Yeonmi Park Reveals Why America Is The Last Hope For Humanity After Escaping North Korea
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Yeonmi Park Reveals Why America Is The Last Hope For Humanity After Escaping North Korea
Yeonmi Park escaped North Korea at 13 years old, starving and desperate, only to be sold into sex trafficking in China before finding freedom in America. Now a bestselling author and speaker, Park warns that the same tactics used by North Korean dictators to control their people are appearing in American schools and universities. From eating grasshoppers to survive, to standing in a Texas Walmart overwhelmed by freedom, her story reveals both the miracle of America and the fragility of liberty when citizens take it for granted.
Yeonmi Park was born in the darkest place in the world in the 21st century. North Korea doesn't even have electricity, and a single glimpse of a pink light bulb was considered a miracle worthy of her family collapsing in gratitude. Growing up, Park didn't even know what the internet was. Her childhood consisted of catching dragonflies and grabbing grasshoppers with friends. She recalls how her male friends were faster than her at catching cockroaches, and they would open the belly of the cockroach to find something that looked like brown rice and pop it in their mouths. Park resented not being fast enough to catch cockroaches herself, a haunting memory that illustrates the depth of starvation in North Korea.
In North Korea, there are no holidays for people. Park couldn't believe holidays like Valentine's Day or Christmas existed. North Koreans are not allowed to celebrate anything other than the dictators. Their holidays consist of Kim Jong-un's birthday, Kim Il-sung's birthday, the mother of Kim Jong-il's birthday, and the party's founding day. On these so-called holidays, citizens are mobilized on the streets to march and sing worship songs for the dictators, expressing gratitude for living in the "Socialist paradise." There is not a single day dedicated to celebrating the North Korean people. Kim Jong-un even banned Mother's Day because he believed if people loved their mothers, they would not love him as much. North Koreans are not allowed to love anything other than the dictators.
Indoctrination and the Separation of Families
In North Korea, every room has portraits of the dictators, and the first thing Park's teacher taught her was to look at the leader as her real father, not her biological father. If her biological father said something disloyal to the government, she was expected to report him, and the government would punish the parents. Park sees disturbing similarities in America today, where teachers tell children their parents are not safe if they don't validate their feelings, attempting to separate children from their families. This is the same exact tactic North Korea uses to separate and isolate people from each other.
The government controls not just actions but language itself. Growing up in North Korea, Park didn't even know the words "escape" or "freedom." The government doesn't give citizens the vocabulary to describe their situation. North Korea doesn't even have a word for "stress" because the reasoning goes: how can you be stressed if you're living in a socialist paradise? The government simply removes concepts like love, stress, and depression from the people's consciousness.
Starvation and the Decision to Escape
By the time Park was 13 years old, she was starving. She weighed less than 80 pounds, literally half her current size, and felt like she would fly away when the wind blew. The fanciest meal she had was grasshoppers, but daily life consisted of eating plants and occasionally some grains if they were lucky. In North Korea, you can be executed for eating cow because there is no private property and nobody is allowed to own anything, including cows. Most food is not allowed for people to eat other than plants and some grains.
Park's decision to escape wasn't really a decision at all. Even if they didn't escape, they would all die because that was the only fate waiting for them. In the 1990s when Park was a toddler, the biggest modern-day malnutrition and famine happened in North Korea. Seeing dead bodies in North Korea was as common as looking at a tree. People were just dead on the streets. During this time, cadres from the countryside went to Pyongyang and told Kim Il-sung that millions of people were dying from starvation, asking what they should do. Kim's response was chilling: "It's easy to do socialism when there are less of them, so let them die." This man-made famine killed more than three million North Koreans in the 1990s when Park was a child.
A Dangerous Journey to Freedom
Park's sister disappeared before her escape. She had escaped first and left Park a note saying to find a specific lady who would help her come to China and find her sister. Park found the lady with her mother, and she helped them go to China by bribing the border guards. Crossing the North Korean border is not like crossing the southern border to America. Every 10 meters, guards with machine guns stand with shoot-to-kill orders. If anybody crosses the border, they have the right to shoot. The lady bribed the guards and sent them to China, but Park didn't know at the time that the woman was selling them as sex slaves.
Park couldn't say goodbye to her family before leaving. Most North Koreans cannot say goodbye because even if they trust their family members not to report them to authorities, those family members will be tortured if someone disappears and they had knowledge of the escape. The crime of knowing somebody is escaping and not reporting it is punishable by death. To protect family members, you cannot let them know you are disappearing.
Park's father later passed away, and three generations of her family on both her mother's and father's side were all punished. Park and her mother eventually made it to South Korea. The escape itself, literally crossing the Yalu River between China and North Korea, took one night.
Surviving China and the Guilt of Making It
The most difficult story for Park to tell about her escape involves the shame and guilt of surviving. She knows clearly she didn't fight harder than anybody else or that she was smarter than anybody else. She got lucky. There are only 209 North Korean defectors who have made it to America over the last 80 years, and Park is one of them. She calls them unicorns because they're real but incredibly rare. In contrast to the 209 who made it to America, there are 300,000 North Korean women currently in China whose organs are harvested, who are raped and killed. When Park was in China, they sold her mother for $65 and sold Park for over $200 because she was a virgin. She feels guilty that she made it and not the people who fought harder than her.
Arriving in America: The Miracle of Capitalism
The first place Park came to in America was not New York City, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. She went to Tyler, Texas. Her friends took her to Walmart, and when she entered, she couldn't believe what she saw. The size of the chip bags were like half her body size. She picked up apples and discovered there were dozens of different types of apples. She went to get toothbrushes and toothpaste and found dozens of types of toothpaste: cavity care, whitening, gum care. The fanciest thing she did in North Korea was using her finger with salt to brush her teeth. That's when she thought capitalism is a simple miracle.
The Threat to American Freedom
Park worries that America on its current trajectory could end up anywhere close to the communism she experienced in North Korea. For a revolution to happen, it doesn't require everybody to agree with the idea. Revolutions happen through controlling hotspots. In North Korea, the hotspot is Pyongyang. Control Pyongyang and you control the remaining whole country. In America, not all people hate America, but the problem is there are hotspots in coastal areas like New York City, Washington DC, and the West Coast.
Park saw this firsthand when she went to university in America to study. The professors at Columbia University were teaching the exact same things her North Korean teacher taught them: that all the problems in the world are because of American imperialists and because of white men. Her professors at Columbia University in New York City said math is racist and made up by white men to control minorities. Park remembers her very first lesson in North Korea where her teacher asked her what 1+1 equals. She said two, and her teacher said she was wrong. The teacher explained that Kim Il-sung discovered that adding one drop of water to another drop of water doesn't become two, it becomes one bigger drop. That is how he "proved" math was made up by Western white men to control minorities. This absurdity was taught at Columbia University in the same exact way, and that's when Park realized this could be the end of civilization.
Raising the Next Generation
Park believes there is no justifiable reason or excuse for a conservative parent to send their kids to public school. It's not the government's job to teach children values and life lessons, and it's not the government's job to raise children. If you gave birth to a child, it's your responsibility.
A Message to America
Park genuinely believes that America is the last hope that humanity has. When she came to America and stepped on the land, she felt a spirit of justice. This is the only country where she did not face racism. Even in America, freedom is not guaranteed and is slipping away every single day. To the communist leftists on college campuses who hate America, Park's message is simple: the border is open, go to North Korea. America is a free country, and they're free to leave.
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