November 3, 2023 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Yeonmi Park was born in 1993, and in 2007 fled from North Korea with her family to China and settled in South Korea in 2009—before moving to the United States in 2014. What we are about to hear is Yeonmi’s story she gave to a group of students at the Young America’s Foundation in Santa Barbara, California.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Yon Me Park was born in nineteen ninety three and
in two thousand and seven fled from North Korea. What
we're about to hear is yon Me's story, one she
(00:31):
gave to a group of students at the Young Americas
Foundation in Santa Barbara, California. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm still getting very nervous and I'm about to give speeches.
And there's one thought that comforts me. Right, even if
I mess it up up there, at the end of
the day, I'm not going to be executed. So what
do I have to lose? Right, Thank you, Thank you.
(01:06):
Today in my hotel room, there was an air conditioner,
and there was a Here in the bathroom, there's a carpet,
and there's a bed, and looking at the swimming pool,
I was thinking, even pinching myself. Am I dreaming? Is
this says so much different planet? Because the world that
I grew up in in North Korea nothing resembles what
(01:29):
we see here today today. I was thinking about my friends,
my family members that I left behind in North Korea.
Right now, what would they be doing tonight? They would
be eating grasshoppers, They're eating cockroaches, They're eating anything they
(01:50):
could find. In North Korea, children eating in mud and
parents tell the children, if you eat the mud, you
cannot go to bathroom and you're gonna die. And people
still eat done that even they know they're gonna die.
And the reason why we are suffering and why we
are starving is because that we have the government, the
(02:14):
biggest government they can imagine. I am very spiritual, and
one day I asked God, like, God, you know everything
that is happening, Like why do you let North Korea exist?
Why do you let this happening? Sometimes I can understand,
and one day I understood. Finally, he wanted us to
(02:39):
see what it looks like when individuals give their rights,
all over their rights and freedom to government, and what
the government does that with. I came to America and
I went to Columbia University, and in my classrooms, the
professors were telling me how I need to be stay outraged,
(03:05):
how I should stay angry and stay work because of
the injustice the white men that causing in this world.
And I was thinking, like, are you a psychopath? You
got to be a psychopath. Do you have any idea
even why now in the twenty first century, four billion
(03:28):
human beings are not free and most of the people
still struggle to find the basic need to survive. We
live in a best nation, the best country that's ever
existed in the entire human history and in the entire world.
And if you cannot be happy with it, I don't know.
(03:49):
You need to go to North Korea, then thank you.
So it's it's very story of Right now I'm standing
in this room full of American bastards. Who was my
sworn enemy. I learned in my school from my teachers
(04:11):
that Americans are bastards and it's a one word. And
even in my math book they were saying, there are
four American bastards, you killed two of them. How many
American bastards left to care? This is a math question
for a child. So now I'm here, I'm with the
(04:33):
most amazing bastards you can imagine. Thank you, And like
that our worldview was so simple. They brainwashed us that
we are so lucky that we had our dear leader
(04:53):
who was chosen by this universe, who was the God.
And one thing that North Korea did was they eliminated
all the religion, and especially they persecuted entire Christians. And
then what Kimir Song did was he became God. He
copied the Bible and told us that he loved us
so much. He gave us his son, Kimir's Song, and
(05:17):
his body dies, but he can read our minds and
his spirits with us forever. So with that brandwashing was
I had no idea the word like this existed. By
the time when I was thirteen years old, I couldn't
find any more food to survive. And we are the
(05:38):
same people with the South Koreans, but we are averaged
three to five inch children than South Koreans because of malnutrition.
And luckily I was living in the border town. At nighttime,
I saw the lights coming from China and I was
thirteen years old. In two thousand and seven, my sister
(06:01):
escaped first when she was sixteen years old. I wanted
to go with her, and I couldn't go because I
had a huge bass stomach ache. My parents took me
to hospital. And you expect, I mean, this is a
sorcerer's paradise, right, There's a free healthcare, free education, free housing.
I mean everything is free. But nothing works, there's no
(06:26):
X rays, there's not They used the beer butters as
a drop. A nurse used one meter to inject every
single patient, and people cut their bones without any anaesthesia.
Doctor just opened my belly that afterner without any pain killer.
(06:47):
And then he thought I was had some appendix, and
obviously when he opened it wasn't. I was just managers
and I had an infection. But he still removed my appendix.
So I'm gonna assume and I go back. So I
learned that from America. By the way, Swing Coature, I
(07:09):
have a lot of people to say. I need to
sue Kim Jong. I need to sue Season Ping, A
lot of people. I need to subter this.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yon Me Park's story continues here on our American Stories.
Here are our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories
of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a
great and beautiful country that need to be told that
we can't do it without you. Our stories are free
(07:43):
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love our stories in America like we do, please
go to our American Stories dot com and click the
donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us
keep the great American Stories coming. That's our American Stories
dot Com. And we returned to our American Stories. You've
(08:12):
been listening to North Korean defector Yon Me Park, who's
been describing what her life was like in her communist country,
where everything was free, including healthcare. She just described how
a stomach infection caused by starvation and malnutrition put her
in the hospital where a single needle is used on
(08:34):
every patient, an empty beer bottle substitute is IV bag.
In spite of this, the North Korean doctors chose to
remove Yon Me's perfectly healthy appendix without any painkiller. Let's
return to her story.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
After this surgery, there is on the way to the bathroom.
We don't, of course have indoor bathroom. If we have
outdoor pathroom, you have to go. There were these pirirs
of human bodies or dead. And this is not something
I see for the first time, but you see these
children trying to catch these rats eating human eyes first.
(09:16):
Do you know when we die, rats eat our eyes first,
Because that's the softiest tisue that we have. And this
women that I don't know how she was wearing the
flower patterns pants. Her eyes open and her eyes are
open because our eyes are out. There's the one thing
(09:37):
that we do is when North Koans die, they don't
they cannot even close their eyes because they don't have
any strength to even use dams. And then when these
children eat this human beings, oh, those children die from
these od some disease that rats carry, and then they
(10:00):
eat us back. This is like psychle going back and forth,
beating eaten by rats, and they eat us back. That's
when I realized, no matter what it takets, I'm going
to escape from North Korea. I found a lady who
wanted help me to go to North Korea. And at
the point, I didn't even it didn't occur to me.
While this lady helping me to escape, I crossed the
(10:24):
frozen River when I was thirteen years old with my
mother to China, and the first thing I see was
my mother being raped. And the saddest thing about paying
on North Korean is you don't even know the word rape.
The regime doesn't teach us these vocabularies, right, how can
(10:47):
you be raped in the socials paradise? How can you
be depressed in the socialist paradise. So therefore they eliminated
these words from our dictionary. No word for liberty. There's
no word for freedom, human rights, depression, and of course
(11:08):
there's no word for gay. It's a different planet. And
then I was like fifty pounds or something. I was thirteen,
and we realized the reason we went to China was
the Chinese men. There were more than thirty million men
(11:29):
right now in China cannot find the wives because of
the one child policy. They more girls got aborted than boys,
and men cannot find the women. So there's a huge
demand to buy North Korean girls as sex slaves. So
they sold my mother, who was forty one years old,
(11:52):
to sixty five dollars, and they sold me formed to
us over two hundred dollars because I was virgin when
I was thirteen years old a child. The phone that
I have in my hand costs more than my own price.
And the most sadist parting that I'm standing here today
(12:14):
is we're eating steak. We're eating this food. There are
three hundred thousand North Korean women right now in China
are being sold. One place they buys North Korean women
is buying them and taking their organs out and kill them.
(12:37):
Second place that day by North Korean women is in
no brothers and women resists, so they give them drugs.
The girls they usually last about three to six months.
This is what North Korean women go through. But even
that is not safe. The Chinese government catch them and
(12:59):
standing back to North Korea. It's like catching a jew
and sending them to a concentration camp. So the only
way I could have survival was escaping from China. Again,
so where do I go? Luckily, for some reason, I
was saved by missionaries from South Korea. They were truly
(13:21):
God's people and they came, risking their lives and told
us there was a way out of North Korea, which
means crossing frozen Golby desert, by food and minus foury degrees. Luckily,
as you can see, I'm not the biggest person, but
(13:42):
for some miracle, I got saved and night I crossed
the frozen Golby desert and eventually I was sent to
South Korea. Only about two hundred or seven North Korean
de factors made it to America. Of the life last
eighty years. It shows how impossible to escape from that country.
(14:08):
It's so interesting. I came to America. Initially I started
my activism to save my people to tell the world
what's happening. And I thought, like, if we oppose slavery
that happened two hundred years ago, obviously we're gonna pose
it right now if it's happening right, not right, And
(14:29):
that's what I thought too. As soon as I was
going around talking to the New York Times, I'm talking
to the people. Actually, so funny. I came to Santa
Barbara five years ago, invited by Jeff Bezos to attend
at the Four Seasons to talk about my story. I talked,
(14:52):
this is the most prominent people in the world and
tour them. This is what's happening to my people. If
you can and know for the girls who were captured
by ISIS or Pokuaram, can you be a voice for
North Koreamen too? And you know what they said, don't
tell anybody that you know me because they have business
(15:14):
in China. Nobody in free world wants to fight for
North Korean women. And not only that, not because I
say big government sucks, that socialisms evil. Now I became
the enemy of the walk. It's such a it's an
(15:35):
interesting word. So I really want One thing I wanted
to realize is that do you know how North Korea
became how it is today. When Kimersong came in the
nineteen fifties, he made one promise to North Korean people.
I'm going to feed you rice and meat stew each meal,
(15:58):
and I'm going to get all the inequality. If I
do that, why don't you give me all your land,
on all your rights. So what you know, North Korean
people did that. We wanted no inequality, so we gave
our land, our rights to this one guy for that
(16:19):
leader price. He took everything from us and he did
not give us anything back. The only reason that Kime
Zone stays in power is because of Chinese Commist Party.
Without Chinese Commist Party supporting North Korea for just one week,
the regime of the collapse. So who is accountable is
(16:42):
Chinese Commist Party, And if we hold them accountable, we
can't save North Korean people.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And you've been listening to YANM. Park tell the story,
the harrowing story of life in North Korea, particularly what
that means to women. The odds of getting sold off
to slavery are high tech slavery still in the twenty
first century. You're hearing it first stand, folks, and the
anguish in her voice as she shares these stories, cry
(17:13):
for help in the west of what's happening in the East,
Asian upon Asian atrocity. Right, the dear leader of North
Korea offering to the people of his country the absence
of inequality, if only they'll surrender their land and right.
And of course look what happened ever since. When we
(17:34):
come back more of this remarkable tale, this lesson in
what happens when we lose our rights and freedoms. Here
on our American stories, and we returned to our American
(18:10):
stories and Yon me Parks story. Am I goodness? We've
done some remarkable pieces from immigrants telling the stories of
escaping from the torture chambers of for deel Castro and
life from places like Venezuela. But this one, this is
as bad as it gets. Let's return to Yon Meat Park.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
It costs Raina about nineteen hundred dollars to rescue North
Korean the factor to freedom. But unfortunately that rot even
got canceled. Because of the pandemic and the development of
the AI, the China facial recognition, it became impossible to
(18:53):
i mean, bring any North Korean out of North Korea
or get them out of China. So basically North Korea,
who cannot even its own people, bought this technology from
China and installed them in the border. So they have
the AI recognition facial recognition cameras all around the country.
And they put the land mines to the entire border
(19:16):
of North with China. So Kimsong here, Kim zongung made
the whole country a concentration camp. He put the electrified
wire fences entire border and land mines and machine guns,
and China's side they did the exact same. So at
this point, rescuing and in North Korean became impossible. So
(19:40):
whenever in America, I came and people in Manhattan, living
in the best city in the world, telling and passionately
how America is so bad. So I asked them, so,
what is it so bad about America that you hate
so much? And they say, you know what, we have
inequality in this country. It's like, that's an amazing thing
(20:03):
that you can rise to compare to other people. The
enemy is a poverty, not inequality. I mean, really completely
honest without maybe we need a brain surgery. I don't know,
how can you be how can you I don't. It's
(20:29):
just I mean, I like every class through my Columbia
was going and these kids vegans right, and going on
this juice clans twenty bucks per bar about bout in
Soho wearing it's like fifty bucks yoga pants and telling
(20:54):
me how capitalism is so evil and free market is
so evil, Wing America is so evil. But they got
to be smart. They come to very good schoores, right,
they took those history lessons. I haven't gone to American
middle school and high school, elementary school, so maybe something
is wrong with this country's education system. I think that's
(21:16):
the only thing I can think of. They really get brainwashed.
I love books. It's it's the best thing that's ever created.
I think. I mean, I used to say, of course,
like Georgia War's book in nineteen eighty four, Animal Animal Farm,
that changed my life. But I love books, and I
(21:37):
think I use more people read the books instead of
going on TikTok and in Stagram. It's a shame even
I have to go on like social media. I'm not
on TikTok but to relay my message. But I think
I cannot believe that the shallowness and how people do
(21:58):
not even know the bay easy things anymore. So the
only thing you can do is, I guess we have
to pray. We need some power, some help from higher
place at this point and hoping for you're back. Thank you. Yeah.
(22:21):
I became American this year, and it's ay, I know,
it's I know. It's to me, like becoming an American
is like worth more than winning billion rotary tickets, so
I used to so it bothered me, like how can
(22:42):
you be not jumping up and down every second that
you live in America? So when people see how much
they are so angry, I like, yeah, you need to
go to North Korea. Yeah, I love people in North Korea,
and I love Chinese people, obviously, I love all the people.
But you know, after you go through all of that,
(23:03):
I feel like I lived like at least thousand years
by now, So whatever I've got afterwards is some kind
of bonus life. And so I wouldn't mind even if
I get cared for fighting what I believe right, and
that'd be a glorious life to me. Now home is America,
and I'm ready to die for this country too, thank you.
(23:32):
I think when when I hear this word freedom is
not fread. It's very true because it took entire my
family's lives for me to have this voice today because
I spoke up and Kimson not only put me on
(23:53):
his killing list, but he took entire mind through these
generations family's lives with him. I think I think that's
the reason why I'm warning America right now. The consequences
of us standing up for truth right now is maybe
losing jobs, maybe getting harassed on Twitter, getting cancered, maybe deplatformed,
(24:16):
But that is going to go to the extent of
like becoming like China North career. They're going to cure
three generations to a family if one person dissents, And
I think that's why we need to fight back before
it's too late. A lot of people actually even ask
me like, like, how are you not crazy? Like how
(24:38):
are you saying? I mean, they some much expect a
survivor going through something like that, and then they expect
us to be damaged. And I found that very interesting.
I was writing my first book and I had agents
in New York and she was telling me, you mean,
you're traumatized. You need to go see a therapist. So
(25:02):
I asked, like, what is therapist right to North Korean.
I mean, this is like fifth dimensioned thing. And then
she's like, it's somewhere you go and tell them and
complaining about your feelings and how you feel so bad.
And then this is something called the PTSD is a
real thing. You need to cure it. I ask, like,
is it free? And now of course it's like she's
(25:22):
gonna charge you two hundred and fifty dollars for per hour,
and of course I didn't have the money. But the
second of I thought, so if I gone through all
of that and all I'm gonna be doing now is
going to complain about it, why do you even survive it?
Like in the first place. But I think also this
is why I keep talking to people, is that I
(25:45):
think having the perspective, I mean, even knowing what trauma
is is a privilege, right, if we really want to
talk about privilege, that's the thing. If you know you're depressed,
if you know you're pressed, even that's a privilege. People
in North Korea have does not know what oppression is.
They do not know that they are oppressed. I mean
people say they are oppressed in America, like you do
(26:07):
not you are not oppressed right, that's not like the
people who can know. So I think keeping that perspective
where I came from, and how can I be even
grateful for this air for freedom. I never have to
worry about getting executed tonight. That helps. I think that's
(26:27):
what we need in this country to keep going. That
keeping the perspective that how lucky we are.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
Greg Hangler. A special thanks to jan Me Park for
sharing her story and the Young America's Foundation for providing
this story. It's so important that all Americans not only
listen to this but share it. Her dear leader in
North Korea, who had promised to end inequality, well, he
(26:54):
turned our nation, our country into a concentration camp. Beyond
me said, the enemy isn't inequality. She added, its poverty
for favorite books. It turns out nineteen eighty four in
animal Form by George Orwell, Becoming an American citizen, Well,
it's worth more than a billion lottery tickets. I'm living
(27:17):
a bonus life. The story of yon Me Park a
story of freedom. Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Yon Me Park was born in nineteen ninety three and
in two thousand and seven fled from North Korea. What
we're about to hear is yon Me's story, one she
(00:31):
gave to a group of students at the Young Americas
Foundation in Santa Barbara, California. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm still getting very nervous and I'm about to give speeches.
And there's one thought that comforts me. Right, even if
I mess it up up there, at the end of
the day, I'm not going to be executed. So what
do I have to lose? Right, Thank you, Thank you.
(01:06):
Today in my hotel room, there was an air conditioner,
and there was a Here in the bathroom, there's a carpet,
and there's a bed, and looking at the swimming pool,
I was thinking, even pinching myself. Am I dreaming? Is
this says so much different planet? Because the world that
I grew up in in North Korea nothing resembles what
(01:29):
we see here today today. I was thinking about my friends,
my family members that I left behind in North Korea.
Right now, what would they be doing tonight? They would
be eating grasshoppers, They're eating cockroaches, They're eating anything they
(01:50):
could find. In North Korea, children eating in mud and
parents tell the children, if you eat the mud, you
cannot go to bathroom and you're gonna die. And people
still eat done that even they know they're gonna die.
And the reason why we are suffering and why we
are starving is because that we have the government, the
(02:14):
biggest government they can imagine. I am very spiritual, and
one day I asked God, like, God, you know everything
that is happening, Like why do you let North Korea exist?
Why do you let this happening? Sometimes I can understand,
and one day I understood. Finally, he wanted us to
(02:39):
see what it looks like when individuals give their rights,
all over their rights and freedom to government, and what
the government does that with. I came to America and
I went to Columbia University, and in my classrooms, the
professors were telling me how I need to be stay outraged,
(03:05):
how I should stay angry and stay work because of
the injustice the white men that causing in this world.
And I was thinking, like, are you a psychopath? You
got to be a psychopath. Do you have any idea
even why now in the twenty first century, four billion
(03:28):
human beings are not free and most of the people
still struggle to find the basic need to survive. We
live in a best nation, the best country that's ever
existed in the entire human history and in the entire world.
And if you cannot be happy with it, I don't know.
(03:49):
You need to go to North Korea, then thank you.
So it's it's very story of Right now I'm standing
in this room full of American bastards. Who was my
sworn enemy. I learned in my school from my teachers
(04:11):
that Americans are bastards and it's a one word. And
even in my math book they were saying, there are
four American bastards, you killed two of them. How many
American bastards left to care? This is a math question
for a child. So now I'm here, I'm with the
(04:33):
most amazing bastards you can imagine. Thank you, And like
that our worldview was so simple. They brainwashed us that
we are so lucky that we had our dear leader
(04:53):
who was chosen by this universe, who was the God.
And one thing that North Korea did was they eliminated
all the religion, and especially they persecuted entire Christians. And
then what Kimir Song did was he became God. He
copied the Bible and told us that he loved us
so much. He gave us his son, Kimir's Song, and
(05:17):
his body dies, but he can read our minds and
his spirits with us forever. So with that brandwashing was
I had no idea the word like this existed. By
the time when I was thirteen years old, I couldn't
find any more food to survive. And we are the
(05:38):
same people with the South Koreans, but we are averaged
three to five inch children than South Koreans because of malnutrition.
And luckily I was living in the border town. At nighttime,
I saw the lights coming from China and I was
thirteen years old. In two thousand and seven, my sister
(06:01):
escaped first when she was sixteen years old. I wanted
to go with her, and I couldn't go because I
had a huge bass stomach ache. My parents took me
to hospital. And you expect, I mean, this is a
sorcerer's paradise, right, There's a free healthcare, free education, free housing.
I mean everything is free. But nothing works, there's no
(06:26):
X rays, there's not They used the beer butters as
a drop. A nurse used one meter to inject every
single patient, and people cut their bones without any anaesthesia.
Doctor just opened my belly that afterner without any pain killer.
(06:47):
And then he thought I was had some appendix, and
obviously when he opened it wasn't. I was just managers
and I had an infection. But he still removed my appendix.
So I'm gonna assume and I go back. So I
learned that from America. By the way, Swing Coature, I
(07:09):
have a lot of people to say. I need to
sue Kim Jong. I need to sue Season Ping, A
lot of people. I need to subter this.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yon Me Park's story continues here on our American Stories.
Here are our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories
of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a
great and beautiful country that need to be told that
we can't do it without you. Our stories are free
(07:43):
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love our stories in America like we do, please
go to our American Stories dot com and click the
donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us
keep the great American Stories coming. That's our American Stories
dot Com. And we returned to our American Stories. You've
(08:12):
been listening to North Korean defector Yon Me Park, who's
been describing what her life was like in her communist country,
where everything was free, including healthcare. She just described how
a stomach infection caused by starvation and malnutrition put her
in the hospital where a single needle is used on
(08:34):
every patient, an empty beer bottle substitute is IV bag.
In spite of this, the North Korean doctors chose to
remove Yon Me's perfectly healthy appendix without any painkiller. Let's
return to her story.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
After this surgery, there is on the way to the bathroom.
We don't, of course have indoor bathroom. If we have
outdoor pathroom, you have to go. There were these pirirs
of human bodies or dead. And this is not something
I see for the first time, but you see these
children trying to catch these rats eating human eyes first.
(09:16):
Do you know when we die, rats eat our eyes first,
Because that's the softiest tisue that we have. And this
women that I don't know how she was wearing the
flower patterns pants. Her eyes open and her eyes are
open because our eyes are out. There's the one thing
(09:37):
that we do is when North Koans die, they don't
they cannot even close their eyes because they don't have
any strength to even use dams. And then when these
children eat this human beings, oh, those children die from
these od some disease that rats carry, and then they
(10:00):
eat us back. This is like psychle going back and forth,
beating eaten by rats, and they eat us back. That's
when I realized, no matter what it takets, I'm going
to escape from North Korea. I found a lady who
wanted help me to go to North Korea. And at
the point, I didn't even it didn't occur to me.
While this lady helping me to escape, I crossed the
(10:24):
frozen River when I was thirteen years old with my
mother to China, and the first thing I see was
my mother being raped. And the saddest thing about paying
on North Korean is you don't even know the word rape.
The regime doesn't teach us these vocabularies, right, how can
(10:47):
you be raped in the socials paradise? How can you
be depressed in the socialist paradise. So therefore they eliminated
these words from our dictionary. No word for liberty. There's
no word for freedom, human rights, depression, and of course
(11:08):
there's no word for gay. It's a different planet. And
then I was like fifty pounds or something. I was thirteen,
and we realized the reason we went to China was
the Chinese men. There were more than thirty million men
(11:29):
right now in China cannot find the wives because of
the one child policy. They more girls got aborted than boys,
and men cannot find the women. So there's a huge
demand to buy North Korean girls as sex slaves. So
they sold my mother, who was forty one years old,
(11:52):
to sixty five dollars, and they sold me formed to
us over two hundred dollars because I was virgin when
I was thirteen years old a child. The phone that
I have in my hand costs more than my own price.
And the most sadist parting that I'm standing here today
(12:14):
is we're eating steak. We're eating this food. There are
three hundred thousand North Korean women right now in China
are being sold. One place they buys North Korean women
is buying them and taking their organs out and kill them.
(12:37):
Second place that day by North Korean women is in
no brothers and women resists, so they give them drugs.
The girls they usually last about three to six months.
This is what North Korean women go through. But even
that is not safe. The Chinese government catch them and
(12:59):
standing back to North Korea. It's like catching a jew
and sending them to a concentration camp. So the only
way I could have survival was escaping from China. Again,
so where do I go? Luckily, for some reason, I
was saved by missionaries from South Korea. They were truly
(13:21):
God's people and they came, risking their lives and told
us there was a way out of North Korea, which
means crossing frozen Golby desert, by food and minus foury degrees. Luckily,
as you can see, I'm not the biggest person, but
(13:42):
for some miracle, I got saved and night I crossed
the frozen Golby desert and eventually I was sent to
South Korea. Only about two hundred or seven North Korean
de factors made it to America. Of the life last
eighty years. It shows how impossible to escape from that country.
(14:08):
It's so interesting. I came to America. Initially I started
my activism to save my people to tell the world
what's happening. And I thought, like, if we oppose slavery
that happened two hundred years ago, obviously we're gonna pose
it right now if it's happening right, not right, And
(14:29):
that's what I thought too. As soon as I was
going around talking to the New York Times, I'm talking
to the people. Actually, so funny. I came to Santa
Barbara five years ago, invited by Jeff Bezos to attend
at the Four Seasons to talk about my story. I talked,
(14:52):
this is the most prominent people in the world and
tour them. This is what's happening to my people. If
you can and know for the girls who were captured
by ISIS or Pokuaram, can you be a voice for
North Koreamen too? And you know what they said, don't
tell anybody that you know me because they have business
(15:14):
in China. Nobody in free world wants to fight for
North Korean women. And not only that, not because I
say big government sucks, that socialisms evil. Now I became
the enemy of the walk. It's such a it's an
(15:35):
interesting word. So I really want One thing I wanted
to realize is that do you know how North Korea
became how it is today. When Kimersong came in the
nineteen fifties, he made one promise to North Korean people.
I'm going to feed you rice and meat stew each meal,
(15:58):
and I'm going to get all the inequality. If I
do that, why don't you give me all your land,
on all your rights. So what you know, North Korean
people did that. We wanted no inequality, so we gave
our land, our rights to this one guy for that
(16:19):
leader price. He took everything from us and he did
not give us anything back. The only reason that Kime
Zone stays in power is because of Chinese Commist Party.
Without Chinese Commist Party supporting North Korea for just one week,
the regime of the collapse. So who is accountable is
(16:42):
Chinese Commist Party, And if we hold them accountable, we
can't save North Korean people.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And you've been listening to YANM. Park tell the story,
the harrowing story of life in North Korea, particularly what
that means to women. The odds of getting sold off
to slavery are high tech slavery still in the twenty
first century. You're hearing it first stand, folks, and the
anguish in her voice as she shares these stories, cry
(17:13):
for help in the west of what's happening in the East,
Asian upon Asian atrocity. Right, the dear leader of North
Korea offering to the people of his country the absence
of inequality, if only they'll surrender their land and right.
And of course look what happened ever since. When we
(17:34):
come back more of this remarkable tale, this lesson in
what happens when we lose our rights and freedoms. Here
on our American stories, and we returned to our American
(18:10):
stories and Yon me Parks story. Am I goodness? We've
done some remarkable pieces from immigrants telling the stories of
escaping from the torture chambers of for deel Castro and
life from places like Venezuela. But this one, this is
as bad as it gets. Let's return to Yon Meat Park.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
It costs Raina about nineteen hundred dollars to rescue North
Korean the factor to freedom. But unfortunately that rot even
got canceled. Because of the pandemic and the development of
the AI, the China facial recognition, it became impossible to
(18:53):
i mean, bring any North Korean out of North Korea
or get them out of China. So basically North Korea,
who cannot even its own people, bought this technology from
China and installed them in the border. So they have
the AI recognition facial recognition cameras all around the country.
And they put the land mines to the entire border
(19:16):
of North with China. So Kimsong here, Kim zongung made
the whole country a concentration camp. He put the electrified
wire fences entire border and land mines and machine guns,
and China's side they did the exact same. So at
this point, rescuing and in North Korean became impossible. So
(19:40):
whenever in America, I came and people in Manhattan, living
in the best city in the world, telling and passionately
how America is so bad. So I asked them, so,
what is it so bad about America that you hate
so much? And they say, you know what, we have
inequality in this country. It's like, that's an amazing thing
(20:03):
that you can rise to compare to other people. The
enemy is a poverty, not inequality. I mean, really completely
honest without maybe we need a brain surgery. I don't know,
how can you be how can you I don't. It's
(20:29):
just I mean, I like every class through my Columbia
was going and these kids vegans right, and going on
this juice clans twenty bucks per bar about bout in
Soho wearing it's like fifty bucks yoga pants and telling
(20:54):
me how capitalism is so evil and free market is
so evil, Wing America is so evil. But they got
to be smart. They come to very good schoores, right,
they took those history lessons. I haven't gone to American
middle school and high school, elementary school, so maybe something
is wrong with this country's education system. I think that's
(21:16):
the only thing I can think of. They really get brainwashed.
I love books. It's it's the best thing that's ever created.
I think. I mean, I used to say, of course,
like Georgia War's book in nineteen eighty four, Animal Animal Farm,
that changed my life. But I love books, and I
(21:37):
think I use more people read the books instead of
going on TikTok and in Stagram. It's a shame even
I have to go on like social media. I'm not
on TikTok but to relay my message. But I think
I cannot believe that the shallowness and how people do
(21:58):
not even know the bay easy things anymore. So the
only thing you can do is, I guess we have
to pray. We need some power, some help from higher
place at this point and hoping for you're back. Thank you. Yeah.
(22:21):
I became American this year, and it's ay, I know,
it's I know. It's to me, like becoming an American
is like worth more than winning billion rotary tickets, so
I used to so it bothered me, like how can
(22:42):
you be not jumping up and down every second that
you live in America? So when people see how much
they are so angry, I like, yeah, you need to
go to North Korea. Yeah, I love people in North Korea,
and I love Chinese people, obviously, I love all the people.
But you know, after you go through all of that,
(23:03):
I feel like I lived like at least thousand years
by now, So whatever I've got afterwards is some kind
of bonus life. And so I wouldn't mind even if
I get cared for fighting what I believe right, and
that'd be a glorious life to me. Now home is America,
and I'm ready to die for this country too, thank you.
(23:32):
I think when when I hear this word freedom is
not fread. It's very true because it took entire my
family's lives for me to have this voice today because
I spoke up and Kimson not only put me on
(23:53):
his killing list, but he took entire mind through these
generations family's lives with him. I think I think that's
the reason why I'm warning America right now. The consequences
of us standing up for truth right now is maybe
losing jobs, maybe getting harassed on Twitter, getting cancered, maybe deplatformed,
(24:16):
But that is going to go to the extent of
like becoming like China North career. They're going to cure
three generations to a family if one person dissents, And
I think that's why we need to fight back before
it's too late. A lot of people actually even ask
me like, like, how are you not crazy? Like how
(24:38):
are you saying? I mean, they some much expect a
survivor going through something like that, and then they expect
us to be damaged. And I found that very interesting.
I was writing my first book and I had agents
in New York and she was telling me, you mean,
you're traumatized. You need to go see a therapist. So
(25:02):
I asked, like, what is therapist right to North Korean.
I mean, this is like fifth dimensioned thing. And then
she's like, it's somewhere you go and tell them and
complaining about your feelings and how you feel so bad.
And then this is something called the PTSD is a
real thing. You need to cure it. I ask, like,
is it free? And now of course it's like she's
(25:22):
gonna charge you two hundred and fifty dollars for per hour,
and of course I didn't have the money. But the
second of I thought, so if I gone through all
of that and all I'm gonna be doing now is
going to complain about it, why do you even survive it?
Like in the first place. But I think also this
is why I keep talking to people, is that I
(25:45):
think having the perspective, I mean, even knowing what trauma
is is a privilege, right, if we really want to
talk about privilege, that's the thing. If you know you're depressed,
if you know you're pressed, even that's a privilege. People
in North Korea have does not know what oppression is.
They do not know that they are oppressed. I mean
people say they are oppressed in America, like you do
(26:07):
not you are not oppressed right, that's not like the
people who can know. So I think keeping that perspective
where I came from, and how can I be even
grateful for this air for freedom. I never have to
worry about getting executed tonight. That helps. I think that's
(26:27):
what we need in this country to keep going. That
keeping the perspective that how lucky we are.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
Greg Hangler. A special thanks to jan Me Park for
sharing her story and the Young America's Foundation for providing
this story. It's so important that all Americans not only
listen to this but share it. Her dear leader in
North Korea, who had promised to end inequality, well, he
(26:54):
turned our nation, our country into a concentration camp. Beyond
me said, the enemy isn't inequality. She added, its poverty
for favorite books. It turns out nineteen eighty four in
animal Form by George Orwell, Becoming an American citizen, Well,
it's worth more than a billion lottery tickets. I'm living
(27:17):
a bonus life. The story of yon Me Park a
story of freedom. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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