Author: Eunhee Park
Publisher: Independently published, 2025
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The Courage to Die is the powerful true story of Eunhee Park, the child of divorced parents and a mother lost to mental illness, who endured years of hunger and indoctrination in a North Korean orphanage where survival meant silence.
Raised by her disabled grandfather and strong-willed grandmother, Eunhee faced abandonment, loss, and the rigid control of a totalitarian regime. To escape the regime, she crossed China in a perilous journey that exposed her to sexual abuse, hunger, exhaustion, and the constant threat of death.
Through every ordeal, she clung to the strength and curiosity instilled by her grandparents and transformed unimaginable suffering into courage, compassion, and a determination to tell the truth. Both harrowing and inspiring, her memoir reveals the cost of survival under tyranny and the unbreakable will of a woman who refused to surrender her humanity.
“From darkness to dignity — the courage to die, and be reborn in freedom.”
Translated from the Korean under the guidance of Professor Yonsuk Song at the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.