It’s an autobiography that portrays among other horrid phenomena:
Oppression, condemnation for the crimes of relatives for generations, corporal punishment and human rights abuse with instances of people being lynched for eating cattle, which were supposed to be dedicated draft animals.
Lack of basic necessities - with the availability of electricity being the exception rather than the norm.
Hunger, starvation and hardship for adults and kids alike to afford anything nearing a sufficient food portion daily, with children having to eat wild plants and insects.
Poverty and disease - with dangerously ill-equipped medical facilities, and medical malpractices such as operations on insufficient anesthesia.
Death - with instances of corpses lying on the streets, frozen babies in the trash, gruesome recounts of dead bodies being left in the open in hospitals to attain a certain number before they are collected, while being devoured by vermin.
Active widespread brainwashing - used by the Kim family and their goons, to shield citizens from information from and about the rest of the world as well as intense suppression of speech, all to subdue them. Conditioned thinking and guided monitored speech that necessarily had to be within designated boundaries. Thinking differently was a crime. Propaganda and indoctrination of children from very early ages so that they could not question anything, for all they were taught was all there was. Imposition of cult-like dedication and reverence for their "dear leader" - who could do no wrong and was by any modern definition, a god.
These to name a few.
At just 13 years old in the hope of finding better living conditions, she escaped to China together with her mother. Getting caught attempting to flee the country could be punishable by death, yet the alternative of remaining in North Korea was so unbearable that they carried lethal backup options from blades to pills to kill themselves in case they were caught rather than be returned to North Korea. However on arriving China they further faced very adverse conditions of prostitution - with some women making as low as $1 per person they slept with - and human trafficking, and got abused and sold. She had to resort to the threat of taking her own life as a bargaining chip to prevent being raped and also to engage in the business of trafficking herself - eventually having to sell her own mother too - to survive. After life in China became unsuitable, they had to escape once more to South Korea through the life-threatening adversity of Mongolia's Gobi desert in winter, ill-prepared.
In the end after escaping and successfully establishing herself abroad, she is tracked, threatened and smeared by the regime in North Korea while her friends and relatives back home - possibly out of fear or pressure or in an attempt to distance themselves from the potential consequences of being associated with her - denounce and denigrate her.
It is a dark sorrowful bibliography whose narration of intense gloom and suffering prompts the reader to count their blessings.