Yeomni Park and the escape to freedom

Yeomni Park has had the kind of life that most of us in the western world only experience in regression therapy, when visiting possible previous life scenarios. Life is really really hard in North Korea!

Her book “In order to Live” is a hard read because of what she endured and because of knowing about the millions of people that are still in similar conditions or worse. But it is also a glorious and life affirming read. She survived! She escaped! And so did her mother and her sister. There is plenty to cheer for. I highly recommend!

When looking at her chart (noon chart, birth hour unknown) the first thing that catches my eye is the almost exact Uranus Neptune conjunction in Capricorn, in almost exact conjunction to the collective south nodes of Saturn and Pluto.

Capricorn rules the government. Uranus the revolution. Neptune what is hidden, silenced, and also what is illusory.

North Korea is the darkest country in the world (hidden). There is hardly any electricity and the night is black. North Koreans are completely isolated from the rest of the world (Neptune). In North Korea the government claims to have created a socialist paradise by the revolution (Uranus) but in reality the government is tyrannical and oppressive (Capricorn). everyone are forced (Capricorn) to participate in the illusion (Neptune) of the revolution (Uranus).

The south nodes of Pluto and Saturn indicates that it is a collective condition. It is not only her life but the lives of 25 million North Koreans. And through her, millions in the western world have become aware of what happens there.

Yeomni’s Saturn square Pluto affirms the authorities (Saturn) affecting her on a soul level (Pluto), or her deepest emotional security attachments (Pluto) are affected by the oppressive conditions (Saturn) in which she was born.

south node of the Moon in Gemini

There are no words for stress or depression in North Korea, as you are not supposed to feel stressed or depressed in a socialist paradise. There is no word for “I” only “we”, and no word for “love” only “Dear Leader”. With the reality of starvation and concentration camps in North Korea, a lot of censoring/silencing is necessary to maintain the illusion of the paradise created by the revolution.

Yeomni’s mother told her when she was little that “even the birds and mice can hear what we say” meaning she always had to watch that she didn’t say anything that could be understood as being dissatisfied when hunting insects to eat as a child to not die from starvation while collecting human poop for the government to use for fertilizer (a requirement from the state with punishment for collecting too little resulting in poop thiefs). When someone are critical of the state in North Korea, not only themselves, but their whole family and friends and anyone vaguely associated with them are punished (by anything from loss of status that might mean the difference between starving to death or not, to concentration camp which is fairly certain to result in death, or direct execution, depending on how critical the one individual were. Kim Jong Un once executed 80 people related by association to one person who had said the wrong thing). So North Koreans don’t criticize their their condition of starvation. All are very very grateful to their Dear Leader and their socialist paradise. Yeomni doesn’t know how many people she knew in North Korea might have been executed since she started to speak up about her story and the conditions of life in a socialist paradise.

With her south node of the moon in Gemini ruler of words and speech, we get further confirmation of conditions around speech being of importance in early life. Gemini also rules lies. One can say the early conditioning of her life, was the requirement to live a lie. (not everyone with the south node of the Moon in Gemini has been required to live a lie, but it is one possible expression of the archetype)

With Pluto in Scorpio widely conjunct the north node of the Moon in Sagittarius, there is a huge pull towards transformation of the self connected to soul (or deepest emotional security attachments), and doing so by Sagittarius archetype means, like traveling or emigrating, or higher education, or learning the truth.

Venus and Chiron square the lunar nodes.

Yeomni’s Chiron and Venus square the Lunar nodes. Squares to the Lunar nodes often mirror big challenges in the life of the individual. From a previous life perspective it may relate to what did us in the last time around. The problems we had we couldn’t solve that remain for us to solve in current incarnation.

Venus rules survival, Venus squaring the nodes may relate to past life imprint of extreme situations where survival is threatened, for example extreme poverty or famine, or it can relate to prostitution (or both as they often go together), or it can even relate to slavery (Venus rules worth, and slaves are sold as a value). While this is something that I’d usually say would be possible past life scenarios, in Yeomni’s case all of it happened in this incarnation. She starved while growing up. At 13 She was sold as a sex slave in China when she escaped North Korea to find food.

WIth chiron squaring the Lunar nodes we have another indicator of starvation. Because Chiron rules suffering, and starvation is serious suffering. The collective nodes of Chiron are often activated during famines (collective suffering)

Venus and Chiron are in Virgo, ruling the digestive system. We can see how for her, the constant hunger was like a constant wounding (Chiron) in the gut (Virgo). She also got some intestinal infection and was operated in the hospital in North korea not long before escaping. because of lack of sufficient anestetics, she woke up during the operation in excruciating pain.

In Yeomni’s case, the problems of the square to the nodes are solved through the south node. I read this as the need to speak (Gemini) about what happened.

The rulers of the lunar nodes

Mercury, the ruler of Gemini, thus the ruler of the south node, is closely conjunct Mars in Scorpio. Mars conjunct the ruler of the south node of the Moon may indicate primitive conditions in early life. Scorpio can add aspects of the Underworld (like hell). On the more empowered side, Mercury with Mars in Scorpio may suggest that she has a lot of power in her words (she does! her book sure leaves a profound imprint in the soul of the reader).

Mercury and Mars are in close conjunction to the south node of Mars, the north node of Mars in the first degrees of Cancer. One can almost see it as the instinctual desire to find a way to find food (Cancer) that in 2007 made her cross the river (mercury short trips) to China where the lights were, and she thought there might be food.

Jupiter the ruler of Sagittarius thus the ruler of the north node of the Moon at 21.57º Libra is in exact conjunction to the south node of Mercury at 21.57º Libra. Writing a book (Jupiter) about her early life experiences (Gemini) and the difficulties (Virgo) on her journey to freedom, is a perfect expression of that.

One of the things that touched me deeply in her book was the description of how difficult it was to learn to be free. When she finally reached South Korea after the years as a slave in China, and was in a transition center where escaped North Koreans learn the basics to live in the free world. She almost panicked when they asked her what her favorite color was. “what was the right answer?”. In North Korea the right answer is red, the color of the communist party. She didn’t understand the concept of the freedom to choose preferences. It felt as a terrible responsibility to decide for herself what she liked.

Her transformation (pluto) by reading (north node of the Moon in Sagittarius) is so beautiful and so touching. She read Orwell’s Animal Farm and realized she was “the new pigs” and then kept reading all the great literature, liberating her mind from the conditioning. Now that she freed herself, her goal is to free her people.

God bless her sweet soul and May she succeed in setting her people free!