Defector builds 1.1 billion won business with ramie rice cakes in South Korea

Park Eun-sook, a defector from North Korea, has built a thriving business in South Korea, achieving 1.1 billion won in sales with her "mosi" (ramie) rice cakes. After 18 years in South Korea, she founded Haoreum Food, which now boasts 11 franchise stores. Her success was recognized with a presidential commendation at the third North Korean Defectors' Day ceremony in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province.

The commendation cited her successful self-reliance in farming and food processing, and her contributions as an advisor to the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, where she helped reflect the voices of North Korean defectors in policy. However, these formal achievements only hint at the difficult journey she undertook to reach this point.

Park's life has been marked by hardship, starting from her childhood in Chongjin, North Korea. Born in 1979, her family's fortunes declined when her father, a military officer, became ill. Her early memories are of hunger, as food rations became scarce in Chongjin. Her mother took up street vending to support the family, often leaving Park and her siblings waiting for her return.

In her youth, Park faced extreme poverty, even being unable to afford a school uniform. The family's situation worsened, forcing them to move to a remote mountain area when she was 17. There, she attended school an hour and a half away, her days filled with studying and foraging for food. After graduating, she worked in a foreign currency-earning enterprise, cultivating poppies for opium production, a practice encouraged by the North Korean regime at the time.

At 19, Park volunteered for a construction project on the Pyongyang-Nampo highway, hoping to join the Workers' Party. This project, completed in 2000, involved over 50,000 young people hauling stones and working in harsh conditions for two years. They endured meager rations of corn and salted radish soup, lived in unheated semi-caves, and had only one bath per week in muddy ditches. Despite the grueling labor and widespread disease, Park persevered, driven by the hope of a better future.