Much is said and written about the ancient Stoics because founders and trailblazers are well remembered by history. However, the modern world is not without its unique challenges and hardships against which the teachings of Stoicism can be employed to live with dignity. These contemporary challenges and those who handle them with exceptional grace are perhaps more relevant to us than teachings from Roman imperial or ancient Greek times. Articles beyond this one featuring a modern day example of Stoicism will be recurrent but infrequent on our blog, because it will be hard to find modern Stoics who measure up to the person featured in this article.
Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector and human rights activist who has endured unthinkable suffering to enable herself to tell her story today. Having long since escaped tyranny and slavery, she continues to embody courage by speaking out against the current and ongoing atrocities committed by the North Korean regime.
Let’s learn and take inspiration from her story, which we will attempt to organize along the lines of the 4 Cardinal Stoic Virtues: Courage, Temperance, Wisdom, and Justice.
Courage
Courage appears first here because it defines Yeonmi’s story. As a young girl growing up in North Korea, lack of food was the cornerstone of her daily life. In her book, In Order To Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey To Freedom, she recalls having to forage in the mountains for edible plants. She tells the story of her mother traveling to another region, a journey of months and uncertain return, while leaving her and her older sister to fend for themselves. The girls, both under the age of thirteen, were left a small sum of money. As kids do, they spent the money unwisely on treats, leaving them with virtually no food or resources for several weeks.
Her childhood was set against the backdrop of starvation and death. Now, years later, in retrospect, she is horrified that she felt no sympathy when she crossed a young man begging for food while his intestines leaked from his body. This lack of sympathy is not evidence of a fundamental flaw in her character. Rather it was the norm of the collective mentality in her country. Suffering and death, especially as a result of starvation, was so ordinary that it blended into the daily landscape just as cars and passersby do in a bustling city.
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A modern day example of Stoicism
The above descriptions only scratch the surface when it comes to the horrible details of her life as a young girl growing up in North Korea. I present them here not to disturb you unnecessarily, but to provide some context to better understand her motivation for escaping North Korea. When she was only thirteen years old, she and her mother escaped the authoritarian regime into China. The escape itself was a harrowing and incredibly dangerous event. The borders of North Korea are laced with landmines and guards who don’t ask but shoot. The only way out for her was by crossing a frozen river.
But, sadly, her arrival in China did not mark the beginning of her freedom. She spent the next several years as a slave. Partly spurred by China’s former one-child policy, there is a disproportionate number of young single men who cannot find wives because there are too few women. This leads to a large demand for what are essentially female sex slaves who are sold to be the wives of farmers. North Korean defectors often fall into the cranks of this dark system.
She endured separation from her mother, rape, continued malnutrition, and overall hopelessness. Yet, she never gave up on life. If this isn’t a shining modern day example of Stoicism and the Stoic virtue of courage, then I don’t know what is.
Temperance
In simple terms, the Stoic virtue of temperance is the resistance against desire. In a rather sad way, it must have been easy for Yeonmi to practice temperance as a young girl. Rather, it was impossible not to act with temperance in a certain sense, because when your primary objective is to feed yourself, you cannot pursue material objects of desire. In another sense, there are no material objects of desire in North Korea.
The man who purchased and kept Yeonmi for several years in China was a gambler. He lost money to the extent that he was unable to feed Yeonmi. He eventually came to realize that he was unfit to maintain this dominant and unjust position and decided to set Yeonmi free. Reunited with her mother and a small group of other North Korean defectors, she embarked on the next stage of her journey toward freedom.
The safest way to complete the escape from the tyrannical regime of North Korea is through Thailand. This is also the most expensive way and was therefore not an option for Yeonmi’s group. Instead, they would traverse the Gobi Desert with the hope of reaching Mongolia. They braved temperatures of minus forty and risked getting lost in a desert with no supplies. Against all odds, they arrived in Mongolia where they were subsequently imprisoned and subjected to psychological torture.
There was still much to endure at this point to make it to South Korea and ultimate freedom. For the sake of brevity, I will skip those details.
A modern day Stoic travels difficult roads
How does this relate to the Stoic virtue of temperance? After arriving in South Korea, daily life continued to be a struggle. Although Korean is technically a common language between the North and the South, the two dialects are practically very different. She had no idea of concepts such as human rights or homosexuality, to name just a few. Even the word ‘suffering’ had little meaning to her. This is because these words do not exist in North Korean vernacular. Despite even these most basic challenges, Yeonmi chose to do difficult things. Most people in her situation would have settled for a basic job and a tiny apartment. Yet she decided to study. She had virtually no education, so she had to begin with basic grade school-level learning and eventually earned a high school equivalent in just one year.
Yeonmi describes how even though she had gone through hell to escape starvation, she studied so hard during her years in South Korea that she would go without food to the point of becoming clinically malnourished. She bravely entered into the ultra-competitive Korean university system, where she studied criminal justice. She completed her degree among the top third of her class. This is a modern day example of Stoicism and the Stoic virtue of temperance because she resisted the easy path toward comfort (a basic job) and pursued something that was incredibly difficult and valuable.
Wisdom
Yeonmi displays the Stoic virtue of wisdom through her path to practicing compassion and empathy. This is no small feat for someone who at one time walked by a dying man without any second thought. Imagine having to learn even basic things like what a movie theater or laundromat is. Now think how challenging it would be to learn complex concepts like justice and empathy. She not only learned these concepts but she manages to tell her story today despite the real threat of lethal reprisal from the North Korean regime. She does this not to sell books but because she wants to inspire discussion and eventual change of what is arguably the worst human atrocity of the twenty-first century.
On one podcast appearance, she breaks into tears when describing how she eventually came to realize something profound about good and evil. When reflecting on how her gambling owner in China was able to acknowledge that he was doing something wrong by keeping her without the means to provide her with basic care, she discovered that there is no such thing as pure evil. Through this man, she realized that all humans are capable of drifting in and out of various degrees of good and evil depending on their circumstances.
Justice
The Stoic virtue of justice is about bettering oneself not for the benefit of oneself but for the advancement of the community. It’s about making the world a better place. Yeonmi is now living in the United States where she regularly speaks and writes about the horrific conditions that millions of North Korean people endure each day. She courageously tells her story to get people to think about this black spot of humanity. It’s a courageous act not only because her story is rife with trauma and pain (which is an understatement), but also because there is a real threat that the North Korean regime could have her assassinated for the unwelcome attention she brings to their grotesque existence.
She bravely draws attention to the fact that China bears most if not all of the responsibility when it comes to propping up and allowing the continued existence of this brutal and inhumane regime. This is an inspiring modern day example of Stoicism and the Stoic virtue of justice because she undergoes incredible suffering and effort to promote positive change in this world in what is perhaps the saddest and least hopeful tragedy of our time.
A modern Stoic inspires
Yeonmi’s story resonates for me personally not only for its human and Stoic elements, but also because I lived in South Korea for nearly six years. I experienced first-hand how wonderfully bright, resilient, and self-sacrificing Korean people are. It is beyond tragic that just a few dozen kilometers from Seoul there are tens of millions of ‘other’ Koreans who are deprived of the most basic human rights. This is a serious loss of human potential and beauty for this world.
I strongly encourage you to follow Yeonmi park on Twitter (@YeonmiParkNK) and retweet some of her content. I have not done her incredible story justice here, so please check out her book In Order To Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey To Freedom for her full story told in her own words.