Top 5 Culture Shock I Experienced After Escaping from North Korea

and it was just sea of lights food delivery this is like a delivery heaven so like they're you know husbands beating their wives wives really can't call the police or go to police saying am i being abused [Music] hi everyone welcome back so today in this video i'm going to talk about top five things that had the biggest culture shock after i came to the west number one electricity i remember uh it was i think uh in 2014 i went to dc and somebody uh i had engagement in new york city and taking a bus to new york was the cheapest option that i had it was like some chinese company was operating it i took this bus and dropped me somewhere near the like of times square and i got out and i just like you looked up and it was a sea of light and i remember when i was in north korea whenever kim jong-un got upset about america or something he wanted to show his power or trying to distract people he would always say we are going to blow up america we are going to make america sea of lights and make them regret and i was i was thinking oh yeah they don't need our help they have like sea of lights right here it was the brightest thing i've ever seen uh some defectors when they go to south korea and they see this like so much electricity on the street they think uh the government is like manipulating them and turning on the electricity while their cars passing and turn them off that's what north korea does so whenever the western tourist comes to pyongyang and even some some parts of the countryside they do come then that that pound they paint like road everything and they turn on the electricity for the time they are passing by and as soon as they are gone just they turn off the electricity and sometimes in north korea we do get the electricity but it's a war on like who gets more power so if we get like maybe in the summer time there's more water more water in the time you get more so like maybe once a month then every household we have this thing called like transformer electricity transformer if you are rich you get a bigger thing has like more wire inside much heavier so if let's say if the government gives out like a thousand like worldwide of the like electricity that they and whoever is so powerful is gonna get the most of it and the people like who are so poor and doesn't have a good transformer like literally get electricity that is like looks like uh just like a pink pink pink line in the board so even the electricity comes you cannot see a thing except the pink line under like a ceiling but when i was landing times square it would just lead up in the middle of night it was so bright but you know for someone like who always lived in darkness it almost like gave me some kind of sickness i don't remember i was so like overwhelmed i was suddenly so just so like nauseous i just had to run back into my hotel room after i grabbed all her hot dogs that from mahato stand up i just got the hotdog and ran back into my hotel and just couldn't believe like it's just what i saw so next second second the biggest culture shock is food delivery this is like a delivery heaven i mean in north korea i like i only dined few times like sitting on the like black market you know bending my knees on the like you know grounds and like sitting in the side where like people are selling white is like homeless like we call like godzilla this street shooter isn't passing by it's a chaos and eating that and that's what we thought like going out and i do remember like one or two times when i was in pyongyang with my father i really went to the legitimate restaurant where they have like table they had a chair i was sitting down and we would like order order the menu to the waitress but you know that one or two time didn't get me used to like going to restaurants and eating out but so going to south korea knowing that like you know you go to restaurants and eat but and coming to america is a completely different level when you open this app you have like counterless like cuisines it's like he's talking italian chinese japanese korean i mean pizza i mean like american like vegetarian vegan oh my i just couldn't believe what's vegan what's vegetarian what's like mediterranean and like what is i mean so many cuisines i've never seen before and as soon as you hit the button it comes to your door you don't even have to go out to get it that was a culture show i was like wow this is the this is paradise i just like if there is a paradise this gotta be that's the point moment i realized i was living in a paradise okay the number three this one is like it was more like i learned in of course in america too but more in south korea so when i when we was arrived in uh like hanawan which is like educational center for the defectors they teach us to have to be you know living a modern life right we are like aliens coming from a different planet not knowing what bank is and not knowing like how to take a subway not knowing like like you know that we live in a dictatorship not knowing anything and they would like make us more like civilized and sending out us out like three months later in that place they told us that like uh in this country if you are getting a problem you have to call like a korean number it's a bit different but like like you call this emergency contact always remember you call this number and get help like i mean of course i never had a phone in north korea but like there is somebody you can call when you're in the emergency it was a culture shock and and like in north korea there's a saying your feast is closer than the law so you know if you in north korea like if someone's fighting the authorities say oh you figure out yourselves so whenever there's a fight you know whoever has more friends whoever has more family members brings more like you know just like what everything you have in the house and go fight together it's almost like gang fight and also problem is when the father is beating their wives or the mothers or like their you know husbands beating their wives wives really can't call the police or go to police saying i'm like being abused so in a lot of connor screw men do beat their wives my father did beat my mom and i had no place to run into best i could do was running to my neighbors knocking their door like saved my mom she's being beaten by father right now and it was so common like no one would get bothered it was something like as something like as normal as people here going to get a coffee shop and get a coffee in the morning it's like that's how common it was women get beat up by their like husbands and other men and here they said like you know in south korea you don't get beat up if you do get some hit you you go to police and they're gonna like punish them and it just that's the moment when i was like this is what justice is this is like the law is always on the side of the week the the law exists to protect the weak and a lot of men especially from north korea going to south korea in the beginning in the now all of them feel just having a hard time adjust because in north korea they were able to like you know just hitting anybody and not get into trouble but when they go to south korea they do get into serious trouble and they learn it sometimes the hard way but a lot of the men do get adjust somewhere and not beating their wives after after that but i think that was really a culture shock that in this country whenever i have like problem like maybe if emergency sickness or someone is hitting me or someone trying to do harm to others me i have a place to go and call them and that was really the biggest culture shock for me among all other things okay now number four equal opportunity i remember reading a book called outliers and i was just like this is just unbelievable it's like uh you know in north korea there is no steep jobs there's no beer gates there's no opera of inquiry when you are born your life destination is determined depending on your grandpa father what he did when the korean war was happening or the japanese orchestration was happening it's all about your like family history and status when you're born there's nothing literally you can do to change your future and when i came to america people said a lot of koreans because i was korean more koreans told me that you know they came really hard they came here they started dry cleaners and worked so hard and they were sending their children to harvard and they become doctors and become in the key position in the society and i was like wait a minute like you so here you can change your future and that was so confusing like when you're born here you don't have to be born under some like present or the some powerful person you can be like who you are depending on the effort that you put in and how hard you work here the system rewards for the people who work so hard in this country and again that is justice for me and just realizing that how completely the opposite the north korea was even though north korea was saying they lying to us that the comm i mean you know socialism is the best and the capitalism is the most corrupt system that you can ever imagine and people but like here people are were taken care of more than anywhere that i have seen in north korea now here is the final list of right to criticize your own present this was like it took a while for me to understand i think there's a lot of the factors like myself in the beginning they get so confused and they don't even like understand i mean i don't think like even in the my beginning i was trying to understand because almost like a you know criticizing your your like present it was something that i never knew knew that was a possibility when i was in north korea so when i came to like south korea i was so like even in like when i came to america i was so offended like why do you criticize your presence so much i mean it's like it's your present you picked it and now i said no i mean you have to criticize them but that freedom of speech is it was like you know when we were escaped from north korea we were saying oh we are looking for freedom but the freedom that we are looking for was really my case at least was really like going to a country where i can watch so many south korean football products because i love it so many like hollywood movies i can as many as i want or like wearing these like beautiful earrings i want to went or the whatever the clothes i want to wear or the jeans that i loved so much in north korea all these items were banned especially they were banning jeans so harshly and that was the freedom that i was looking for when i was crossing the gabi desert at i was risking my life literally for watching some movies and wearing some jeans it was no freedom that i was looking forward to like going somewhere and criticizing and standing up to a to that kind of big power and i think that is why it's just so i just you know the freedom that i imagined that the freedom that i found it was so much greater so much better and and i still i think in this journey for me to understand what freedom truly means but it is this most beautiful thing that i've ever seen that you can be equal in this and freedom that you can be as much equal than your present you can make fun of him you can do anything to him and you are not gonna go into going to jail as long as you don't like practice violence so that was the top five things the five culture that i felt when i came to the west and freedom and i hope that you like my videos please subscribe my channel and turn the notification so you see every updates that i upload and please stay tuned and let me know what you want to see for the next video thank you i love you so much

Channel: Voice of North Korea by Yeonmi Park

Views: 1,710,728

Keywords: North Korea, HumanRights, Culture, Freedom, NorthKoreanCulture, SouthKorea, K-Pop, 탈북미녀, 이만갑, 이제만나러갑니다, 남남북녀, freedom, KimJongUn, NewYorkCity, USA, Lifestyle, NorthKoreandefectors, Defectors, Refugees, UnitedNations, UnitedStates, America, 탈북자

Id: B0hKjDpPnDU

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020