Hyeonseo Lee is born in Hyesan, North Korea. Her father is in the North Korean military. She spends her youth living in different North Korean cities, before she leaves North Korea for China just before her eighteenth birthday. She never returns to North Korea. She lives for a long time in China illegally, in Shenyang and Shanghai, before travelling to South Korea and claiming asylum. After becoming a legal, South Korean citizen, she returns to China and smuggles her mother and brother to South Korea via China and Laos. Lee has since recounted her ordeal in this book, a popular TED talk, and before the United Nations Commission of Enquiry on Human Rights in North Korea. She currently lives in South Korea with her American husband, Brian.

Lee’s mother is the daughter of a North Korean Communist Party loyalist. She upsets her family by divorcing Lee’s biological father and marrying the man she loves, and who would raise Lee as his own, because he is of a lower social status. Lee’s mother is a natural businesswoman who keeps her family alive during the famine through illicit smuggling, black-market trade, and bribery. Lee’s mother defects to South Korea in an arduous experience that takes her through China and Laos, and several detention centers.