Yeonmi Park and Maryanne Vollers

Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector and an activist. Born in 1993 in Hyesan, Park was raised under North Korea’s totalitarian regime, led by the Kim family. When Park was 13, after her father was imprisoned for black-market trading, she and her mother fled across the border into China. She endured trafficking, separation from her family, and years of hiding before eventually reaching South Korea in 2009, where her harrowing story was elevated to the national stage. In 2014, she began writing her memoir In Order to Live, where she shared new, horrifying details about her experience fleeing North Korea. Park later moved to the United States, continuing her education at Columbia University, and became known internationally for her advocacy work. In 2023, she published her second book, While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America. Maryanne Vollers, who co-authored In Order to Live, is an American journalist and ghostwriter whose work often explores the intersections of gender, politics, and power. She began her career reporting on domestic terrorism, including major events like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, before moving into long-form nonfiction. She has written for major publications such as Rolling Stone and Time, and she has collaborated on memoirs with public figures like Hillary Clinton and Billie Jean King. In In Order to Live, Vollers helped shape Park’s experiences into a clear, accessible narrative without compromising the complexity of her story. She is currently based in Montana.