Yeonmi Park: North Korea | Lex Fridman Podcast #196

the following is a conversation with yon mi park a north korean defector human rights activist and author of the book in order to live quick mention of our sponsors balcampo gala games better help and ate sleep check them out in the description to support this podcast let me say a few words about north korea from 1994 to 98 north korea went through a famine mass starvation caused primarily by king jong-il who at the time was the new leader of north korea after his father's death in 1994 somewhere between 600 000 and 3 million people died due to starvation from all the stories of famine in history including my own family history i've come to understand that hunger tortures the human mind in a way that can break everything we stand for in north korea during the 90s famine many were driven to cannibalism imagine more than 10 million people suffering starvation for months and years always on the brink of death we don't know the exact numbers of people who died because the suffering was done in silence in darkness very little information in or out most people had to survive without electricity without clean water medical supplies sanitation and food the north korean propaganda machine called this the arduous march or the march of suffering and words such as famine and hunger were banned because they implied government failure and once again now in 2021 kim jong-un the current leader of north korea is calling for his country to prepare for another arduous march or march of suffering another period of mass starvation as the country closes its borders looking at atrocities of the past decades and the encroaching atrocity there now i think about the quiet suffering of millions of north koreans i think about the torture of the human spirit i think about a north korean child who could be a scientist an artist a writer but who instead grows impossibly thin without food their bodies slowly rotting away as their parents watch helplessly i got emotional in this conversation with you on me in part because i remembered my grandmother who survived khaldamur the famine in ukraine intentionally created by stalin where 4 to 10 million people died and many many more suffered imagine knowing that if you don't engage in cannibalism you will die before your children did and then they will be eaten imagine because of this deciding to murder and eat your own children as many people did imagine the kind of desperation torture that leads up to a decision like that i'm not smart enough to know what evil is know where to draw the line between good and evil but stalin king jong-il kim jong-un are men who are in the name of power are willing to make millions of people of children suffer and die from starvation i rarely have hate in my heart but i hate these men i hate that such men exist in this world i hate that the beauty i love about this life exists amidst such unimaginable cruelty i have been haunted by this conversation by memories of my grandmother's pain but i've also been warmed by memories of her love love gives me hope hope for the perseverance of the human spirit even in the face of evil this is the lex friedman podcast and here is my conversation with yomi park can you tell your story from north korea to today as you describe in your 2015 book and with the extra perspective on life love and freedom you've gained since then wow that's a long story so i was born in the northern part of north korea initially and my father was a party member and my mom was housewife i had a one order sister and i remember born in that country i never thought i was in an unusual country now i'm thinking of what it is like literally called the hermit kingdom but i thought i believed that i was living in the best country on earth it was a socialist paradise and everybody in the rest of the world worshipped my idea leader and there was nothing to envy for me so i had this enormous pride in my heart and grateful to be in that country so was love for the leader not fear for me at least it was love yeah it was all the moderation and gratitude it changed lately but for me was pure pure like love was there any like looking back with the perspective you have now would you describe some of those moments growing up as full of happiness or was that delusion at the time so not knowing the alternative will you still be able to be happy the fact that i did not know like in north korea this is the only country in this 21st century has no internet and they don't even know the existence of internet not only that we don't even have this 20 like like you know 24-hour electricity yeah so not knowing definitely helped i think to be sane so as a human being you're still able to find moments of happiness i think my happiness was from family nothing else even though those they was keep telling me that they were our source of meaning and happiness i don't think i ever got happy by that maybe they're here and they're in schools and like when i was learning propaganda like you know the proud feeling right i mean the greatest nation here and there but like actually true happiness came from laughing with my family and my friends are there any childhood memories pleasant or painful ones that stand out do you know i mean like you know whenever i think about my north korea the interesting is there's no color i mean one is because north korean country has no color right most of things are unpaved and trees all cut down we have no fear so people cut down trees to make food so but only that like even what we were wearing was like no color so it's um interesting like memory to look back what about fashion i've noticed from sort of uh you now you're you're you have quite an incredible sense of fashion so contrast that with your time in north korea how do you remember fashion just or ways that people could express themselves visually was it all bland there was no word for fashion in north korea we didn't even know it was not even our dictionary so of course i did not know what victoria secret motors were i didn't even know what motors were so when i came out i learned more there was a job and like what is that and i'm still confused so there's so many jobs that we have here doesn't exist in north korea what was life like in north korea as compared to the rest of the world so maybe you said there's no internet uh 24-hour electricity is a luxury you do not have what about food what about water what about basic human rights i think that's the thing like when people were asking me can you tell me about like life in north korea and in the past i was like i cannot describe it to you and initially i thought oh because of my english that i cannot find the words it's not that it's a different planet the common sense that we have doesn't exist there like people literally do not know the concept of romantic love or human rights or liberty so when i'm thinking back to my country it's uh you know like as you cannot imagine your life on mars right now it's like that kind of difference i grew up never seen the map of the world i never knew that i was asian like the regime told me that i was keemer's son the first king race and then our calendar doesn't begin when jesus christ was born our candor begins where hymns was born so we and history was forgotten to us they didn't touch us about of course christianity or like the big bang like our history began when kim was born so everything was forgotten to us and it was like different meaning i mean feeling of existence you know it's not even like the same life i literally think that was almost like my past life and this is like a new life that i began you're you're almost like a different human being now absolutely yeah so you've uh i have to say i often say that my favorite book is animal farm by george orwell i've read it i don't know how many times and so i was really happy to hear that that was uh of the many books excellent books they will hopefully talk about you've mentioned that an animal farm had a big impact on you it was the book that kind of uh led to uh a kind of awakening for you maybe can you describe what impact it had so after going to what i went through right and i arrived in south korea after many years of journey they were saying so kim's were dictators and south korea is not colonized by american investors and americans first of all not bastards they're good people and then they say everything that you believed in north korea was a lie it was a propaganda then at 15 i was thinking so if everything that i believe was a lie how do i know what you're telling me it's not like that was so hard how do i trust ever again and i just it was chaos and belief right i did not know what was true anymore and that's the moment few years later i read this book like animal farm just by mistake it was a very short book in the library i was like okay i can finish that quickly and when they're ending that like last chapter right they could not see between the pigs and humans anymore like that sentence i just understood everything what happened i just it made every sense to me what happened to me my people and to my country yeah that there's uh there's so many things they could say about that book yeah there's a haunting nature to the young and i guess spoiler alert but you should have read this already if you're listening to this um at the end the animals were looking to the humans and to the pigs and they couldn't see the difference and then there's this kind of gradual transition from the initial revolutionary steps of animals fighting for their freedom to slowly uh the pigs gaining control went from four legs good two legs bad two uh four legs good two legs better even better i think yeah like that they were so like gradually transitioning the ideology under which the farm operates and i think the gradual nature of that where basically you have generations born not knowing how things were in the past and that's that's what makes the most kind of for me haunting transition from freedom to slavery to suffering to injustice all those things and the animals don't know they're part of that and also for me personally i've always kind of found a kinship with boxer the the horse because i just i'm kind of an idiot i just work really hard to work hard and i just love the idea of working hard for an ideal mm-hmm and the tragic nature of to the end that horse boxer working his ass off for for the pride uh for others uh but yeah for the pride of the farm you know uh and then the the the pigs giving him sort of using that but then just sending him to the slaughterhouse anyway when he was no longer useful i mean there's so many tragic elements that echo everything i've seen in the soviet union and many of the elements that you see in even harsher more drastic way in north korea if there's something hopeful you pull from that book like within the suffering within the gradual decline the taking away the freedom there were still moments of beauty it seemed like it can be but i think for me was when i was ending the last page of the book until that point i was angry towards a dictator why do you do this as a human being i was so angry dreaming of killing him revenging my father the people that he cared but when i was ending the last chapter actually everybody was responsible to create this dystopia in my country that animals initial animals that when they're scared when they receive the first execution and then they were not doing their job speaking out and keep questioning like they had a question and then they as soon as they feel fear they silence yeah because of that like that's when i was like my grandma knew life could be different i think the one thing about north koreans are unique is that they don't know they're oppressed they don't know that they are slaves to the dictator and the fact that other people know they're oppressed like in america a lot of people think they are oppressed like you are not oppressed you don't even know the definition of oppression and like that's like when the new animals came the new animals didn't even know what the life could be like there's no alternative for them to compare even and i was like my grandmother knew why didn't they not do anything about it and they were just scared they kept silent and everybody was responsible so the people who knew were too afraid to say and then there's people that just didn't even know and i don't know what's more terrifying about human nature looking at this group of people who are afraid to say that things could be otherwise and then the group of people that don't even know it could be better no it's uh i don't know that this is that's the reason i've returned to that book often because it's such maybe because it's interesting using animals to represent ideas that were very human it almost allows you to explore the darkness of human nature without sort of being uh broken by it so you mentioned anger when i watch your interviews you're really calm and collected not just your interviews you know instagram the way you present yourself you um i don't know it seems like you're almost at peace with the world um is there in private times when you're just angry do you feel fear do you go to dark places depression all those kinds of things are are you able to put that world that you were in behind you it's a joke because i talk about north korea every single day and i still rescue people like from china and russia and other countries right and sometimes our rescue mission fails and they get capture and send back i still have uh people in north korea report to me so like when i talk to my sister who chose to not be in this life activist life she forgot most of things and like for the other hand i like remember everything so sometimes it's uh it's it's a blessing to keep reminded of how because it's you know they say happiness relative thing it is sometimes i mean a good thing is also people say because nobody was fooling when you're growing up everybody was suffering you should have been okay right but know like if you are suffering that degree no matter even if there's no comparison like if you're in nazi german in a holocaust right in the in the concentration camp i'm sure nobody was better than them i'm sure they were suffering is the same thing i suffered but now because i'm in this place i can compare easily right getting that perspective but it is true like i still have days that i cannot get out of bed and i'm really hoping like that where it was elam was talking about downloading your brain blah blah yeah like if maybe technology develops that i can download some part of my memory and then i can erase it like when was i deleted and that would be so much better what i this is uh sorry for the tough question but if i came to you if elon came to you and said we can erase that part of your memory would you do it some days i would do it for sure and my mom would do a hundred percent my sister would do it all other defectors know they do a hundred percent for me i hesitated because i'm a witness so if i delete that part i don't know how real that can be but it is painful like after i talk give a speech right i mean i'm fine but somehow i'm depressed sometimes if the talk was very intense i'm like depressed for three weeks it takes a while for me to be recharged but i don't know why it is you know yeah i i just don't know yeah well there's also the and uh there's a guy named victor franco who wrote the book masters for meaning and there's some aspect um where so he talks about the holocaust and you can in the in those moments of suffering still discover meaning still discover happiness in the simplest of joys like while starving you know a little piece of bread could be a source of incredible joy yeah and there's some aspect in which that experience gives you a clarity about the world like somehow experiencing suffering allows you to deep deeply experience joy yeah and love and also empathize with the suffering of others and like it's almost like brings you closer to other humans so it's this double-edged sword that um that the highest of joys sometimes are catalyzed by suffering and it's hard to know what to do with that you see that with world war ii the stories of soldiers that have suffered but some of the closest bonds of brotherhood of just pure love was experienced by them and it's it sucks that our brains are like this you know the love requires hardship i don't know why that is yeah that's like that's thing of course in my journey i learned how to survive right when to not trust and when to run but i think most of i was keep learning what it means to be a human being i think that was like ultimate thing i was keep learning and i still don't know fully what it means but i do think it seems like suffering is necessary for people to be grateful and even be joyful to sometimes yeah so i talk about love quite a bit and you mentioned that romantic love uh i'm fascinated about love in many aspects but you mentioned romantic love was forbidden in north korea yeah what do you think about love now that you've kind of discovered it what's the role of love in life why was it so why do you think it was forbidden in north korea so the tragic thing about north korea is not only just banning shakespeare like we don't even know what romeo and juliet is right our movies is never about love stories but then also they ban the love between mother and daughter wife and husband and you know and you between your friends they deny you being a human so only love that i knew was when i described my feeling towards the leader and in the written form that was the only love that people know in north korea and now i'm like there are many loves you can experience i mean i think you definitely love science right but imagine that if you're being denied that yeah so there are so many loves in life but in north korea all of those things are denied and i think for me is love what makes you tick like you know love for your child love for your parents love your friends love for even yourself that is denied so i mean many people say like love is an option but like then why do you live i think we live to love and it doesn't have to be romantic love it can be anything but finding love any in any person or you know any subject i think that's a goal i think that's when people find the meaning in something yeah i think a lot of romantic love is just one sort of part of it yeah one echo of the some core thing yeah science i love science i love robots all of those things and it sounds like deliberately or not the north korean regime wants to channel that very deep aspect of the human spirit all towards the leader yeah that's it that's the only thing they allow us to fear and know about so i remember i mean you read 1984 by georgia where it talks about double think and double speak who controls the language who controls thoughts and why he does talk about as they go they like eliminate a lot of words right now like later one word can represent 10 different things and like what fascinates me is like how many vocabulary meaning people can have and like when i literally came out i remember i went even to san francisco and someone came to me and hugged me and then he was a guy who's like oh baby don't worry i'm gay i was like what the heck is gay i don't know right and then they try to go to hotel room and google the gay and i think oh that's what you meant and like that like they deny what that is i'm sure there are gays in north korea i'm sure there is but you don't know what it is and like that they eliminate words so the fact that you know the concept that is a state is much better than and that's the thing a lot of people like when you're born you somehow know what justice is what liberty is and it's all somebody taught you that and like that's the thing why people is like oh humans are inherently know what is right what is wrong what is oppression and like no that's like bs you gotta learn that's fascinating that words give rise to ideas so like as a child one of the ways to learn about justice and freedom is to first learn the word and then to ask well what is it yeah the concept yeah and if you don't have the word for it then you never have the kind of first spark that leads to you trying to be curious about it that's interesting and controlling the words and then yeah i mean your thoughts you control the thoughts there's so many echoes i mean i have uh it's it's a very different but perhaps a very similar experience which is the journey of my family through the soviet union because there is a love of country there is a pride of the people yeah like you are proud of your family in general yeah but um i wonder how much of that is polluted by the the propaganda i think a lot too for sure yeah it is to this day i'm like my father who died in china and he was tortured and then he died he wanted to go back before his bath right and then it's like that if you go about you're gonna be executed and like i wanna be executed he wanted to go back to north korea to be executed so he can be buried in his own land and then his last wish was if i die criminate me and then bring my ashes back to my country when i'm dead i still want to be my country and this is nationalism this is a propaganda right and but now like it's the same thing like it's the same thing if i die i somehow buried in my land and i still feel like i'm the outsider i'm always longing for my home it's a horrible home yeah like let people say what's your dream like do you want to be a president do you need to run for office like i just want to go home that's my dream right and people here don't get it ever yeah i um i don't know what to do with that i love my country and i think for me my country is um the united states and perhaps it will be for you too one day it is i think it's becoming new years has been a very special place in my heart i think this is the first place i felt like i i feel like home and i mean i was in south korea longer and i didn't feel that way so so i think there were very different life stories but i think it's almost two different people the for me it's the person that was in the soviet union and the person that's here those are two different people for that previous person's home in the soviet union and he's part of me yeah and i suppose in that same way you're you know your first maybe two decades of life are somehow longing for the home that is north korea yeah and your next two decades of life might be finding a home in the united states yeah your your dad uh can you tell the story of um of his struggle um uh of his death i mean first do you miss him do you think about it all the time like i had a son when i was 22. and i had ivf three times and i know as you see i'm like 80 pounds but back now like 75 pounds because of my master of your malnutrition somehow my body is very different and so after three times of av ivf after 23 i was still wanting family and the reason i wanted him is because i felt so guilty for my father that he never seen this world i somehow like when you're so desperate you become illogical like i want to believe in the recon like buddhist idea right you come back to life and i prayed please come to me like as my son so i will take care of you like come back and when i was pregnant with my son even though i planted pregnant with a girl doctor made a mistake he became a boy so i made his middle name like my father's name since i think he's the only american got north korean name [Laughter] it is so he's so part of your father isn't your son yeah that's how i that's how i make the sense of it and that's how i move forward like if i like as a logical human being you you know when you're dead you're done maybe that's that's what i at least used to think but then life just become too unbearable and somehow that's the thing like we tell ourselves stories in order to live and that's how i came within my title of the book in order to live i had to tell myself a lot of stories to overcome a lot of things i think i was part of it can you tell the story of um you escaping north korea to china yeah i think it's it's a thing it's amazing even though i was like 13 my like life outside north korea is almost like it went by like one second and my life till that point was like eternity i remember being in china i arrived there at the end of march at 13 and by october it was six months passed and i literally felt like i lived eternity and one day living in china felt like living one year one day was a war like surviving through one day was so hard every night i was like i cannot believe i got done one day today that was the thing i was grateful for before i went to bed okay i survived i didn't get captured and i made you another day on earth so the experience of the minutes is is what fear fear of being captured fear loss everything so because i mean i sold my own mom in china to survive too so it was more than that and it's not feeling i think that's the thing in china i learned not to fear and after my escape was challenging i didn't feel anything and it was hard not feeling anything is a torture it's a bigger torture you can never feel like even you fear sadness that's better than not feeling anything and i fear something when i had my son that's when i started healing so he was a miracle to save me but yeah in china it wasn't even fear like it was numb you were numb yeah it was like paralysis yeah just overwhelming on the uncertainty of your future did you have a sense what your future held at the time like what do you even even feature i don't even know that word right like a lot of times i was looking at myself like i left my body and like just looking at me and just not feeling it it's not like i'm scared for her i'm like sad for her just looking at me like oh that's interesting wow not feeling anything and me like being raped going through every emotion of life to survive right like but like like somehow i don't know you say so or something like looking at it just like you feel nothing you don't feel anything for that person so even with your mom like what was was there some i don't know some warmth that you were able to extract from the connection with your mom yeah of course i think that made me survive i had a very strong connection with my family and i think that's what kept me going to do all of that i think as you said i escaped at 13. my sister at the age of 16 escaped with her friend first and i was going to escape with her but one day i got like really bad stomachache and my parents took me to hospital and north korean hospital they don't have like x-ray machines like they don't even have electricity they like literally using one needle to inject everybody yeah and people don't die from cancer and north korea you die from infection and fever and hunger right it's most likely you're gonna die more by being treated by doctors and not being treated i think i was lucky even though they thought i had appendix they they operate on me without any painkiller and i didn't get infection i survived so that's how i got delayed to escape to my sister and she left me a note in my bedside saying like follow this lady and this is like another trick about human trafficking right she sold me to china as a sexual slave and she executed fully later and she had she was executed for that later she had five daughters and she sold all her children to china and we can now sitting here judging on like how heartless you are selling your own children to china and as a sexual slave they were like her children were 7 10 years old but that was the only way for her to save her children and if she didn't start me that day i would be dead right now so i'm grateful that she sold me and i think that's the thing is life is so crazy you cannot judge it's just so complex and yeah that's how she changed my life by selling me she sold my mom and myself in 2007 to china so you're grateful for that you're grateful for that suffering of course i am grateful because the alternative is worse i would not be here with you you never knew i existed what do you make of the others suffering in the world today the people there in north korea so that is part of the your of your life's work is helping those people mm-hmm what do you think about them what should people know about them i think that's when i get angry whenever i think about them like your anger directed at at the heartlessness of people the ignorance of people like so when i got on north korea going through all of them and i went to south korea one day i was watching television and just like famous korean k-pop stars and crying and doing some fundraising concerts and i literally thought i was like oh my god something is a horrible going wrong in this country why are these people crying it was cheery like campaign and then later was showing that it was the animal rights campaign to helping out cats and puppies in the shelters yeah do you know anybody she has their tears like that to another human being right now like no right people rather give a million dollars to save some dolphins than saving these children right now being raped in china and i think i love elon musk i read this right i love these people want to like go the moon mars and like people told them like yeah you went we went to the moon like i did not know in north korea i think that's what upsets me okay why there is not even one single human with that kind of brilliance in their brain they they can't save so much suffering that nobody does anything i think that's when i i feel like hard to find help in humanity and that's when i get so upset because think about like even biden or trump or obama they know what's happening in north korea exactly right i mean if we see satellite photos there's public executions i mean the u.n says this is the holocaust happening again and is it happening if the holocaust happening again how why how are you okay doing nothing about it but somehow humans are able to okay not doing anything and this is like this is hard like when people say i'm gonna change the world i want to make a difference like it's hard to believe it you know yeah that we can turn our back to human suffering at scale when it's right in front of us i mean that makes you think about the holocaust this is just everybody was looking the other way yeah because it was almost too hard to look at it no it's not it's the easier thing like it does the thing i was like here to speak at the south by southwest few years ago and like they're everywhere talking about like elon musk project going to the moon right we're gonna be multi spell like species i was like back then i did not even know who he was so if you're guys trying to go after this earth you haven't even explored our earth yet you cannot go to north korea right now you haven't explored that part of our our like planet can we do that first and then move on explore the landscape of human suffering like alleviate suffering in the world there's um there's a lot of suffering happening in africa that has to do with disease and for some reason it's even though we turn our back to that kind of suffering too we still can try to do something about it and there's still efforts uh in terms of uh health care in terms of medicine in terms of bioengineering in terms of like all these efforts to help people from disease but like that's almost like converting into an engineering problem and trying to solve it that somehow is easier for us humans but when there's obvious sort of non-disease-related torture of humans we look the other way yeah whether it's china or it's north korea yeah i mean that has to be changed somehow we'll have to change that somehow this is the thing right now like the china like they bring the xinjiang vigors right dave they say oh this vitamin take it and then it kills their sperm and make them not reproduce their birth rate gone down something 47 to something 50 in the one year time it's a genocide in 21st century and they get those people and get their like organs out imagine if there's some people who do that with cutie puppies and cats there's gonna be insane amount of product they're gonna destroy everything and this is like a human nature that i don't get why there's so much anti-human sentiment in this modern world like we don't have to like the the fact that i was saying like the fact that you care about animals rights it's beautiful because you care about something who cannot speak for themselves the fact that we care about animals is because they cannot speak for themselves right they don't have that ability and there are many people who cannot speak for themselves right now and why do you refuse to be the voice for them because they're simply being a human and maybe it connects to us not being proud of who we are like maybe i don't know what it is why do they deny humans this way maybe they don't like themselves yeah it's almost um we would have to acknowledge some dark things about ourselves in order to start helping what's the solution so you know i see two solutions one is in the military side yeah it's uh assassination or the full-on invasion and then on the activism side which is figuring out ways to um like like you said sort of let people in north korea understand their situation sort of from within try to reform or maybe there's others obviously there could be activism from the outside to build up momentum for the entirety of the world especially the world that it's not just the united states or europe but also as russia and china and so on what what are your ideas here how we can what we can do as individuals and as countries i think the first thing that we can do is speak about chinese role in this sponsoring dictatorship in north korea like i haven't had so much struggle talking about north korea right they say how north korea is possible why is it like the way like this is 99 accountability going to ccp kim jong-un cannot last without chinese have even one week this is completely funded this holocaust is funded by ccp but if you talk about in the mainstream of course they don't buy it and i think it's in a way north korea is a lot easier to serve than even in the middle east there's nothing conflict like between people there's no ideology no religion nothing people are peaceful right there's not even one civil any discontent among the people or problem is there's a dictator funded by the second economic power in the world and even any military they know if they kill kim jong-un they're gonna get killed by chinese nobody can dare to stand up against kim jong because of china is backing it so somehow here in the west we collectively acknowledging that china is the responsible person for these crimes against humanity in north korea then we can somehow i don't know china exactly we're we're failing to do that in a way in all kinds of avenues of life of public life because uh for many reasons they're probably primarily financial but it also i'm against i don't know maybe you can correct me i'm against sort of making china this evil enemy because i've seen this with russia as well and i don't think that leads to progress i think you want to highlight like you basically want to help china the chinese people become the best versions of themselves so speak to the chinese people and not fear not uh making the leaders of china the like into these caricatures of devils i i feel like the cold war the way it was done in russia i just for both sides they were caricaturing each other through propaganda and the result was not productive at all it did not help russia become the best country it could be did not help america become the best country it could be and the same thing with china i feel like making them into this enemy like being afraid of china being making them into the thing that's going to spy on us that's going to destroy the rest of the world that's not going to help china like reform themselves they're going to plant their feet the dictators the evil people will become more evil the power hungry will become more like they will centralize the power more it feels like um maybe naive but it feels like it should be like again love not violence that solves this thing now of course in north korea it's like long gone 80 years almost 80 years old you can't love is not going to solve that problem or i mean i don't it's very difficult they have tried that because of the sunshine policy which is there's a two people walking down the street and the sun and the wind made a battle so who can take off that man take off jacket so wind tried to blow as much air he could and then that man was like putting more like his jacket on right not taking off but sunshine came like okay i'm gonna give him a lot of worms and then he took his jacket out and came out so that was the theory let's give north korea as much love they want let's give them a lot of money whatever they want let's give to them do they know that we are not here to attack them yeah and north korea what they did with the guy who did the sunshine policy in south korea named kim daesung won the nobel peace prize for that and kim kim jong-il used the money to build nuclear weapons so that's how they came with the nukes so i think that's the thing i hope your love serves problems but there's got to be a way and that's the the hope is with the 21st century you can directly speak to the people somehow when there's no internet when there's nothing like that it's hopeless i think china there's a hope that yeah the china is still connected to the internet i love your optimism i have seen the actual dark side of china on the underground i hope i think that's the thing people here in the west right they say oh how can it be that bad they ask me like i walking passing this young teenager man in near the world with my sister he's like intestine coming out through his bad way and even in that moment what he wanted was please give me food he was hungry his intestine is hanging out of his body yeah and he's asking for food do you know what humans demand when they die in north korea all they want is eating right yeah and people say oh nothing can be that bad but people just here haven't seen an actual true evil would you say that the evil comes from a tiny minority of people or does it permeate much larger parts of the population like if we look at sex trafficking how many people like is it 99.9 of the people are s are um longing to do good in the world or is there is it uh or do we all have the capacity for evil in certain kind of environment certain kind of uh governmental structures inspire a large percent of the population to do bad things i think humans are capable of anything there is no exception i don't think there's any saying to born with a morality i think in north korea you can say initially that there's few guys in the top wanting the power and then doing this but eventually made a society where people don't even know what compassion is we don't know the concept of we don't know that you need to feel bad for another human being when they're suffering the fact that you know compassion is in your knowledge that's why you do that humans need to learn it's not anything bad about human nature it's just saying humans are capable of everything we are the most adaptable species on the planet that's why we created the internet like talking this way right now other animals have done it because we are so adaptable that is a good thing and that's a bad thing so in the adaptive situation they all can be i mean during the holocaust right those people they could have been capable of good too if they were exposed to different system yeah and that's why when people underestimate evil that's what scares me evil is evil it's a different thing it's a completely different thing and of course i could really get your idea we don't want to isolate 1.3 billion human beings in on earth by chinese but the thing is we are talking about this regime not the people i love chinese people i speak chinese i love like all about the country but this system does promote evil well that's an optimistic view actually because we can fix systems yeah it's harder to fix people so if we fix systems then the people are adaptable absolutely as you said i mean that and then the question is uh first of all you have to talk about it just as you're doing you're right now like this little flame that burns bright and it's really important for north korea but just keep talking about it until there's until hopefully leads to at the highest levels of power revolutionizing the systems in the world and then uh in china and in north korea do you see north korea being a potential instigator of a nuclear war they will not start any korean war as long as they can do whatever they want right now right north korea's army not designed to fight the enemy they designed to prevent their own people the quteta and the revolution with their own citizens that is 1.6 million north korea with a tiny country the fourth largest armies in the world so this this country designed to fight with their own citizens and the army the fourth largest in the world is designed to basically fight its own people oppress their own people that's what north korean military is about okay let me uh ask you some aspects about north korean life can you describe the seongbon system of uh ascribed status used in north korea yeah so that's a very interesting thing right right now there are a lot of people playing with this ideology of like democratic socialism socialism communism whatever you call marxism leninism right they have all like these similar features where we give collective power to a certain entity and they will make the decision for the bigger good right and north korea came up with the idea the kimir song he was the leninist he was marxist saying i'm gonna create the most equal society on human face so it was a communist north korea and then they came up with this tumbling system it's a family caste system three b categories warrior wavering and hostile and then in between three classes they divide into 50 different classes so a lot of people don't even know which exact class you belong to that's a sacred golem document and that's how they decide your future so in no way north korea before you're born your life is determined for you and this is normal joke right they dreamed of creating the most equal society they ended up with became most inequal society in the face of humanity so there are 50 different classes and where the one guy on the top became a god so when this animal farm as we keep saying like there's so many all the animals are equal and someone and more equal than others exactly but but it's not only it's just more equal one guy in our school became a god because north korea was born out of uh marxist ideals yeah from stalin can you comment on uh juche ideology which seems to be its own kind of socialism but uh with unique aspects here it really does ideologically says the importance of having a great leader yeah is there some interesting similarities or differences that you can comment on between other implementations of communism throughout history the soviet union china elsewhere so tutor is very unique it came around the 90s after soviet union collapsed so before that north korea was very still loyal to the marxist and melanianism which is state takes care of you we are going to give you the right education health care your livelihood you everybody's going to be equal you're going to have in the working collective form collective workplace everybody collectively do things together and let's work for the paradise but 1991 the soviet union collapsed and until then north korea was heavily subsidized by soviet union's aid and then soviet didn't give them anything so now three million people die on the streets the regime then came up with the idea okay our goal is what is successful ruling for us is keeping the 10 percent of population alive which is in the capital pyongyang so they design the hunger games there is a capital 13 other districts everybody on the countryside on purpose being starved so those people who are starving cannot thinking about meaning of life cannot thinking about shooting to the moon right they're not gonna think about anything or they're gonna think it's like finding next meal all on purpose is man-made famine international community was begging to give north korea food why not stood at the u.n they begged to give north korea formula medicine and food they are begging can you please feed your people and kimchon said no thank you last year like we knows had a horrible horror flooding south korean prisons are begging can you get can i give you please some medicines like no because he wants to be the one provider he doesn't want people to think other people giving him the thing so on purpose other people are starving and the truth idea is that's when you're coming from so until that communism was about like steady speaking being a father figure takes care of all your needs right give the power to us and you are all good but north korea regime says okay now we cannot give people's rations so which means means self-reliance you need to take care of yourself while you're giving every right to us so now in 1990s the regime told us okay we are not going to give you russian you cannot trade that's illegal but you find your own way to survive so be self-reliant that's what to say and you know but when you're a god you can do whatever you want you don't need to make a sense that's the difference being a god and being a leader even it is religion it's not falsifiable you cannot challenge it god's way is suspicious god works in the mysterious way so when you're god people are not gonna say oh this doesn't make sense right you're gonna okay whatever god says we as a human being we can never change these thoughts it is unbelievable what regimes can do the there's something about famine you know that um is another is another level of evil to me you know what stalin did in ukraine in the 30s yeah [ __ ] him yeah this is what torture is cannibalism yeah and um north korea too they humans right now in 21st century seven billion people on this earth right now you make the enough food for 10 billion people nobody should be starving right now it's worrisome to me the humanity is moving forward with the technological advances blah blah we are going so fast in in advancement and we are living this like 25 million human beings in the cage completely leaving them behind and north korea is living like 16 centuries i never like this morning i was taking a shower beautiful shower like one never knew what shower was i was bathing few few times a year going to the like river how do i even know what shampoo is and this is how human beings in 20 persons living and it doesn't bother us and rather most people obsess being a vegan and like how how do you reconcile this i think we get used to stuff very quickly we get used to comforts that's just the way of human life you you take the beautiful things for granted so i try to appreciate everything i have so whether it's uh like the food i have now or like the luxury to have a diet and to be struggling with that yeah or just the basic simple moments of being alive with the people i love or actually i get like i think i'm on drugs all the time because i feel like just even like uh this mug everything on this table just brings me joy but it's like filling your life with joy in the full capitalistic american way you can still at the same time uh not feel too bad about yourself no and still focus on the the suffering in the world and i think there's some way that in trying to build a better world in america it has ripple effects elsewhere sort of like so i'm a fan of rockets in space it sounds perhaps counter-intuitive but sending raucous to space will help solve the north korea a problem because it lets people dream yeah and build cool stuff so it's not the rocket it's the other people that like are inspired by the rocket and then look to other problems in the world i mean that's what elon did is like he saw problems in the world and saw like what can i do to help it and i think the north korea one is a tough one though because that's ultimately has to do with revolutionizing government china china that's what it takes changing chinese communist party is impossible that's why we couldn't solve north korea for that many decades but it's china well for now it's china but it's china it's um so it's uh russia it's certain aspects of the united states and struggling with that uh one of the you know there's a bunch of technologies that are striving at this um for example uh i don't know what your thoughts about cryptocurrencies i love it so like there's a idea that money could be a way to destroy or to challenge the power centers of the world yeah so if you give if you take away the power from fiat currency and give it to this thing that can't be controlled by government that's cryptocurrency whether it's bitcoin ethereum all those kinds of things that's a way to get money into the hands of people to where the government can't take that money away but north koreans don't have electricity no internet so yeah we can do that with china we can do it a lot of african dictatorship countries right i do think big cryptocurrency is such a fascinating technology right i think this is an amazing experiment i mean that power is in our hands i'm the huge advocate believer but i think nurses too behind yeah you know i think that's what is unique about north korea is that most of things that we talk about is now it's different planet literally the common law that we have is now applicable what about kim jong-un kim jong-un yeah is he intentionally evil or is he mindless mindlessly propagating an evil system created by his ancestors what's your sense of the man so with the keemer's song i can give him more than i feel that he was a initial true believer of communism but then as later he gained the power he realizing i think i guess back then he thought most of people are dumb my individuals don't so therefore i need to make a decision for all of you that pure arrogance came from out of him even that i can tolerate okay fine and kim jong-il who never like yeah fine he grew up in that system too but kim jong-un is very unique this guy was educated in switzerland in the heart of democracy he knew how human beings should be treated as a child event when you're a child your brain is very susceptible right you change anybody like why the mall was so pleasant changing young people's minds like that's every revolutionary they do right they go change young people's minds first this guy was so obsessed with the power him being a god even starting in switzerland didn't change him and that's why i think that's a pure evil you know i can't give him more benefit or thought to his grandfather and father but when it comes to kim jong-un this is like what pure evil looks like pure selfish being yeah that's what it looks like is there is there some sense where he's justifying everything he's doing to himself or do you think there's a psychopathic aspect to where he enjoys the suffering i think in his life right i read a lot about like north korea a lot of cia documents a lot of intelligence people work there and even like worked in north korean type elites and escaped i could hear about them so kim jong-un when they're born they treat like gods so they never have a sense of them being a human they're like equal with others for them like if you're just any kind of tool like that what napoleon like thing does right anybody's a tool like once boxer dies you get him slaughtered for my cause and they do not even feel guilty about it because they don't view us that you deserve you are worthy of it yeah that's right so it's not like he even fears he doesn't even recognize the suffering like of course you you this this is what you do serving me because i am i am this so i think that's like beyond that like he's not like suffering his enters his minds he doesn't even think what we go through you see he thinks is himself as a as a god yeah and then everybody else is just uh tools that are disposable right there was rumors several times of him dying yeah do you think he is um obviously his health is not good do you think he will die soon what happens if kim jong-un dies well when it comes to north korea anybody knows what they're going what kim jong-un does it's lie right nobody knows i'm sure cia knows but they may never reveal that cia has enough intelligence to can tell where kim jong-un is what he's doing they just don't assassinate him because they don't see the needs of it right now because do you think they can assassinate him they can't they do have ability abilities why the hell do they not assassinate them because they don't care they don't care about the suffering of 25 million people they gotta pay the price if they sell assassin kim jong-un they gotta pay the price there will be financial there'll be political price to pay it will anger china absolutely that is a huge piece for them and then they'll have to deal obviously there'll be financial military consequences of having to deal with the turmoil the uncertainty yeah the revolutions that will spring up yeah that's the thing like that's why they don't want to take that risk they don't want to do anything the u.s now became very passive when they pursue these mortal values to the rest of the world they did the same thing with the holocaust in the early days actually yeah they were like just they didn't care and that's what they're always policy has been they don't care i mean so if kim jong-un dies it's gonna be very hard for north korea to replace anybody in his position because kim's is a brand it's not just like a leader for us right whenever we think of kim who came with my mind like who's like almost god figure like north korea is the number 10 religions in the world they copy the bible so if you believe that if there are people believing that god and jesus christ how do you not believe that north korea believes in the same thing so kim il-sung's grandfather and his parents were devout christians so kim your son was grew up just like christian like word verses so when he finding his country he said i love my people so much that i'm giving you my son kim jong-il his body dies but he spirits with us forever who can know how many hair i have what i think and when we suffer we go to paradise with him and when you block every single information going into country of course people are gonna believe it so who would be the successor if he dies he has a son a first son born 2009 and not not old enough if he dies now so either his sister might rule for of short amount time as not like a leader but like replay like temporary placement and then when the sun is old enough he might take it off because it's a kingdom that's most likely and china will do everything they can to maintain that status call for the north korean regime so north korean people have no option here we just need some leader to courageously come up and do the right thing so we can't just wait this out no we can't it's not something that takes its course and not gonna change like we not even know that economic freedom does not bring political freedom we know in china it doesn't that's that's unique thing about freedom you gotta fight for it otherwise you don't never get it freedom is something has to be fought and if nobody fighting for freedom it's not gonna be there can we talk a little bit about freedom what what does it mean to you having had we talked about love in that same way about freedom having sort of discovered it later in life what does it mean to you i think every day i i get a new definition of freedom it is it's a never-ending journey having this relationship with being free and what it means to be free right i think i think uh you definitely can live life without being free and also happy life too i saw a lot of nursing elites who were were fed and have power but didn't have freedom were very happy in a way happier than the people that i found in yeo were like investment bankers and consultants in manhattan and seventy percent of them called like talk therapists i was very confused i remember writing my book in new york like my editor was saying yeah me you know like you're traumatized you need to go talk to therapists and it's like what is therapy right what is trauma because in north korea they don't have word for stress or trauma because how can you be stressed in the surgery is paradise so they don't let you be knowing what that is yes so and then they were like yeah hearing people having problems go talk to therapists and i was like like how much is it actually like 200 per hour and it's discounted rate too it's like no thank you [Laughter] you know i was like you know and we know that freedom comes with responsibility and in a way it's not that easy to be free thinking for yourself constantly like when you in a way i understand like let's give government every power we have let them decide what education that i get let them decide where i live like you know let someone figure that out for me and that's how north korea began hoping the government gonna represent my own interest believing that they were good and with that benefit of thought and good faith you began the nightmare right yeah so freedom is not like a gay way to be happy at all in a way you can make life a lot more complex but then it's fun isn't it you start being for yourself you start making mistakes and it's so fun to be free even though you can be suffering way more than the people who are not free the thing about freedom is when you have freedom you also have the responsibility for your actions and that could be a huge burden yeah because um if you succeed it's you but if you fail it's you yeah and uh if you do horrible things it's you if you don't do something for example if you don't help people in north korea it's you yeah and that's a huge burden yeah and living with that burden is a kind of suffering i mean there's some aspect in which freedom is suffering it is suffering because life is suffering and then freedom is uh you as an individual fully living through that so you talked you're friends with michael malus he believes and so i want to kind of ask you about government he believes he's an anarchist and he believes kind of in freedom fully implemented in in human societies meaning that humans should all be free to choose how they um you know transact with each other how they live together there shouldn't be a centralized force that tells you what to do do you think there's some role for government in um in a healthy society yeah so you if we look at north korea there's the most horrible implementation of government but then if we look at what the united states strives to be at least in principle there's uh there's an ideal of a government that represents the people and helps the people like is there is there a place for that kind of ideal or is government always going to get us into trouble i am not i mean i spoke to michael males i kept asking why he's anarchist right and he doesn't believe in military none of that and it's i was like i was like i don't think i want to be in that world you're describing me that's pretty scary i want the law enforcement i want like i don't in a way that so why equality makes no sense is that the fact that when you and i were born we were born in a very different capability of thinking different intelligence different capability in our physics right so equality is nonsense you can never achieve that right so to me that's when it's very scary when the government tries to interforce equality on everybody that is impossible that's specifically equality of outcomes so like so given that we all started different places enforce like measure in some kind of way where people stand and if they're on equal in force equality yeah and that's what leads to the kind of things that you mentioned with the class system right in north korea yeah so i think that's why government can be bad they can be very dumb and another another thing is that they cannot know what you want a lot of times people don't even know what they want any individual like how the heck do you assume government gonna know what is best for you nobody knows we just all do our best i do think that some governments against switzerland you know have more give power to the different state can be good i think i'm more you know like giving power to the state and let individuals decide where they want to go in within states or i mean why did you choose taxes right there's no income tax right like there's a lot of things people find texas like you know charming and they come here so in a way that i don't want to be in a one strong garment it makes every single thing the same way in a way i want to kind of experiment everything you can have anarchy state there's no police nothing going on you can be whatever one you want and you can go on a stable it's like abortion is bad blah blah this is bad all these conservative values and let the ideas compete and let them how they are being tracked in real real life but i think it's very scary when the youth government is getting bigger and bigger and then they try to you know make every state under one big government and that's like when i get really alarmed are there things that you see in the united states in the current culture that kind of has echoes of the same things you saw in north korea that that worry you that much absolutely it's it's uh it's in america now the meritocracy doesn't matter right it's evil the white man's idea of like talking about if you're competent enough they said oh if you're coming from which white family you are going to be competent so other people don't have a chance but look at asians who came from nothing is competent and go to like harvard law school and medical school so it doesn't almost it's like there's no incentive for you to work hard anymore in the system right now that is north korea there's no incentive because you're born with your class already so no matter what you do you can never so the horrible thing about north korean system is that there is nothing even holding mary up so if you're coming from other cultures that like mega marco join the royal family and she became a lawyer you go up by north korea if someone from high class is going to marry somebody down you only go down with them that's how they prevent classmates right they that kind of enforces the separation because there's huge disincentives to go uh to marry to to integrate between classes yeah what do you do about this kind of um you know especially in universities but in companies i'm thinking about starting a company so i'm looking at this very carefully there's these ideas of diversity and and meritocracy that's a tension so yeah i think there's there's a big way in which diversity broadly defined is not at all in in tension with meritocracy so having a variety of people backgrounds way of thinking all those kinds of things is a huge benefit to any group but the way diversity is often defined is by sort of very crude classes of people whether it's by skin color or gender or or or some very kind of large group way and that that actually does two things in my mind one it drowns out real diversity or not real but the full spectrum of diversity which is like within class diversity of like um are you are you somebody who is um are you somebody who's exceptionally good at mathematics are you somebody who's exceptionally good at psychology are you good with people are you good with numbers all that kind of stuff that i think spans or intersects in fascinating ways with these kinds of groups so that's diversity and then meritocracy is this thing that probably the reason i wanted to move to silicon valley and the reason i didn't is like having a fire to change the world within you like meritocracy is like i want to be the best in the world at this and i will strive and work hard not stepping on others but like in purely within yourself be the best version of yourself that that idea is um in some ways being not celebrated or demonized is it literally meritocracy is being demonized right now in america working hard is a symbol of you coming from some established family yeah the fact that you celebrate accomplishment hard work is a sign of your patriarchy whatever thing they call right and they want to abolish that they they want to like stop giving kids grace that's what they're already doing right they want to stop they want like we should abolish like s 18 in america they take to go to college right they won't even abolish this because yeah some keep kids have no ability to do math so why do we have to force them to learn math and that's what comes with humans overcome challenges yeah that's what makes us special but then like because these kids coming from this family let's find a reason why they cannot and then they don't have to do that thing but they still deserve the same job they need to be a lawyer and doctors yeah and that's like what in north korea was like not there was not even meritocracy to begin with right you these people in the same family the family the blood right like if one person does something wrong it's like collective guilt because i spoke out three generations of my family got punished who are left behind and then in america i see the same thing like if you're somehow great great grandfather on the slave now you are privileged and you're guilty because you are white and geared then but how do you change your ancestor how did you have a saying on it and that is where there's no way out there's no forgiving there's moving forward and this current culture in america now like i remember at columbia like before class everybody have to go around of saying tell us what your pronoun is and my english might third language i learned as an adult even saying he and she i'm confused by this is a pure mistake and they say call me day because i'm gender fluid basically i can be a girl but next hour you talk to me i'm a boy right yeah and if you don't do it right they like look at you why are you big at right it makes me so nervous and this is where i come to this is a regression of civilization we are regressing as a humanity here like the enlightenment all of those things made us so much brighter and looking forward and now we are going backwards well i think it's there's a pendulum aspect to it because it's my it's my hope in terms of backwards so pendulum goes backwards too but it just goes back and forth i think and then uh in the long arc of history we're making progress i think all of the discussions of diversity and inclusion and all those kinds of things i always thought that they're healthy in a in moderation right they should be a small part of the conversation amongst other things the the natural asp like it seems that they kind of have this way of just consuming all conversations it's like the meetings like diversity and inclusion meetings multiply somehow where it's like the only thing that you're talking about it's very kind of absurd and when i look at uh even at mit it's it's it's a strangely disproportionate amount of discussions about that and also to me as an engineer those discussions are very frustrating because they don't seem to actually do anything no so like they want to uh bully people yeah instead of creating systems that fix define like definitive problems and that in itself that kind of bullying that's the same kind of thing you saw in terms of mccarthyism in america against the communists you certainly saw that in soviet union against everybody who's not communist it's uh it creates hate not progress when you talk to jordan peterson recently and people should listen to that conversation it was a fascinating one i think um he he almost got emotional on the discussion about universities and your experience with colombia because he like myself for perhaps different reasons have a hope for our academic institutions some of the most incredible people some of the most incredible engineering and idea development innovations happens in universities and so we both deeply care about them um is there something so the reason he got emotional the reason he was kind of hurt is the the the fact that you did not you were not deeply inspired by your experience deeply it made me dumber it made me scared it made me terrified that i had to censor myself in america like like are you seriously telling me that you don't ever censor yourself and when you talk do you can you truly say whatever you want about race of anything gender we all censor ourselves let's be honest right we are all doing that and that's what i learned like i thought i was coming to country where i never needed it like first thing my mom taught me growing up in north korea was don't even whisper because the birds and mice could hear you and i thought okay now america is a truly the land of the free home of the brave you can say anything you want and then you have freedom to change your mind and evolve right but the people now demand you to be the perfect version they demand you to be you cannot change your mind and then what is the meaning of life you cannot grow right you should be feel safe to talk about anything and then later okay i was wrong but now if you do that you gotta like get penalized for it i mean censorship is a funny thing because you probably should not say dumb things you should try to say things you want to say in the most eloquent the most effective way you can so i mean that's what editing is right yeah so there's some level of like being careful with what you say not because you're afraid of some overarching kind of group of bullies but you want to be the best version of yourself when you express stuff but there's some sense where in the university setting you can put that self-censorship like level down more and say stupid stuff right and explain and play because you should be forgiven for that kind of uh play especially when you're discussing difficult aspects of human history whether that include racism that that include uh atrocities i'm still nevertheless sort of hopeful but at the same time i'm i'm surrounded by engineers yeah so i don't get to interact with people in humanities much and it seems like there's a good thing it's a good thing i i yeah i don't know um well i do sort of interact with psychologists but they haven't touched on those kinds of topics yet i i still sort of in defense of psychology i still i wish he had more numbers yeah uh but i still feel like most psychology people don't partake in this kind of stuff either they're just doing excellent research we're just highlighting this what america does well you're kind of highlighting anecdotal experiences and uh making a big deal out of them but that's good because like it's a slippery slope if those if those things start to overtake all of academia it starts becoming a big problem even in the engineering field so we should be concerned but it is truly tragic that somebody who's exceptionally well read like you whose fire was stoked first with orwell that fire should burn bright like this should not be you should be writing many books you know what i mean like and you'll be you talk to jordan you know it's very possible depending what you want to do with your life that you'll be a future jordan peterson right so like that and colombia should be a place that enriches that your mind and the fact that it didn't is is tragic it's like i was there four years it wasn't like i had one class that was bad in a one semester yeah that was the thing i mean dr peter was asking is there any one class that had no sentiment of this this virtue signatory and politically right yeah there was none yeah entire course i think i took 126 credits total yeah not even one class doesn't matter we were talking about classic art and that's the thing i literally thought okay i pushed it last like the semester the call like the art and music right so i thought this is going to be the least politically correct class i can take and then it begins with who has problem with calling this course the western civilization muse of art and music and everyone's raising their hands because like why do you have to learning about this better than mozart the bigots and all the people like you know everything ruined by white men yeah and it's even music even these paintings and as i i didn't raise my hand everyone's looking at me how do you not have a problem with us like you used to hate us you're asian you're so i think that's the thing is i think the problems way deeper than what people think and it's it's so that's what i when i learned it's like it's not that safe in america we can go complete to the south and looking at even europe that is like i used to be way more optimistic like you know that but now i actually see wow this country can go to south and we might if u.s force land right this is the only country left to battle with the common spot in china we may lose the opportunity to be free ever again as a humanity wow so i mean that puts a lot of value on having these kinds of conversations it is i mean i'm troubled i'm troubled by a lot of things but like censorship on youtube for example yeah it was very annoying to have to listen to donald trump all the time like just like create drama like the news cycle was completely drowned out by donald trump but like banning him from twitter it was like that i that was that was scary for me because it's like that's a step towards the direction where you're going to like where's that take us you're going to silence people then it's like jordan peterson is next that's why we need to promote freedom of thinking and speech right and one thing that i love about dr peterson is humans he's psychologists right he talks about we we we think by talking yeah that's why when you go to therapy you talk and then you hear yourself and then you think and you come up to the answer it's so important for humans to talk so we can think so when they say you cannot talk means you cannot think and they don't know the consequences of that and this is why i promote i want the freedom of speech even though it hurts ridiculous you know sometimes it can it can be dangerous but the price the alternative is so bad that we should take the you know make this trade-off everything has a trade-off in this world and it comes with a sacrifice right so i think that's uh that's what i want to see in america but it's unfortunately like the people like you say who decides what is hate speech what is dangerous that's what what i've been getting scared because everybody's imperfect yeah how do you want to give the power to them and they're going to decide today they might agree with me say okay your speech is good promo is good and then they might come back next year so you're probably bad what are you gonna do when that happens to you we have to almost like get ideas out and then play with them i think what's a really important component of that is forgiving each other for like realizing the word different person day by day and certainly years later and i think some of that is both cultural mechanisms of saying like we forgive each other for wrong ideas or not wrong ideas but for who we are the the full evolution of the human being for the steps we've taken on that evolution and also creating mechanisms that allow you to um allow us to forgive each other like for example on a twitter is like horrible with this because one of the main viral ways that people create drama on twitter is like pulling up an old tweet that somebody said right and then saying oh this is the guy that thinks that yeah and but that's like the opposite of the mechanisms we need to forgive ourselves forgive each other for the things we've said in the past um so part of that is the cultural part of this is as is the um the technological um mechanisms you mentioned uh jordan jordan peterson you had a great conversation with him what uh what was chatting with him like i'm just i'm just curious because he's deeply passionate especially on the soviet union side about the atrocities of these kinds of systems what was it like what did you um what did you agree with him on what did you disagree what were some things you both kind of learned from each other through that conversation do you think so here so my story the jordan period is not a very long one so one day i was walking down in chicago and they were like a huge theater or sold out he said big letter jordan peterson saw that yeah and then it was a huge theory in the middle of chicago right like doesn't like comedian like who can be selling this entire thing out at like 7 00 p.m and then with my like ex-husband we were walking the street and then we saw people were like selling those like tickets like and for a very higher price right and then you want to take it and then he was like yeah sure and we went in it's packed and then i was just give birth or like but i wasn't able to understand his english that much my english was served and he didn't know who he was really no no you were just curious yeah he was like 2 000. he's the guy that sells out of a theater yeah yes i i saw dave rubin came up before him and make jokes i still don't know who dave rubin is afterwards i met them all but back then i had no clue what that is and then he was giving lessons but what i got from that night was not what jordan said but what people did on the audience these people like i don't know thousands of people in this big theater crying like babies and that's what i was like whatever that guy is doing is very special right he was like making any jokes he had no slides just one simple person standing in the huge dragon theater talk and long time too and people cry i was like wow okay mate whatever that is i gotta check it out and then i got home and then later many years later i got a book and i was start reading his book and it talks about it explains so much right like now at columbia learn like everything gender is like made of concept construct like the higher kills my men's idea make the hierarchy and he begins with the number one the the lobsters had the hierarchies evolution of history that is within us that we want a higher key rate and then chapter five about socialization of child you know how do you raise them and all of it and then what's why telling the truth is matters right and there's a white like in it's entire twelve lessons i read it and i was like i'm i was so grateful that i'm alive with this like there's people always say if socrates is alive how much would you pay to have lunch with him that kind of thing right so for me was like okay i'm like alive in the same contemporary world one of the greatest singers of my entire generation and then like how much money you hang out with exactly right how much money would i pay right no no limit amount yeah and i like reached out to michaela on her pockets on twitter and connected and then one day she'll say do you wanna go my father's podcast i was like what i was like of course and i was very nervous but i didn't expect him to be like that connected yeah because i thought he was psychologists like he saw so much suffering in the world he started solving his hobbies collecting those things to remind him of the suffering of a human being so sometimes some people hear so much atrocity they become like very you know not engaged desensitized he felt he was feeling he was it's almost like he was living through the experiences with you as you were talking about it it was an amazing conversation so jordan is one of the great thinkers of our time but i would say the greatest thinkers of our time is michael malus you've also got to just talk to uh well so he wrote a book on north korea yeah it's an interesting style book i learned a lot from it i learned a lot from michael about it and it's interesting that he chose north korea as a as a thing to study that he of all people this fascinating human being that is michael chose this darkest of aspects of of uh humanity to study what uh what do you think of michael what do you think of his book on north korea called dear reader that people should definitely check out absolutely so back then when i reached michael through mutual friends south korea i my english wasn't good so i got a copy in my hand i tried to read and a lot of them i didn't understand so but i thought it was very fascinating how he explained north korea through the deal leaders perspective right as nobody has ever done that and you can reverse so much about the state and the absurdity of entire situation and also through humor and that's what's amazing about my chris is he knows the full gravity of tragedy he knows the first offering he's not just like people here in america on the bus feed making fun of kim jones haircut they don't care what people go through michael cares deeply cares and then he still does ridiculous jokes so that that kind of reveals in a dark way the absurdity yeah of evil yeah he does that masterfully do you he's a genius he is definitely all right let's let's if he watches this uh you know let's not get make his head too big here but is there some aspect to i mean there is an absurdity to the whole thing yeah uh kim jong-un is this i mean he's almost like a caricature of evil like joke it's a joke a lot of people think it's a joke they just think like this is too too absurd that is a they laugh like can you imagine you laugh at holocaust this is that ridiculous can you maybe psychoanalyze that a little bit because that that's where my mind goes too like he's so ridiculous that you can't it's almost like hard to believe this is real yeah is that just is that just my kind of and people's desire to escape the cruelty of reality by just kind of making a joke out of it i think it is a few things right like um to north korea as a nation uh number one or number two smartest iq people in the world despite their magnitude so so so there is i mean that that was that's an interesting point so in your sense the people are not dumb still carry the the the brilliance there's a there's a culture there that's like hungry to become realized like the people that that were like that that are silenced by the electricity by the actually having no food all those kinds of things like if you add the electricity if you add the food you're going to have a cultural center of the world like south korea that's what they exactly did right the exact same career one became one like 11th largest economy one became the world's most like polish nation right and this is a perfect example like if i don't know if you read that book why nation affairs the system it's not about the culture it's not about people it's not about iq what makes us too different is a system south korea is north korea is a perfect example of that one is exact same capability we were homogeneous like country same language tradition all of that we gave them different system one is free democracy one dictatorship and came up with the biggest different results and i think north korea reveres that to us it's not because we are great that we are living in this prosperity free market the ideas gave us to this the system we built our ancestors spirit gave us this privilege it's not us nothing is about us being special here right the system that we have is quite special and north korea proves that to us it doesn't matter even if you're smart it that's all irrelevant and i think that's why people just keep denying that they want to feel special like because i'm awesome i got all of this like no it's not you you got this and when people say like i hate capitalism it's like without capitalism how do you came up with this thing literally how did you come up with this the systems matter and they matter like um way more than this individualistic society would like to imagine it is the most important thing you can have in life choosing the right system do you have a device for young people today you've lived an incredible life and you have i hope an incredible life ahead of you what advice would you give to young people today high schoolers college students how to um be successful in their career maybe successful in life last thing i want them to fear is guilty it's it doesn't do anything right so i hate when people talk about white gears it's like that doesn't make even any sense right i think the fact that they born with freedom is a blessing for all of us it's not like i want them to want to do something because they are guilty i want them to do something because they are grateful it is true like we are sitting here the fact why i have children is suffering having kids you don't sleep costly like so much work like any like logical rational mind you should never want children right like why would you do that to yourself especially as a woman right yeah you don't want to do that to yourself but think think about like we are sitting here today two of us in this amazing technology this country because somebody in savannah hundreds thousands of years ago they're hunting berries and surviving cold every suffering they can imagine they fall for us that's how we ended up here so life is ultimately bigger than us and i think that's what i want them it's not like i want them to do the right thing and be the best person of themselves it's like i want them to feel grateful and we should be very grateful for the freedom and then take full and advantage of that i mean it starts with the freedom to experience everything in life and for your life literally like how my father like you know working dying is a lot easier than living that takes like few minutes right maximum and living takes forever so when i was facing this unbelievable challenge i thought okay this most rational thing i can do is killing myself right now but the hardest thing i can choose is choose to live and my father did that even in the consumption camp even no matter what he said life is a gift you need to fight for it and i think that's what's missing here that we don't think life as a gift it's a gift like how many people had to fight for me to be here today think about the sacrifice they made for many many many generations i don't even know what they went through i can't even fathom what they went through they fought for life yeah and that is my responsibility enough so it doesn't make them their fault fire was not meaningless right it meant something because now i'm carrying on that fight you mentioned considering suicide do you think about your mortality now now that you're perhaps in slightly more comfortable place you still think about death i do because i was informed actually when i was 21 that i was on the killing list of kim jong-un in by south korean intelligence and then and then i i had to live with that right but now i actually feel more because i don't know you follow jamal khashoggi's story the saudi journalist who got chopped off in turkey canvas right his reason why he got killed was he became very prominent on twitter he had a huge voice and saudis followed him now i became very first north korean to have this many social media followings and recently north korea started invasion investigation team to analyze whatever i do even though it's first time for them so they don't even know what at this point like they're like this is so new what do we do with kim jong-nam kim jong-nam the half-brother kim jong-un got killed in malaysia that is another tragedy that i feel so sorry for the u.s government is that kim jong-nam was giving information to the cia for the past like 10 years that trip when he got killed in malaysian airport he was meeting up with the cia agent for two days on the northern ireland cia could have protected them they didn't they let him die and who killed them north korean kim jong-un do you know the malaysian the ladies are the vx the nerve agent north koreans kill them in malaysia in the international land so i mean jamal khashoggi who was a youth resident and the washington post journalist when he got killed in saudi like a lamb they chopped them into pieces in that most inhumane death what was the consequences for the saudis nothing the word is we think we living in justice country now there's no justice there is no accountability for killing any decent no matter how big their names are so you don't think you're vast and quickly growing social media presence protects you no it does opposite because kim jong-un in german i spoke out i don't know if you went through it they did everything they could to characterize assassinate me saying i'm a liar i'm a cia spy i get paid and then they reach out to penguin saying we're gonna blow up you cannot write this book and they did it with the sony they hacked the sony studio for making that stupid movie interview right and then penguin did their investigation they met every survivor that i went through in the desert they got the voice recording of them because they don't want them to change their mind later right people remember differently so they got the voice recordings like the penguin regarding got the old audience and now we are ready for the lawsuit we are going to publish this book because we checked to verify every single thing that was going in the book and north korea couldn't do anything anymore but that's a character assassination which by the way that's a whole nother conversation that you were able to survive that i appreciate the kind of strength it requires to survive that because you don't know and your character being assassinated is in some ways can be as painful as actual assassination it's worse everybody thinks you're a liar yeah like everybody thinks you're a liar yeah and now everybody like you said this nature of internet that as long as something is written internet they think that's a fact yeah any stupid person can start a blog and write about you but they think oh because it's written on the internet it's a legit especially negative stuff that's the thing i was kind of trying to elaborate on there's a viral aspect to calling somebody a fraud or a liar yeah that nobody questions whether it's true or not it just spreads yeah it's a it's a dark side of our human nature that we want to destroy yeah the people who are rising yeah we cannot stand it yeah yeah we any change maker in this world who wasn't controversial right martial engineer like nurse mandela he was called as a terrorist right so i just did not know i the character assassination is the thing it'll probably continue with you it will continue forever so you have to get stronger and stronger i think in the face of that but actual assassination and perhaps it's me being hopeful because i have a situation with russia that i hope i'm not under well i don't care actually but there's some aspect in which social media presence i thought protects you a little bit because just imagine the outrage from an attempted assassination assassination of you but what was our wage when drama koshki got killed like that was the social media presence large over one million people i don't have that family he was 1.6 million twitter followers and the outrage wasn't there no because saudis spoke to amazon the prime studio netflix there were people made a documentary about him but told everybody don't cannot get that deal so there was a huge censorship on that and people of course like i mean they can talk about it one day some distance from saudi got killed yeah horrible it just dissipates like they they move on to the next cute puppy right they didn't execute cat like that's what the nature of this new generation does they desensitized it doesn't affect them they keep following the instant pleasure instant high that's what instagram does to you it changes your brain like that's why i always reminisce about the shallows we became shallow and shallow and our brain changes permanently so this inner generation we can get them angry for like 10 minutes create hashtags for one day but then as quick as that was it goes down like instantly and i think that's the well that means that okay so that means that there is uh it's an effective way to get rid of opposition is by murdering them and that means a united states if it stands for freedom if it stands for the freedom of exchange of ideas should be protecting people like you but they because they don't want to be involved they will they they they didn't even protect kim jong-nam who was giving information 10 years to risk in his life that's what is so i mean working for cia is not bad i'm not i don't i hope i mean the thing is he was giving information to bring down the vision yeah that is valuable that is something noble about him but then you just don't go extra miles to that that's when i lost my faith in the u.s system as well like this country just cares about saving face what is most minimum because they pay for anything and like i went up south korea constantly every single day intelligence calling me like the north korean agent going this place where are you going the u.s citizens came to us nobody they said when people said that you're a cia agent like i wish they called me i really truly do but nobody nobody does here i'm sure they know what's going on but the south korean agent is more like oh my gosh we don't want you to get killed a south korean citizen right yeah and now i'm trying to become a citizen so it's in a way it's i don't know what's worse are you are you afraid for your life i was afraid for those ever three four years i was afraid and it was but i had to came terms with it like in my enemy is not on some crazy psychopath it's a state with a new career power to attack the most powerful country if kim jong-un decides if i die i'm gonna die it's not up to me right so in a way it's just liberating that you it's like if you are like afraid of some mobs or some like gangsters on the street it's almost like you have power over a little bit you gotta be like thinking that's my fault i i went that way right but when it comes to kim jong-un i know like my enemy is so much bigger than me it's in always a liberation and also it always i just i live a lot so i have seen a lot i've seen everything i don't have that much yogurt left here like okay i'm going too soon you know it's like okay maybe it's time like death is a part of life so in some sense you're willing to accept death to keep fighting for freedom in your in at least in part a place you call home yeah it is do you hope that one day you can return to north korea i hope so i hope i bring my son and tell him this is like where your ancestors from too it would look very different than the place you came from in your as you hope do you do you hope that there's a democracy one day that north korea looks like south korea well that'll be in paradise right that's but i'm a rational optimist i'm not like just optimistic because i have to be i think as long as there are people who have changed the world right like who believed in something and worked for it and like i don't know like there's a like alice she wrote a few people holding entirely this word right i really believe in that i think as long as that continues that can happen in my country as long as people like you someday you want to decide to do something about north korean working for using your brain power to solve this puzzle how fascinating would that be that's why i continue to speak continue to recruit to inspire millions to do something the books you like are all the books i love so i have to mention this you mentioned uh briefly on the uh with jordan uh siddhartha by herman hesse is uh it's an incredible book yeah they're i mean i don't i don't know exactly what i want to ask here but there's some i think the book kind of through telling a story yeah reveals that life is suffering and yet there's beauty in it the beauty in every moment it uses kind of a river painted metaphor is there is there um is there something that you could say speak to like how that book impacted your life and the way you live life maybe the way you see life whether it's on the life of suffering side or that life is beautiful side i mean he goes the entire journey right he goes in this state like i'm so enlightened that i cannot deal with people they're in love and cry about it right they're like that's so like primitive once he has his own son he actually being attached he actually cares he actually really does whole thing right that's the thing that he used to think not once his son comes find him he looks at life differently i think that's the thing i did have the kind of journey where oh nothing matters right so bitter so so like so cynical and after i met so many incred incredible people i was talking about that person who told me he was gay he told me i love you and i was like why do you love me in the past people when they wanted me was because they want to rape me everybody wanted something for me that's why they wanted me and i never understood you can love somebody unconditionally and this gay guy the last one was going to sleep with me right and he loves me and i think i had a blessing after my journey meeting people who loved me unconditionally because i was just being a human and i think that's what it is now for me that like him i live for love now i live for love any kind of love love for knowledge i like i read so many books because i love books right i love what i do i love my people i love humanity you know even it sometimes annoys me i love myself and that's beautiful too the annoying parts are beautiful too what do you let me ask the ridiculous question what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing of uh what's the meaning of life well i think at this point i stop questioning why i'm here right like it doesn't matter someone put the atom there or the big bang i'm here that's truth right i'm going to accept that fully so what instead of me keep asking the impossible question what i'm here i'm going to let you do that science do that right you guys go out in the space and look for the evidence i'm contested you accept that you're here and you're just going to enjoy like you're here for love as you said that's the thing i think i'm here for the process of pursuing something bigger than me process of doing something it's not like a model it's not a virtual signal or anything it just makes me happy that i fight for something bigger like that me right so how boring is it every day you get up like oh my god i'm gonna buy myself this so i'm gonna get this for myself it's so boring isn't it so in a way i think that's what it is i i'm grateful that i'm in a state i don't have to fly for myself anymore but many people have to do that and that's sometimes more than enough they have to do and i salute them they are doing fighting saving themselves every day but now i'm i'm not there i'm very blessed that's why i'm very grateful so fighting for something much bigger than you but do you still believe that you can change the world that you can be a thing that at least in part helps north korea or even broader helps alleviate some suffering in the world so that's the thing uh i was reading this book food by randomness right yeah i was like they're up here like oh my god you're so courageous you're amazing i was like you know i'm not i'm horrible right i know myself you don't want to tell me that it's random why i end up here like why did i pick up english so quickly why do i love books right i don't know why yeah it's random don't ask why just enjoy it yes it's random i think i don't know how the history will remember me i think only thing i have to at this point to make sure is that the people after constructing a lot of security teams like now north korea became less smarter like you said they may be more disguised as a like a suicide and a car accident yeah so when i die they don't even know i got killed yeah i think that's a higher chance so i think that's the thing like people are suffering take it or not it's your choice and at least it's my responsibility for them to know what's going on i think if you did not know and didn't do anything you are not even guilty of a thing but once you know then you are not doing it then you something is like not right so that's what i'm doing like i want the people to know and then what they are gonna do is not my my problem afterwards right so my role is very small in that regards and i just hope that would humanize north koreans for the first time because we have been so dehumanized right like we are like looking like robots if you look at us marching and cry like when dear later dies it almost seems like you don't even have the same emotions people cannot connect us in the same level and i think that's something is uh we that's something media have done it to us and you're you're shining a small light on this dark part of the world that i think and you make it you're so modest but i think i think you will have that little light uh just might be a big thing that changes that incredible amount of suffering that's happening on that part of the world you know me you're you're an amazing person i'm so fortunate i get a chance to talk with you i can't wait what you do in the future you're i hope you write many more books i i do hope you uh continue making videos continue having conversations you're an inspiration to me and millions of others i really appreciate you talking with me today i'm so honored thank you thank you thank you for listening to this conversation with you on me park and thank you to valcampo the gala games better help and eight sleep check them out in the description to support this podcast and now let me leave you some words from bob marley better to die fighting for freedom and be a prisoner all the days of your life thank you for listening and hope to see you next time

Channel: Lex Fridman

Views: 1,546,326

Keywords: agi, ai, ai podcast, artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence podcast, lex ai, lex fridman, lex jre, lex mit, lex podcast, mit ai, yeonmi park

Id: usDqSEKDVsA

Length: 120min 48sec (7248 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/mojambowhatisthescen]

Because Lex is usually so reserved, the anger in his voice during the intro was really powerful. You could see his blood was boiling.

Really looking forward to hearing Yeonmi's story.

[u/jimjamcunningham]

This was a powerful one, I like and appreciate the perspective of yeonmi

[u/Rh0_Ophiuchi]

Enjoyed this one a lot, her life story and the curve its taken is something you can not fathom. Highly recommend listening to more of her on the Jordan Peterson podcast.

[u/TheSkepticApe]

This episode was absolutely incredible. This woman is truly an inspiration. I teared up multiple times during this episode.

[u/broken_throw_away__]

I'm relatively new to this podcast, how often does Lex post a new podcast? I don't know If I can keep up with this schedule lol how does he manage to find time?

[u/Ambitious-Dot-476]

Not to be a big baby but she annoyed the hell out of me when she said people in America don’t know oppression. Just because you’ve experienced an extreme case of something doesn’t mean you get to invalidate others experiences. Everything is relative, people who feel oppressed in America, aren’t from North Korea, you can only experience what’s in front of you. You’d think she would be more empathetic to that type of thing, but hey maybe I’m wrong for assuming or taking offense. Idk

[u/noxot]

Kim Jong-un needs to be assassinated. here is one idea. abrin is a toxin 20-33X as powerful as ricin. it's in an invasive plant called rosary pea. the usa has a cure for ricin, dunno if it would work on abrin and don't know how much ability kim has to save himself from such things. if he is assassinated by some random guy rather than a government it might not make as much blow back. I would kill him myself if I had the skills and funding. it would give me a great sense of meaning to my life.

[u/1Vendra1]

Loved the intro

[u/imatelefone]

If love isn't the answer in the most extreme cases, then what is it good for? We define love in a lot of different ways.

I think of the death of Muammar Gaddafi. Catharsis doesn't work, at least, not the way we wish it did. It may make someone feel better in the moment, but it generally makes one more inclined to violence and hate.

I agree, hang the evil dictator. I just think it should be done from a place of pity. We all could have been the same thing, or worse.

There's more humanity in this episode than most people will encounter in a college career. I'm glad I listened.