YEONMI Park thought freedom from North Korea meant being able to dye your hair, wear jeans and watch movies.

“I thought, that’s great, I’d risk my life for that,” she laughingly told a Sydney audience this week. “I literally risked my life to wear jeans.”

But freedom turned out to be a more complicated prospect. It meant hiking over mountains aged 13, in constant fear of being caught and shot. It meant watching her mother being raped in her place by a Chinese people trafficker. And it meant becoming a “mistress” to a man whose daughter was just a year younger than her.

Worst of all, after she walked across the Gobi desert in -3C temperatures to reach Mongolia and then South Korea, it meant learning to function in a new world.

“I was scared of going into a coffee shop,” she said, to a packed room at Sydney Writers’ Festival. “I didn’t know how to order a coffee. Small, medium, large ... I didn’t even know what toilet paper was. It’s funny now but if you can’t even figure out the bathroom, how are you going to figure out society?”

When asked to introduce herself, she froze. “I didn’t know what that was. They said, if you don’t know what to say, give your name, where you’re from and your favourite colour.”

Her favourite colour? She was stumped. In North Korea, there was no concept of individuality. “Why is it important what I think?” she wondered. Just tell me what to do!”

Yeonmi realised early on that, for her, being free was going to be just as hard as life under a repressive regime. “It was a dark, depressing moment.”

Even today, the 22-year-old poster girl for North Korean defectors feels left behind. Despite having caught up with South Korean classmates who were years ahead, written a best-selling book about her life, learnt English and moved to the US to study finance and economics at Colombia University, she believes she has a long way to go.

GROWING UP IN NORTH KOREA

“We didn’t know much about the world,” Yeonmi said. “I didn’t know about Australia or Africa. I never heard about the famine. If anything bad happened in the country, it was because of American bastards. Everything you learn is propaganda.”

When people around her died of malnutrition, and bodies piled up in the street, she blamed the US. Three million people in a population of 22 million died in the famine between 1994 and 1998.

“My grandmother killed herself before the famine got her,” said Yeonmi. “My uncle also died.”

Her father was arrested and jailed for 10 years for black market trading. “If he was in this country, he would be a normal businessman, but he was a criminal. In North Korea, there’s no court. They say there’s a court, but there’s no one to defend you.”

She watched a man executed for eating beef, because cows are used for work. “Human life, that's all it’s worth,” she said.

When her father grew sick, her family feared he would die in jail, so they bribed the guards and managed to get him out after just four years. She and her mother decided to follow Yeonmi’s 16-year-old sister to China, not knowing she had been sold into the sex trade.

“If I stayed, I knew I was going to die of starvation,” said Yeonmi. “I was surprised when I came to the West that spring is described as a season of hope. In North Korea, it’s a season of death. Nothing grows.”

She was just 13 years old.

OVER THE MOUNTAINS

When Yeonmi left North Korea, she was “barely walking” after doctors had cut open her stomach without anaesthetic, thinking she had appendicitis. In fact, she just had an infection.

She and her mother climbed mountains to reach China, knowing that if they were caught trying to escape, they would be shot.

But after they arrived, Yeonmi realised: “We’d come to a bad place, maybe even worse than the one we’d left.”

The Chinese did not accept North Koreans as political refugees and the defectors were in constant danger of being caught and sent back — to torture, death and, for those pregnant by a Chinese man, the slaughter of their baby.

“People would say, I can kill you and I’m not going to get punished, so you have to do what I say,” said Yeonmi.

The people traffickers ordered her to have sex with them. She didn’t know what sex was. Her mother asked them to take her instead, and Yeonmi watched as she was raped.

A major gender imbalance in rural China means men are desperate to find wives. Yeonmi’s mother was sold to a farmer for $65 and the 13-year-old to another man for more than $200. “That was the moment I stopped being a child.”

Yeonmi threatened to kill herself, but the trafficker made her a deal. If she became his mistress, he would get her father out of North Korea and find her mother. She agreed.

ACROSS THE DESERT

Yeonmi says she never hated her captor. She fantasised about killing him, “but he was the person who cared about me when the world abandoned me.”

Her happy reunion with her parents didn’t last long, however, because her father died from cancer soon afterwards. “I buried him in the mountains, like a dog,” she said. “There was no dignity. I didn’t know what human rights were but I knew I didn’t deserve that, I knew I had to live differently.”

She and her mother decided to make the journey to Mongolia, and their only option was to cross the Gobi desert. They went in winter, when the temperatures were below freezing and no one would expect them to attempt it.

“We had a guide to the border and then we were given a compass and told to follow north and west and when we reached eight wire fences, that was Mongolia,” she said.

The 15-year-old, her mother and four other North Korean defectors walked for days. The night before they reach the border “was the longest night of my life,” she said. “It feels like you’re on Earth by yourself and the whole world is against you and you have to fight on your own. I wanted to give up.”

When a Mongolian soldier held them up at gunpoint, she thanked him.

The guards tried to send the group back, but they had brought poison and knives. One woman swallowed her poison, and was taken to hospital. “That’s what you have to do,” said Yeonmi.

INTO THE WEST

Yeonmi was given a health check and fake passport, and boarded a plane for the first time in her life to fly to South Korea. She expected to be accepted as one of their own, but was downcast to find that North Koreans were viewed as foreigners.

“I had a really hard time in South Korea. That’s one of the reasons I moved to the States, and I’m not planning to go back. People are not interested in North Koreans. If you’re going to be discriminated against by people, you would prefer it’s others, not your own people.”

Yeonmi has made it her life’s work to campaign for support for North Koreans, those in their home country, those hiding in China and those fighting to build a new life elsewhere.

“People think my struggles ended when my hardship ended.” she said. “I have to not just understand North Korea but understand this world. How do I connect to this universe?

“I didn’t know people cared. I didn’t have any faith in humanity. They sold me. How can I trust men again?

“There’s a fundamental wrongness in North Korea. Kim Jong-un was killing his own uncle. This man can do anything. I can’t imagine what sort of person he is.

“In North Korea, there’s no word for liberty, love, human rights or individuality. I never heard my mum and dad say they loved each other. The only love was for the regime.”

emma.reynolds@news.com.au