Jin Sik begins smuggling precious metals from Pyongyang on a restricted train car to sell across the Chinese border.

Jin Sik is arrested at Wan Sun's apartment in Pyongyang and sent to a reeducation labor camp.

Jin Sik is sentenced to 10 years in a felony-level prison camp following a secret trial.

Jin Sik bribes a prison guard to visit his family on sick leave due to his failing health.

Eunmi leaves for China alone without waiting for Yeonmi to recover from surgery.

Yeonmi finds the broker and convinces her reluctant mother to cross the Yalu river that same night.

Yeonmi and her mother are sold to traffickers immediately after arriving on the Chinese side of the border.

Yeonmi accepts Hongwei's offer to sleep with him in exchange for reuniting her scattered family.

Yeonmi's father joins the family on her birthday and is immediately diagnosed with advanced colon cancer.

A government crackdown on human trafficking tied to the upcoming Beijing Olympics devastates Hongwei's business.

Yeonmi's father dies, and Hongwei secretly cremates his body to avoid detection by the authorities.

Christian missionaries guide Yeonmi and her mother's group through the freezing Gobi desert toward Mongolia.

Yeonmi and her mother land in Seoul and are questioned by South Korean intelligence agents.

Yeonmi reads George Orwell's Animal Farm and finds its allegorical parallels to North Korea deeply cathartic.

Yeonmi reunites with her sister Eunmi at the National Intelligence Center after seven years apart.

Yeonmi Park's family falls into desperate poverty after her father turns to illegal metal smuggling to survive, is arrested, and is sentenced to a labor camp. When Yeonmi's older sister Eunmi vanishes into China, Yeonmi and her mother follow and immediately fall into a human trafficking network. Trapped in China, Yeonmi strikes a brutal survival deal with her captor Hongwei and manages to reunite her family, only to lose her father to colon cancer shortly after. A Chinese government crackdown forces a turning point, and Christian missionaries eventually guide Yeonmi and her mother on a harrowing crossing of the Gobi desert into Mongolia and onward to South Korea. In Seoul, Yeonmi rebuilds her life through education and literature, finding healing through books and eventually reuniting with her missing sister.

The core journey from North Korean poverty to freedom in South Korea.

Yeonmi's maternal grandmother takes an overdose of sleeping pills to stop being a financial burden to the family.

Yeonmi's father's smuggling connections allow the family to secretly watch Disney and Hollywood films at home.

Yeonmi visits her father in Pyongyang for the first time and marvels at the city's lights and zoo.

Yeonmi and Eunmi are left alone for an entire winter and survive with help from their generous neighbor.

Yeonmi sells persimmons at the local jangmadang and realizes trading gives her a degree of personal independence.

Yeonmi falls seriously ill and requires surgery, delaying the family's escape plans.

The North Korean broker rapes Yeonmi's mother moments after the pair crosses into China.

A Korean girl Yeonmi trusted to help her escape Hongwei betrays her and sells her back to him.

Hongwei locates Jin Sik in Hyesan and arranges a phone call reuniting father and daughter.

The family scrapes together money to take one final photograph before Jin Sik's condition worsens.

Yeonmi and her mother find work in an online adult chat-room business in Shenyang.

Yeonmi's mother meets a woman named Hae Soon who reveals that missionaries in Qingdao help defectors reach South Korea.

Yeonmi and her mother are sent to the Hanawon Resettlement Center and taught about democratic life.

Yeonmi's mother travels to China to search for Eunmi but returns without finding her.

Yeonmi's mother returns to China to retrieve Jin Sik's ashes and brings them home to South Korea.

Before the escape, Yeonmi's family endures layers of hardship in North Korea, including the suicide of her grandmother, long separations caused by her father's imprisonment, and Yeonmi learning to trade at the jangmadang as a child. In China, brutal violence marks their arrival, and Yeonmi's attempt to escape her captor through a trusted contact ends in betrayal. Even as her situation stabilizes, key encounters — a final family photograph, a chance meeting with a new acquaintance, and financial help from an online stranger — slowly shape the path toward freedom. After reaching South Korea, Yeonmi navigates a difficult resettlement process while her mother makes two return trips to China: one to find Eunmi and one, years later, to finally bring Jin Sik's ashes home.

The family struggles, survival choices, and quiet turning points behind the main story.

Yeonmi's mother is interrogated by the bo-wi-bu after repeating a rumor about Kim Il Sung's death to a friend.

The Park family quietly begins asking around for brokers who can guide them across the border to China.

Yeonmi discovers a note Eunmi hid under her pillow containing the address of a broker.

Threatened with deportation back to North Korea, Yeonmi makes the decision to remain in China.

Yeonmi's mother reveals Yeonmi's true age to Zhifang, who agrees to keep her rather than sell her immediately.

Yeonmi acts as a negotiator to buy her mother back from the Chinese farmer who purchased her.

Hongwei gambles away the money Yeonmi earned selling her mother, pushing Yeonmi to her breaking point.

Yeonmi tricks her kidnapper Huang into releasing her by falsely promising to abandon Hongwei.

Yeonmi convinces Hongwei to free her and her mother by exploiting his superstitious fear of being haunted by her father.

A South Korean online client learns of Yeonmi's situation and offers to fund her escape to South Korea.

The South Korean pastor pressures Yeonmi to publicly confess her experiences as a sex worker before the group is allowed to depart.

Mongolian police catch Yeonmi's group at the border and initially threaten to send them back to China.

After facing discrimination and gossip from classmates, Yeonmi abandons public middle school and isolates herself at home.

Yeonmi joins Youth With A Mission's volunteer program and discovers for the first time her capacity for compassion toward others.

After speaking at the One Young World Summit, Yeonmi resolves to write her memoir and fully disclose her time in China.

Yeonmi's story is defined by a series of pivotal moments that force her to act under impossible circumstances, beginning with her mother's encounter with state surveillance that teaches the family to guard every word. The decision to flee accelerates when Yeonmi finds her sister's hidden note and boldly convinces her mother to cross the border that same night. In China, every critical decision falls to Yeonmi — from agreeing to Hongwei's exploitative deal, to buying back her mother, to engineering her own escape from a kidnapper who holds her captive. Even the journey to South Korea carries a sharp moral test when a pastor demands public confession before granting safe passage. In South Korea, Yeonmi faces rejection and isolation before eventually discovering compassion through volunteering, and she closes her journey by resolving to tell the full truth of her story in a memoir.

The key decisions, betrayals, and revelations that shaped Yeonmi's path to freedom.