While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America

After reading In Order To Live – Ms Yeonmi Park’s first book – we were left with the comfortable feeling that all was well with her in this world. There was a happy ending after all for Park and her family who had endured so much–living under the Kim dictatorship of DPRK, being smuggled by human traffickers in communist China, and walking through the Gobi desert with nothing but an old compas–to reunite once again, and taste what many of us take for granted–freedom!, While Time Remains picks up where the first book left off, and we are once again with Yeonmi as she navigates her new life, now in “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” We find Park confused about so many “issues” of American life, and she cannot help but contrast the lives of her compatriators in America to those of her comrades in North Korea–one people starving to death, while the other has to diet eating “rabbit food” (salads) to lose weight. Park correctly observes that “not having a problem is a problem” in America, and that Woke ideology that has infected American higher education is a disease, with slogans that ring far too familiar to those has had heard in her home country: that imperialist American Bastards–especially white men–oppress others, and that the only solution was dismantling American constitution and its Capitalist roots. Nothing would make China and the CCP happier, and in her book chapter “People’s Republic of Chains” Park does a fantastic job of painting a clear picture of the origins of the Chinese regime, and the sole reason behind its meteoric rise in the 21st century (spoiler alert: it’s ironically capitalism), Park also shares the more personal aspects of her life–the challenges of overcoming divorce, feeling like a bigot at Columbia University not knowing everyone’s 70+ types of pronouns, and the fear she feels for her toddler son growing up in American society being half white and half Asian (man, he is screwed!) Park takes the readers through many seemingly parallel worlds–from celebrity elites behaving badly at the Met Gala, to encounters with Jeff Bezos, Harvey Weinstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell, to not-so-amusing events of being robbed during the pandemic lootings of Chicago and being called racist by the people on the street because her attackers are black. She does, however, find solace in seeing that for every one of these lost souls, there are kindred spirits–the Warriors of Light, like Jordan Peterson (who wrote the Foreword) and Candace Owens, who will stop at nothing to fight the evils lurking within., Park’s book is as bold as it is touching. Her sharp mind is aided with the softness of her voice to tell a daring story that could only happen in America. Just like In Order to Live, Park ends this book on a positive note, and with a call to action for all of us–to help bring our country back on track, and to preserve the beacon of hope for freedom that is America. I highly recommend this book!

One reviewer complained that the author aligned pieces of secondary education to the dictatorial regime from which she escaped. Well she is correct. That reviewer, obviously, has not recently experienced the current college experience. As both a parent of college students, and a student myself, the nonsense fed to students is both scary and horribly sad. Park (the author) has extreme examples to highlight the information and ideals presented in classrooms. To us, these are subtle. But the correlations are factual, nonetheless. I am a data driven person. This book is anecdotal which really causes me to think and analyze the current state of education differently. It also highlights the importance of making sure that our children are educated in the manner in which we, as parents, find to be the best for them – academically, mentally, and spiritually. We have gravitated away from truly educating children by teaching them HOW to think and question and toward teaching them WHAT to think. This book highlights the extreme risk in doing so.