While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America Hardcover – February 14, 2023

UPDATE:Thank you all for the support! Following Yeonmi’s lead, I’ve began to get involved at the grassroots level campaigning for Kennedy 2024 and have experienced VERY ENCOURAGING results. Personal responsibility and ownership is the Way to restoring American freedom, democracy, and unity.Park's second volume serves as a courageous, cautionary and uniquely crafted perspective into contemporary American culture. Recruiting her experiences in the tyrannical regimes of North Korea and China, as well as her experience at Columbia and as an acclimating American citizen, she carefully and clearly details the growing connections between the current sociopolitical climate in America and the fundamental idealogical narratives and practicalities of circumstance that lead to tyranny.Park makes several powerful arguments and observations that help make an objective case for the why the American elite is motivated, by the self-interest of their position, to continue the propagation of woke ideology—and why everyday Americans are afraid to take action, partly because most of them are unable to truly appreciate the marvel of their own liberties (having never been denied them or exposed to real life circumstances without them), and partly because of a lack of leadership, guidance, and planning on this front.I found her increasingly articulate reflections on the circumstances that make socialist tyranny possible particularly eye-opening and intrinsically persuasive. Park discusses how the lack of linguistic representation for concepts such as 'starvation', 'depression', and 'freedom' in the North Korean dialect provides the state increased abilities to police thought, and as consequence deter revolution and resistance by stripping individuals of the necessary cognitive, communicative, and linguistic means to organize such. There's much to talk about, many similar arguments to this that outline the practicalities of the current situation—attempting to elucidate, from Park's perspective, why society is where it is at today and what we can do about it. This, coupled alongside interesting anecdotes, leads to a mentally stimulating, educating, and thoughtful read that I believe ultimately made me a better person, or at least a less ignorant one.Here's a quote that struck me hard:"At the end of the day, this is the object of cancel culture in America: to deprive people of the right or ability to express thoughts that run counter to official narratives, so that eventually, they won't even know how. Threaten people enough with the destruction of their reputations and livelihoods if they criticize the wrong thing, and eventually they won't even know how to criticize it."I would also like to mention that there was a moment reading this book where I can say that for the first time in my life, I genuinely felt proud to be an American—and in the best way possible, not founded on grandiosity or false bravado but a real, solid sense of appreciation, perspective, gratitude and honor. It was a strange feeling, one that I suppose I wasn't supposed to feel, but it left me with a resolve to remember the words in this book and put my faith into them as True.To provide some context, I am an Ivy League student in the US and am well aware of the current woke idealogical narrative. I think Park's second installment is so crucial because it has given me the perspective to see the real value in what American stands for, and to therefore have the wisdom to understand how precious and fragile freedom actually is, and to be willing to speak my mind and do my part no matters the consequences. I am now embodying this knowledge in my own life and my own decisions, and am frequently reminded of Nietzsche's comment "How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? That became more and more for me the real measure of value" as I begin to speak my mind, say what I think. I now see that the consequences of not doing so are simply too great.Park ends optimistically describing what we, everyday Americans, can do. Park advocates for personal responsibility, and outlines how by attending to the democratic process, by voting in schoolboard meetings, building local communities, engaging meaningfully with your family, limiting social media usage, among other such things, we can all do our part, carry our weight, and produce real change. In essence, instead of looking towards DC to fix our problems, abdicating our personal power, we should look to ourselves.My only critique of this deeply purposeful book is that some of the passages appeared to be repeated throughout the book. However, in consideration of the magnitude and importance of the piece of a whole, I would consider this to be a minor practical flaw.I give this book five stars and would recommend it to anyone, really.

...this book is a wake-up call. The existential threat to all our liberties is gaining sway in a generation of educated--or, indoctrinated--quasi-literates. And Yeonmi has lived among them. The book is also an eloquent, unequivocal, wise, and persuasive defense of civilization that is hard to put aside. Many of the implications of her indictment of North Korea and the "Kim Crime Family" also apply locally. And nobody has better biographic credentials to say this than the author. The ordeal of her harsh and squalid childhood and harrowing ordeal of escape thru China was told in a previous book (and recounted as a brief synopsis in this book's foreword ).A Popular image of a desirable, benign socialism has eclipsed its recent historical conception as a platform for totalitarianism. (Virtually ALL the most infamous modern dictators came to power as socialists.) Socialism has morphed into a sacrosanct secular religion of (enforced) human equality pursued by hordes of True Believers in the primacy of Social Justice--and must be defended against infidels who cite irreverent facts, forecast inquisitions, and revere the heresy of freedom. For them, Ms. Park is the worst kind of false prophet. She must be discredited, shamed, and silenced--not tolerated or debated. A Literary Jihad is necessary to ensure a Woke future.Her experiences at Columbia University as much as her childhood in North Korea qualify her to speak out. She had an insider view of the anti-American, anti-freedom ideas espoused now in academia, and spreading out into the heart of the Land of the Free--which is fashionably conceived as a Land of Victims. Professorial dogma was disturbingly similar to the hometown propaganda that had been the only information source of her youth. How she negotiated this academic minefield isn't elaborated, but the habit of silence from North Korea must have helped. Retribution for questioning Woke Orthodoxy may be weaker than during say, Mao's "Great Leap Forward", but the Woke spirit is more than willing. (Examples of her experiences abound in other reviews, so I won't repeat them.)Reading "While Time Remains", it's hard not to recall Ayaan Hirsi Ali's early-life autobiography, "Infidel". Both suffered a childhood within a cultural container sealed against outside ideas, then discovered Western values almost accidentally. The quest to explore, understand, and then defend these values (e.g., freedom, rule of law, pursuit of happiness) is a common experience, the basis of their intellectual growth and their subsequent achievements. Their circumstances differ, but both distilled their experiences into compulsively readable books that continue to infuriate the wardens of the cultural prisons from which they fled.

The reality of this young person's life should be shared and she did it so honestly. A valuable read for young and old. And an eye opener of North American education as well.

Excelente livro. Muito diferente do primeiro, que é mais chocante. Esse é mais revoltante. Resumindo: a pessoa sai do inferno, pra sofrer censura nos EUA. Vale a pena demais ler.

I have read that Yeonmi Park is criticised for her narratives some suggesting that she is exaggerating. Even if a quarter were only true I would still admire her fortitude, intelligence, perspective and generosity in telling her story, putting her head above the parapet to help her fellow North Koreans. She loves America and is vocal in her praise of its freedoms and what the country has given to her so don't be put off when I say that In this book she takes no prisoners. She exposes the hypocrisy of the elites whom she has met and who have subsequently disappointed her because of their dependence on China. She writes of her experience at Columbia University, doing a cultural module where she is told to see things in a particular way triggering memories from the Kim past and the subsequent prevailing 'group think' that pervades , spilling into ordinary peoples behaviour on the street. An experience which inspired her to write this book. I had read her autobiography so know the point from where she comes. The enormity of her life experience both in North Korea and in China. Her insights hit hard. It is much more concisely written than her first book and I would recommend this as a book that all young people should read. Ms Park was only 29 when she wrote this book and I wish her and her son all the best for the future. She survived and could lead a life of quiet safety but she has chosen to shout. Respect.

Goed boek om te lezen om een idee te krijgen hoe iemand van ginds de dingen bij ons in t westen ziet. Alleen is de schrijfster niet onbesproken en zou een deel niet waar zijn volgens anderen die ooit ook wisten te ontkomen. Wat natuurlijk niet geverifieerd kan worden. Los daar van interessante lectuur

The media could not be loaded. Jag är ledsen att utsikten ser så här ut… jag väntade ganska längre för att få boken och omslag är lite förstört.