My life in North Korea

We lived in the dark all the time. Fearing that the neighbours might hear us, we hardly spoke to each other...

Living in famine and totalitarian dictatorship drove young North Korean Pak Chihyeon to flee, even at the cost of leaving her dying father behind. However, her first attempt to cross the border illegally ended tragically in China, where she was sold into slavery by a smuggler. She became a wife and mother there and was eventually taken back to her communist homeland. In 2004, she escaped from a North Korean concentration camp and returned to China in search of her son. Four years later, she finally found a safe haven in the UK. She entrusted her story to the South Korean writer Che Serin, who gave it a literary form. It wasn't easy: Both were raised in mutual animosity and had to go a long way to get to know each other, become friends and work together on a unique testimony. With a sober, unsentimental view, they portray the shocking conditions in the world's harshest regime and the journey of a woman who managed to fundamentally change her life prospects.