March 21, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 2007, Yeonmi Park fled North Korea with her family to South Korea—before moving to the United States in 2014. Here's Yeonmi speaking about her experience at a YAF event in 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 yan Me's story, one she
(00:31):
gave to a group of students at the Young America's
Foundation in Santa Barbara, California.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I'm still getting very nervous and I'm about to give speeches.
And there's one thought that comforts me, is 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 hero 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 say? Is so much different planet? Because the world
that I grew up in in North Korea nothing resembles
(01:29):
what 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
(01:49):
anything they could find. In North Korea, children eating in
mud and parents tell the children, if you eat the mud,
you cannot go and you're gonna die. And people steer
it done that even they know they're gonna die. And
the reason why we are suffering and why we are
(02:09):
starving is because they we have the government, the 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,
(02:34):
And one day I understood. Finally, he wanted us to
see what it looks like when individuals give their rights,
all over their rights and freedom to government, and what
the governments does that with. I came to America and
(02:54):
I went to Columbia University, and in my classrooms, the
professors were telling me how I need to be stay outraged,
how I should stay angry and stay work because of
the injustice the white men that causing in this world.
(03:15):
And I was thinking, like, are you a psychopath you've
got to be a psychopath. Do you have any idea
even why now in the twenty first century, four billion
human beings are not free and most of the people
still struggle to find the basic need to survive. We
(03:37):
live in the 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.
You need to go to North Korea, then thank you.
(03:58):
So 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 that Americans
are bastards and it's one word. And even in my
math book they were saying, there are four American bastards,
(04:21):
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 most amazing bastards
you can imagine. Thank you, And like that our worldview
(04:46):
was so simple. They brainwashed us that we are so
lucky that we had our dear leader 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
(05:07):
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 his body dies,
but he can read our minds and his spirits with
us forever. So with that brandwashing was I had no
(05:27):
idea the world 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 same people with
South Koreans, but we are averaged three to five inch
shildren than South Koreas because of malnutrition. And luckily I
(05:50):
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 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,
(06:15):
I mean, this is a Sorcier's paradise, right, There's a
free healthcare, free education, free housing. I mean everything is free.
But nothing works. There's no 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
(06:39):
their bones without any anaesthesia. Doctor just opened my belly
that aftern without any pain killer, 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
(06:59):
and I go back. So I learned that from America.
By the way, swing coachure, I have a lot of
people to say. I need to sue Kim Zongun. I
need to sue Season Ping, a lot of people. I
need to subter.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
This yon Me Park 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
(07:37):
great and beautiful country that need to be told. But
we can't do it without you. Our stories are free
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
(07:58):
dot com. And we returned to our American Stories. You've
been listening to North Korean defector Yon Me Park, who's
been describing what her life was like in her communist country,
(08:21):
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
every patient, an empty beer bottle substitute is IV bag.
In spite of this, the North Korean doctors chose to
(08:42):
remove Yon Me's perfectly healthy appendix without any painkiller. Let's
return to her story.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
After this surgery, there was on the way to the bathroom.
We don't, of course have indoor bathroom. If you have
outdoor pathroom, you have to go. There are these pirs
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 tissue that we have. And these
women that I don't know how she was wearing the
flower patents 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 them. And then when these
children eat these human beings, those children die from these
some disease that rats carry, and then they they eat
(10:00):
us back. This 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 with
(10:20):
this lady helping me to escape, I crossed the 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.
(10:43):
The regime doesn't teach us these vocabularies, right, how can
you be raped in the socialist 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 this.
Chinese men, there were more than thirty million men right
(11:30):
now in China, cannot find the wives because of the
one child policy. They more GOLs 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 in Fortus
over two hundred dollars because I was virgin and I
was thirteen years old a child. The phone that I
have in my hand costs more than my own price.
And the most saddest 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. No one place they buys North Korean
women is buying them and taking their organs out and
(12:35):
kill them. Second place, that day by North Korean women
is in no brothers and women resists, so they give
them drugs succors. 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 back to North Korea. It's like catching a
jew and sending them to a concentration camp. So the
only way I could have surviv 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 foty 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 in mede it to America of the last
next eighty years. It shows how impossible to escape from
(14:05):
that country. 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 oppose it right now if it's happening right, not right.
(14:29):
And that's what I thought too. As soon as I
was going around talking to the New York Times, I'm
talking to these 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.
(14:51):
I talked, this is the most prominent people in the world,
and pour them, this is what's happening to my people.
If you can stand know for the girls who were
captured by ISIS or Pokuaram, can you be a voice
for North Korean women too? And you know what they said,
don't tell anybody that you know me because they have
(15:13):
business 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 socialism is evil. Now
I became the enemy of the walk. It's such a
(15:35):
it's an 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 Kimirsong came
in the nineteen fifties, he made one promise to North
Korean people. I'm going to feed you rice and meat
(15:56):
stew each meal, and I'm going to get rid of
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 Krian people did that. We wanted
no inequality, so we gave our land, our rights to
(16:17):
this one guy for that leader price. He took everything
from us and he did not give us anything back.
The only reason that Kime Zone states in power is
because of Chinese Commist Party. Without Chinese Commist Party supporting
North Korea for just one week, the regime of the collapse.
(16:40):
So who is accountable is 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 Yan me 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 or 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.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And of course look what happened ever since.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
When we come back more of this remarkable tale, this
lesson in what happens when we lose our rights and freedoms.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Here on our American stories.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And we returned to our American stories and yon me
Parks story.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Am my goodness.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
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
Met Park.
Speaker 3 (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 freed. It's on. 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 amazing thing that
(20:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
How can you be? How can you I don't It's
just I mean, I like every class through my Columbia
was going and these kids vegans right and going on
(20:43):
this juice clans twenty bucks per barbot body, soho weading
this like fifty bucks yoga pants and telling 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 schools, right, they took those
(21:06):
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 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.
(21:28):
I mean, I used to say, of course, like Georgia
War's book in nineteen eighty four, an Animal Farm that
changed my life. But I love books, and I 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
(21:49):
TikTok but to relay my message. But I think I
cannot believe that the shallowness and how people do not
even know the base sick 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
(22:12):
this point and hoping for your back. Thank you. Yeah.
I became American this year, and it's ay, I know,
it's I know, it's to me, like becoming an American
(22:33):
is like worth more than winning billion rotary tickets. So
I used to so em bothered me, like how can
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,
(22:56):
and I love Chinese people obviously, I love all the people.
But you know, after you go through all of that,
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
(23:16):
that'd be a glorious life to me. Now home is America,
and I'm ready to die for this country too, thank you.
I think when I hear this word freedom is not freads.
(23:40):
It's very true because it took entire my family's lives
for me to have this voice today, because I spoke
up and Kimeson and not only PRETI on his killing list,
but he he took entire life through these generations family's
lives with him. I think I think that's the reason
(24:04):
why I'm warning America right now. The conset cass of
us standing up for truth right now is maybe losing jobs,
maybe getting harassed on Twitter, getting cancered, maybe deplatformed, But
that is going to go to the extent of like
becoming like China North Care, where they're going to cure
three generations to family if one person dissents. And I
(24:28):
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 are you saying?
I mean, they someone expect a survivor going through something
like that, and then they expect us to be damaged.
(24:48):
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 I asked, like, what
is therapist right in North Korean? I mean, this is
like fifth dimensioned thing. And then she's like, it's somewhere
(25:09):
you go and tell them I'm 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 gonna charge you two
hundred and fifty dollars for per hour, and of course
I didn't have the money. But the second about thought,
so if I gone through all of that and all
(25:32):
I'm gonna be doing now is going to complain about it,
why do you even survive? Like in the first place.
But I think also, this is why I keep talking
to people, is that I 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,
(25:55):
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. I'm like, you do 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
(26:17):
can I be even grateful for for this heir, for
this just freedom. I never have to worry about getting
executed tonight. That helps. I think that's 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 yan Me's story, one she
(00:31):
gave to a group of students at the Young America's
Foundation in Santa Barbara, California.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I'm still getting very nervous and I'm about to give speeches.
And there's one thought that comforts me, is 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 hero 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 say? Is so much different planet? Because the world
that I grew up in in North Korea nothing resembles
(01:29):
what 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
(01:49):
anything they could find. In North Korea, children eating in
mud and parents tell the children, if you eat the mud,
you cannot go and you're gonna die. And people steer
it done that even they know they're gonna die. And
the reason why we are suffering and why we are
(02:09):
starving is because they we have the government, the 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,
(02:34):
And one day I understood. Finally, he wanted us to
see what it looks like when individuals give their rights,
all over their rights and freedom to government, and what
the governments does that with. I came to America and
(02:54):
I went to Columbia University, and in my classrooms, the
professors were telling me how I need to be stay outraged,
how I should stay angry and stay work because of
the injustice the white men that causing in this world.
(03:15):
And I was thinking, like, are you a psychopath you've
got to be a psychopath. Do you have any idea
even why now in the twenty first century, four billion
human beings are not free and most of the people
still struggle to find the basic need to survive. We
(03:37):
live in the 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.
You need to go to North Korea, then thank you.
(03:58):
So 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 that Americans
are bastards and it's one word. And even in my
math book they were saying, there are four American bastards,
(04:21):
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 most amazing bastards
you can imagine. Thank you, And like that our worldview
(04:46):
was so simple. They brainwashed us that we are so
lucky that we had our dear leader 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
(05:07):
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 his body dies,
but he can read our minds and his spirits with
us forever. So with that brandwashing was I had no
(05:27):
idea the world 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 same people with
South Koreans, but we are averaged three to five inch
shildren than South Koreas because of malnutrition. And luckily I
(05:50):
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 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,
(06:15):
I mean, this is a Sorcier's paradise, right, There's a
free healthcare, free education, free housing. I mean everything is free.
But nothing works. There's no 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
(06:39):
their bones without any anaesthesia. Doctor just opened my belly
that aftern without any pain killer, 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
(06:59):
and I go back. So I learned that from America.
By the way, swing coachure, I have a lot of
people to say. I need to sue Kim Zongun. I
need to sue Season Ping, a lot of people. I
need to subter.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
This yon Me Park 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
(07:37):
great and beautiful country that need to be told. But
we can't do it without you. Our stories are free
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
(07:58):
dot com. And we returned to our American Stories. You've
been listening to North Korean defector Yon Me Park, who's
been describing what her life was like in her communist country,
(08:21):
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
every patient, an empty beer bottle substitute is IV bag.
In spite of this, the North Korean doctors chose to
(08:42):
remove Yon Me's perfectly healthy appendix without any painkiller. Let's
return to her story.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
After this surgery, there was on the way to the bathroom.
We don't, of course have indoor bathroom. If you have
outdoor pathroom, you have to go. There are these pirs
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 tissue that we have. And these
women that I don't know how she was wearing the
flower patents 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 them. And then when these
children eat these human beings, those children die from these
some disease that rats carry, and then they they eat
(10:00):
us back. This 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 with
(10:20):
this lady helping me to escape, I crossed the 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.
(10:43):
The regime doesn't teach us these vocabularies, right, how can
you be raped in the socialist 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 this.
Chinese men, there were more than thirty million men right
(11:30):
now in China, cannot find the wives because of the
one child policy. They more GOLs 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 in Fortus
over two hundred dollars because I was virgin and I
was thirteen years old a child. The phone that I
have in my hand costs more than my own price.
And the most saddest 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. No one place they buys North Korean
women is buying them and taking their organs out and
(12:35):
kill them. Second place, that day by North Korean women
is in no brothers and women resists, so they give
them drugs succors. 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 back to North Korea. It's like catching a
jew and sending them to a concentration camp. So the
only way I could have surviv 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 foty 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 in mede it to America of the last
next eighty years. It shows how impossible to escape from
(14:05):
that country. 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 oppose it right now if it's happening right, not right.
(14:29):
And that's what I thought too. As soon as I
was going around talking to the New York Times, I'm
talking to these 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.
(14:51):
I talked, this is the most prominent people in the world,
and pour them, this is what's happening to my people.
If you can stand know for the girls who were
captured by ISIS or Pokuaram, can you be a voice
for North Korean women too? And you know what they said,
don't tell anybody that you know me because they have
(15:13):
business 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 socialism is evil. Now
I became the enemy of the walk. It's such a
(15:35):
it's an 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 Kimirsong came
in the nineteen fifties, he made one promise to North
Korean people. I'm going to feed you rice and meat
(15:56):
stew each meal, and I'm going to get rid of
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 Krian people did that. We wanted
no inequality, so we gave our land, our rights to
(16:17):
this one guy for that leader price. He took everything
from us and he did not give us anything back.
The only reason that Kime Zone states in power is
because of Chinese Commist Party. Without Chinese Commist Party supporting
North Korea for just one week, the regime of the collapse.
(16:40):
So who is accountable is 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 Yan me 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 or 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.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And of course look what happened ever since.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
When we come back more of this remarkable tale, this
lesson in what happens when we lose our rights and freedoms.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Here on our American stories.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And we returned to our American stories and yon me
Parks story.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Am my goodness.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
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
Met Park.
Speaker 3 (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 freed. It's on. 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 amazing thing that
(20:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
How can you be? How can you I don't It's
just I mean, I like every class through my Columbia
was going and these kids vegans right and going on
(20:43):
this juice clans twenty bucks per barbot body, soho weading
this like fifty bucks yoga pants and telling 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 schools, right, they took those
(21:06):
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 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.
(21:28):
I mean, I used to say, of course, like Georgia
War's book in nineteen eighty four, an Animal Farm that
changed my life. But I love books, and I 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
(21:49):
TikTok but to relay my message. But I think I
cannot believe that the shallowness and how people do not
even know the base sick 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
(22:12):
this point and hoping for your back. Thank you. Yeah.
I became American this year, and it's ay, I know,
it's I know, it's to me, like becoming an American
(22:33):
is like worth more than winning billion rotary tickets. So
I used to so em bothered me, like how can
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,
(22:56):
and I love Chinese people obviously, I love all the people.
But you know, after you go through all of that,
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
(23:16):
that'd be a glorious life to me. Now home is America,
and I'm ready to die for this country too, thank you.
I think when I hear this word freedom is not freads.
(23:40):
It's very true because it took entire my family's lives
for me to have this voice today, because I spoke
up and Kimeson and not only PRETI on his killing list,
but he he took entire life through these generations family's
lives with him. I think I think that's the reason
(24:04):
why I'm warning America right now. The conset cass of
us standing up for truth right now is maybe losing jobs,
maybe getting harassed on Twitter, getting cancered, maybe deplatformed, But
that is going to go to the extent of like
becoming like China North Care, where they're going to cure
three generations to family if one person dissents. And I
(24:28):
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 are you saying?
I mean, they someone expect a survivor going through something
like that, and then they expect us to be damaged.
(24:48):
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 I asked, like, what
is therapist right in North Korean? I mean, this is
like fifth dimensioned thing. And then she's like, it's somewhere
(25:09):
you go and tell them I'm 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 gonna charge you two
hundred and fifty dollars for per hour, and of course
I didn't have the money. But the second about thought,
so if I gone through all of that and all
(25:32):
I'm gonna be doing now is going to complain about it,
why do you even survive? Like in the first place.
But I think also, this is why I keep talking
to people, is that I 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,
(25:55):
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. I'm like, you do 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
(26:17):
can I be even grateful for for this heir, for
this just freedom. I never have to worry about getting
executed tonight. That helps. I think that's 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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