Daily Life of a North Korean

but in pyongyang i remember every morning this huge song comes out from every radio and we all get up the same time so in north korea there's like no school bus we all have to walk what this is like this is a rabbit food you know this is not what i escaped for and why are you eating rabbit food for like 10 bucks it's so expensive [Music] hi everyone welcome to my channel i am a north korean refugee and living in america i work as a human rights activist today in this video i am going to talk about something you have been long requesting so many of you have asked me how does a daily life look like in north korea so finally i am doing the video and describing and helping you to understand the daily life of a north korean but before i dig into that i really want you to understand my daily life was a vast lady from from kim jong-un's daily life therefore my just one single experience do not represent entire 25 millions of daily life but because i was coming from more common class not an elite or not a bottom so you will i think it's going to give you some good taste of a general population how they are living just daily life so let's go to talking about just weekdays normal days i think i will share the time and then on the weekends that will be helpful so on the weekdays as a student i did go to school so in the morning around 5 a.m or 6 a.m the winter time is later 7 a.m our towns had to call the in ban which is like everybody has been associated in that group so in north korea you cannot be individualistic so everybody is part of some kind of group and so in the morning we always are assembled in the some kind of a gathering of working together in the mornings everybody has to go out and sleeping though like roads and therefore a lot of times parents understand their kids to go those places because parents have to like uh prepare for the breakfast and they will send me or my sister or my father sometimes go out to do this manual work so in in the times when there was electricity was coming every household had its radios that we cannot turn off we can turn down the volume but we cannot turn off the radio so this radio you know makes like singing these things about socialist paradise and how about the happiness of the people all sorts of these propaganda songs and really making getting us into the mood of being a revolutionary that day so during that time our imbanzan is like head of this our unity now our town comes and asks everyone to join in from those somebody in their household we go out we gather everyone with everybody else sometimes these works are you know you're going to the train track there are stones like in the train track so we have to like destroy like um break the stones for the train tracks or we you know if there's a flooding we will go work in the flooding place or sweeping i mean also the manual of work that usually continues from five to seven am or six am to 8 am depending on the season after that we go home we all have a breakfast with our families we have a breakfast around depending on the family but my family has a bit later because a lot of other people go to work early but we didn't have to go that early so our school was starting before 9 00 am so we would eat somewhere around like 7 30 to 8 it's very quickly in the morning and run to school by 8 am so in north korea there's like no school bus we all have to walk we i would go to school around 8 00 am and it will take somewhere 30 minutes to 45 minutes walking to school and arriving before 9 a.m class some schools do start early but that was i think generally when we started and then once after in the morning we have something like four classes each class takes like 45 minutes then once the class ends there's no like cafeteria in the school there's never such a thing you either buy bring up the bento box or you just go hungry or sometimes you go back home to eat so depending on kids if they brought food or going home to eat once that lunch time offers around 2 p.m all the class gathers and they send us to different labor places so in the morning we do cover studying about the revolutionary history of the dictators and all how they were defeating our enemies all those brainwashing things and some like basic math and that was about the whole education after in that afternoon we all have to wear our like labor clothes and go go to helping farmers in the farm or going to monuments clean the monuments or going to train track to you know pull out those plants or helping the farmers through the harvest and once that ends around 6 pm or 7 pm we go home and usually my mother we would have mom to prepare dinner so we chop the woods we you know go bring the water because we don't have running water at home so we would go to the river or somewhere to bring the water home so we could wash our you know clothes or wash our feet and face then we have dinner around before 8pm in the summer but in the winter time we eat way earlier because we don't have this 24-hour electricity and having a you know candle is so expensive it was something so precious we cannot use candle the maximum you can use is like some kind of a oil without thing it's very like not bright it smells really bad it's not good for your lung but it was the cheapest we do but even that oil was so precious parents would be like eat quickly and just go to bed so by the time around like in the winter time we just go to bed slowly you know by five it's very dark we eat by five and be in bed like 5 30 or 6 p.m and just looking at look at the stars and that's how we get the weather if you see lots of stars at night that means there's no much cloud and the next day is not going to be rainy and the next day it's going to be very sunny so we do know like through a lot of natural ways of guessing the weather if it's maybe raining or snowing or it's going to be sunny uh we we do that and our day ends on the weekends is different weekends we do not go to school so we get up we eat we yeah be assembled all those kind of manual labor in the morning once that is gone we come home and we eat breakfast and then we go home go somewhere to search for food so my case i was always you know knocking the door on our friend's houses and now i'm like people think now i'm like when i try to meet my friends i text them or call them in north korea you you we didn't have those communication methods so only way for me to meet my friends is going outside and knocking everyone's door and see whoever was at home that time in a way it's like it's such a different universe i'm now i'm thinking about it like if i want to play with somebody i had to go knock their door and see if they were home and if they do i asked to go you know catch i mean dragon flies together grasshoppers together and in the house we usually have animals like rabbits then i usually often go with my friends to mountains or heres to pick up the plants for uh rabbits but during that time i you know i shared my plants with the rabbits so this is a thing when i came to america i saw these corners where have a salad bar and americans in the menu there's tons of salad options right and i was so offended i was like what this is like this is rabbit food you know this is not what i escaped for and why are you eating rabbit food for like 10 bucks it's so expensive and i didn't eat salad now in the beginning i didn't like this i did not eat the salad i was like oh i have eaten too much for the lifetime i don't need to eat any more salad so that was like on the weekends i would go to here some mountains to look up the plants or things to eat at home and then i'm gonna cover now lastly about odor to life so if they're adored they get uh picked on this assembled works in the morning it's like everyone must participate if they go to work usually they don't really have a running factory or nothing so if the men's case they get to go to work they you know drink they play cars and kill time ontario until in the afternoon five five four six pm then they come home a lot of men will just keep drinking and come home and beat their wives and women's case they have to find things to survive right governments do not provide anything to us husbands have to go to work and they cannot be operating in the black market system so wives have to send their kids to school and they send their husbands to work and they usually have to go to black out black market to trade and finding ways to survive and so this was like a very general common north koreans life daily life looks like and you know when i was in pyongyang i still so vividly remember every morning because pyongyang had a better electricity even though we had those radios in the countryside we don't often use them because of no electricity radios don't work but in pyongyang i remember every morning this huge song comes out from every radio and we all get up the same time and then they it's like it's everything's uniformity is not being individualistic so we all get up at the same time we all go to the same work and come on eat the breakfast at the same time go to work at the same time and the radio literally beeps at 12 pm and then letting us know it's a lunch time and then when the the day closes the literally radio beeps again like oh you had a great day you all go home now have an evening with your family and safe journey to your home so it was like i still remember those days and how how the universe can be how do you know countries can be this different i hope they really helped you two guys understand north korea a bit better and i've been recently talking about my libertarian or limited government side youtube really has been restricting my ability to monetize it so i have started patreon account it it really just helps me to do what i am passionate about which is spreading words of democracy and freedom and human rights and your support really means so much to me to continue this work so please help me to come find me at patreon and if not don't worry about it this is what i care about even though youtube doesn't you know it's okay for me i expected this to happen there's no surprise in any part i love you guys and i look i look forward to seeing you next time bye bye

Channel: Voice of North Korea by Yeonmi Park

Views: 4,153,186

Rating: 4.9586201 out of 5

Keywords: North Korea, HumanRights, Culture, Freedom, NorthKoreanCulture, SouthKorea, Yeonmi Park, CCP, China, Defectors, NorthKoreanDefector, Trump, USA, Fox News, Conservative, Church, Libertarian, Patrick Bet-David, Valuentertainment, Park Yeonmi, NorthKoreanRefugee, Refugee, Women's Rights, Girls, Aisan Women, East Asia, Japan, Kimyojong, Kim Jong Il, American First, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism, Asia Politics, North Korean Human rights, In Order To live, Daily Life in North Korea, North Korean Life

Id: afqaRpYPkFw

Length: 13min 34sec (814 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020