worked nonetheless.
Her rehabilitation provided the impetus Park required to locate her son, Chul. She waded across the Tumen River and through the mountains into China with the assistance of another trafficker in order to trace her son to the residence of her husband’s parents.
On March 18, 2005, she was finally reunited with her son, “kidnapping” him in order to travel with a group of other defectors across the Gobi Desert to the Mongolian city of Ulaanbaatar, where they would seek asylum at the South Korean embassy.
They did not survive.
“We told anyone who inquired that my uncle died of measles, having contracted the childhood disease in adulthood,” writes Park. “Hunger is not a cause of death in socialist nations.”
Park, unable to carry Chul and pursued by police, was assisted by Kwang-hyun Joo, who placed Chul over his shoulder and led them to escape. They would spend three days in the Gobi Desert before returning due to the frigid temperatures.
Before seeking for refugee status at the UN embassy, they would reside in Beijing and lie low for a months – Park’s outstanding Chinese allowing them to easily blend in — before submitting an application. In 2007, their status was granted, and they began planning a new life together.
Jihyun Park, 54, currently resides in Bury, a tiny industrial town near Manchester in the north-west of England, 14 years after she fled Beijing to seek asylum in the United Kingdom. She married the guy who saved her, Kwang, and lives with him, their two kids (including Chul, who studies accounting at university in London), and their daughter.
When she arrived in 2008, Park did not speak English; however, in 2021, she ran for town councillor, being the first person of North Korean heritage to do so in the United Kingdom. She collaborates with other North Korean defectors and will get an award from Amnesty International in 2020 for her efforts.
To this day, Park is unaware of what happened to her mother and brother.
And while she believes her father passed away shortly after she left North Korea, she has never known for certain. As she states in the final paragraph of her letter to him, “If I never see you again, I will never forgive myself.”
»No food, a sharing blanket, and public executions: North Korean upbringing«