Grace Carter

“I loved my little grandmother Hwang with her wooden leg. She never got upset with me, even when I cried and pestered her to carry me on her back like a horse. She was a wonderful storyteller; I would sit with her for hours as she told me about her childhood in the South. ... Most of her stories were from the time of Chosun, when there was no North or South Korea, only one country, one people. She told me we had the same culture and shared the same traditions as the South. She also told me a little bit about the time she visited Seoul, although even saying the name was forbidden in North Korea. You just didn't mention such an evil place. I knew it existed only from propaganda, newspaper articles describing anti-imperialist demonstrations by its oppressed masses. But somehow my grandmother planted deep inside me a curiosity about this place she had loved. She told me, "Come to my grave someday, and tell me that the North and South are reunited.”
― Yeonmi Park, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom