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While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America Hardcover – February 14, 2023
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The North Korean defector, human rights advocate, and bestselling author of In Order to Live sounds the alarm on the culture wars, identity politics, and authoritarian tendencies tearing America apart.
After defecting from North Korea, Yeonmi Park found liberty and freedom in America. But she also found a chilling crackdown on self-expression and thought that reminded her of the brutal regime she risked her life to escape. When she spoke out about the mass political indoctrination she saw around her in the United States, Park faced censorship and even death threats.
In While Time Remains, Park highlights the dangerous hypocrisies, mob tactics, and authoritarian tendencies that speak in the name of wokeness and social justice. No one is spared in her eye-opening account, including the elites who claim to care for the poor and working classes but turn their backs on anyone who dares to think independently.
Park arrived in America eight years ago with no preconceptions, no political aims, and no partisan agenda. With urgency and unique insight, the bestselling author and human rights activist reminds us of the fragility of freedom, and what we must do to preserve it.
- Print length224 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThreshold Editions
- Publication dateFebruary 14, 2023
- Dimensions6 x 1 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101668003317
- ISBN-13978-1668003312
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That’s why the subversion of critical thinking is so dangerous. It is the mechanism by which humans lose their faculties as individuals and succumb to groupthink, which is a precondition for every totalitarian society on Earth, and which ultimately felled my father.Highlighted by 279 Kindle readers
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- Publisher : Threshold Editions (February 14, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1668003317
- ISBN-13 : 978-1668003312
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,548 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Political Freedom (Books)
- #23 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
- #166 in Memoirs (Books)
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Many of those who have grown up in a free society have come to take it for granted. Even to the point where they now feel they can continue to enjoy that freedom while systematically working to deprive anyone they do not like of their freedom. And with a total obliviousness that they have now become the very enemy of freedom and democracy that they fancy themselves as champions of.
Yeonmi Park has lived the horrors of totalitarianism. It took her a long time after becoming free to even understand what freedom is. Now that she does understand, she knows what freedom is better than those of us who have grown up with it. Because she truly understands the alternative. She has LIVED it.
In contrast, the supporters of the political establishment in the west only know totalitarianism as some sort of abstraction. Their comprehension of it is so lacking that they fail to even recognize that they themselves have become perpetrators of it.
Yeonmi Park is the child who recognized that the emperor has no clothes.
Off the top of my head I only ran into one point I disagree with her on. Her concern about China becoming the dominant superpower is unfounded. This was a genuine concern until quite recently, so perhaps she has followed the more recent news and doesn't necessarily feel the same any more. The Chinese regime is deteriorating in numerous ways. Xi Jinping has sabotaged Chinese businesses whose executives he fears are rivals for power. He has adopted economic policies that are hostile to foreign business, even as many foreign companies are already leaving China. Those reasons include an increasingly hostile political environment as well as China no longer being very economically attractive for manufacturing. There are much lower cost countries to manufacture in today. China's only remaining advantage is the large existing base of manufacturing infrastructure there. That provides inertia to slow China's economic decline but it can't stop it. China's housing and banking sectors are in a massive debt crisis. Their local governments are in deep debt. They rely on land leases for their revenue, and with a declining population and a massive inventory of unoccupied overvalued housing, there is little need for new housing. Except perhaps to replace the many apartment buildings that collapse due to corrupt building practices. China's population is shrinking. The birthrate is very low, and most likely will go even lower. Economic despair deters people from having children. The unemployment rate for young people in China is 20% or higher. Key infrastructure such as the Three Gorges Dam is vulnerable to collapse due to slipshod construction methods. The Belt And Road initiative of loaning money to foreign nations is backfiring on China. Many of the projects are economically nonviable and thus the poor countries that took the loans to do the projects cannot pay back the loans. The people of countries with Chinese projects are becoming increasingly hostile to China. China typically exports their own workers to do the projects so there aren't even jobs created for the people of the host country. China's military belligerence is making its neighbors increasingly hostile to it. Japan is sharply increasing its military budget. South Korea has elected a China hawk as its leader. The Philippines have granted access to the US for more military bases, since a new leader replace the witless crackpot Duterte. Chinese aggression has made an enemy also out of Vietnam, and of course India, which is the country that will probably prove to be the new emerging superpower rather than China.
Got a bit on a tangent there. Anyway, it's an outstanding book.
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.
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Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on March 9, 2023
enough said.






















