Yeonmi Park: While Time Remains

oh my goodness I always it's become a cliche every time I come out here I go wow wow wow wow like I was not expecting anyone to show up uh but uh but you're here thank you for coming this is a really special event uh in case you didn't know and if that makes you nervous now is the time to get out because this this is such a special event I have hardly any notes because I I feel particularly unequal uh to the subject and the story of my guest yonmi Park let me actually ask you a question before I begin how many of you have never been to a Socrates event before Oh what quite quite a number of you look at that look at that all right so we will not disappoint you because we want you to come back uh no we we really been doing this now it's really almost Preposterous to think of it is this is I think we're just starting our 24th year I was just a just a kid uh just a kid out of grade school and I had an idea you know in America you can do anything if you have an idea and I was uh I was just a little girl at the time and I said I now listen I don't want to get political but in America if you put your mind to it you know you can just whatever whatever uh and I was Tiny and blonde and I said by God's grace someday I'm going to be different in every way and I'm going to start a speaker series and of course we started this in 2000 we really did start this in 2000 and do you remember whenever I say 2000 it sounds like it when I grew up 2000 was the future right two like in in the year 2000 you know we'll all be wearing silver unitards or something like that right but anyway we've been doing this for years um it's only in the last 10 or 12 years that I've been interviewing uh people and we've interviewed a vast array of of guests uh for example I've interviewed people who have walked on the moon and I've interviewed people who have not ever walked on the moon um and everything in between I want you to think about that that makes that makes no sense but it sounds like it should though right everything in between but no we've we just had a vast array of guests uh iyomi Park uh is the youngest uh guest we've ever had at Socrates in the city um we had one of my favorite guests ever was my oldest guest which some of you know was Alice Von Hildebrand who was 90 when she was my guest and what a fireball she was it took three New York cops to oh man she was yeah she was uh she had a little too much and got out of hand got out of hand you know old people they don't know their limits but uh no but she some of the conversations that I've had over the years hers is a classic example just the other day I don't know where I was I've been traveling so much but somebody comes up to me and says I'll never forget your soccer season City with Alice van Hildebrand that conversation changed my life and I have to tell you we have had a number of those conversations over the years um because ideas matter Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living you know critical thinking was not invented at the enlightenment did you realize that yeah the Greeks were there first we were there first we were there before you I don't care who you are unless you're Greek but but the idea that we can think about things we can explore the nature of reality we can talk about truth is there truth what is truth whatever we thought we would have those kinds of conversations and as I said we've had just a vast array of conversations over the years I recommend that you just go to our website Socrates in the city.com you can watch them um and really some of them are just um extraordinary typically we frame the evening around a big question um and this evening though I was so non-plussed by yonmi's story that I hardly know where to begin or what question uh to ask for those of you unfamiliar with yonmi in a nutshell uh I will simply say that she and her mother escaped North Korea and survived it's an astonishing story uh her first book which came out a few years ago I don't think we have copies of that here but you can get copies I believe at socratesinthecity.com you must read that book I wish that book were mandatory reading for every Young American I say that emphatically with the authority of my decades with and with with it is one story that when you read that story you appreciate things in a way that you couldn't possibly have before so tonight uh you and me will will tell uh much of that uh story um my mother and father uh have experienced something similar some of you in the room have my mother escaped East Germany okay when Stalin took over you know German that part of Germany she escaped when she was 17 years old so I have lived with these stories of what it means to escape a totalitarian regime and when your own mother uh did that at age 17 it it gives you a perspective and I know I've said this before that your average American couldn't possibly have you couldn't possibly appreciate what it is that we have here because we've most of us uh take it for granted and we're already on to denigrating it uh and and the fact of the matter is that um when you've come from a place that is as uh dedicatedly against Freedom as North Korea or as the former Soviet Union it will it will give you a perspective and it's really valuable that we that we hear those stories because they're true in terms of uh details of the biography of yonmi she's way too young to have any resume for me to recite to you except did I mention she escaped North Korea yeah that pretty much says it all uh and if that wasn't Tough Enough she went to Columbia University and uh which used to be in the ivy league until 10 minutes ago um they uh no it's uh we'll talk about all of that it really is a genuine privilege to have as my guest yonmi Park [Applause] well how you doing I'm doing a lot actually you're doing well actually yeah I mean before I say this I normally don't sound like this and I have coffee drop like coffee I had a flu two weeks ago I'm not sick I'm not competing you had the flu yes you didn't get the vaccine they have a vaccine very powerful vaccine they can kill you but if it doesn't kill you it knocks out a lot of symptoms I really meant what I was saying about um when I read your story your the first book is in order to live so I'll show it here in order to live what year did you write this book 2014. so you were very very young when you wrote the story and this is the story of your escape from from North Korea I want us to talk about that and then I want to get to your new book uh which is is quite new um where you you talk about your experience in America at Columbia among the cultural Elites uh of uh of the United States so how do we start uh you and me your your story is in some ways um in some ways it's very simple um so tell us what are your earliest memories I was very moved by some of your earliest memories and your um it's it's astonishing that you remember when you were very very young uh being with your sister alone being hungry but how do you how do you begin a story like this I mean just sitting in this room is very surreal to me looking at this beautiful portraits of American Heroes and in North Korea when you're born there nobody is actually allowed to compete with our dear leader so compete with our dear leader you said yeah so in our scratch if you don't have ads we don't have advertisements you don't have art nor advertisements and no advertisements yes so every room I see like this the first thing the thing that we see is a portraits of dictators every room is trains School classrooms households in household we have to find the finest wall we can find and put the portraits of dictators and we have the car that with our lives and when you say dictators you're talking about the three uh now it's Kim Jong-un his father Kim Jong-il and his father and the wife so the woman as well in in the book in both books you describe it as a cult like a brainwashing cult and it is but it's it's hard for us to believe even reading the book the level of of how true this is is it it's it's very difficult to grasp an entire Society um in which you are essentially commanded to worship a human being whom you'll never will meet but for us he's not a human being he's a God right like he doesn't go to bathroom and I literally believe that he had the power to read my thoughts even so I was even afraid to think so so in North Korea the the idea then is that these are these are Gods you are to worship them and life revolves around that what is the line that you use many times in the book that even the mice your mother taught you that even the mice and the birds can hear your thoughts so yeah the very first thing that my mother told me when I was younger was don't even whisper because the birds and mice couldn't hear me and mices are everywhere in North Korea and birds are everywhere like that it's in a way like in a way resembles only like America right now where people cannot trust each other because you never know who is a spy you know there's a bag in North Korea saying you don't even trust your own back the cases where children reporting their mothers parents they put in their children and they tell us early on you know the most important thing that my teacher told me was it's not your biological father he's your real father is your spiritual leader so you know in North Korea nobody say really so we don't have work like friends we don't have vocabulary friends we have world for comrades then you have comrade with your classmates that's a very different relationship you exist to serve the revolution but you are not there to make friends with each other so like that the concept of Love Liberty human rights or even gay don't exist so simply we are not allowed to know what that means in 1984 George Orwell's book he writes about this covers big and he writes about how certain words will they're stripped of meaning so that you can be free of lice you can be free of you can the word free is reduced to that kind of thing but the concept of freedom is wiped out but this is according to both your books literally the case in North Korea that you you you're not allowed to talk about anything uh along the lines that well you're not let you're not allowed to talk about almost anything it seems to me yeah it's like the most dangerous thing that you have in your body is your tongue if I said one wrong word that was going to get up to eight generations of my family along with me so in North Korea the crimes like they separated two crimes one is the economic freedom I mean crime and was political crime economic crime is a graping child like murdering somebody stealing somebody you don't get like rape it's not a crime in North Korea you can do that rape is not a crime yeah North Korean dictator himself has a pleasure squat he has young girls from every Elementary School get you know drafted to Pyongyang and they believe that having sex with a young kid is gonna prolong their life so like babies institutional thing in the country but the real crime the northern regime says a political crime like in every middle of night the officials kicked out on come into your room and then they you know the widest clot like this they swap the portraits on the edge if you find a little dust the portraits of the of the the dictator I read this recently I'm not I'm not sure I think it's at the end of your second book but that was amazing to me in other words this is true this is not just an idea that they will come to your home and if you have neglected the upkeep of the portrait if they find dust on the portrait you can be taken away for this you get executed and three generations of your family sent to prison camp and this is a thing to understand when you end up in North Korean prison camp it's the first thing you cannot do is ask why you're there so I met a lot of the factors who escaped later they were sent to prison camp when they're 80 years old till they're like 27. China do not hear this moment they don't know why they end up there so stuff oftentimes maybe they're going grandfather grandfather there's something wrong and then that discovered 30 years later and that's how you end up in a prison camp but if you ask a guard while you're there they execute you they execute you yeah um let's go back to the beginning of your life um it's amazing to me when you describe the personality of your father your father was obviously very intelligent it seems obvious and very entrepreneurial and creative and um talk a little bit about what life was like when you were very very young I mean very very young to City you know we don't have like central heating I remember being very cold and I remember just feeling very hungry and I don't remember seeing any color so that's all I remember like the my dream as a young kid was having a bucket of bread because I never thought that was impossible by how can a person have that much food and that just oh I remember every day like dreaming of food like someday I was hoping you know maybe if there's a we don't know what God is in North Korea but somebody in the sky might drop off you know bread to me like that's all you think about you you talk about going with your sister to find leaves from the trees and insects to eat yeah so I mean like my source of nutrition is summer time in the fall is the drugs I mean grasshoppers in the harvesting time the rice field and in the August of July we catch dragonflies and then the summer before the summer a lot of plants are not poisonous at the moment and they're a lot like soft so you can eat a lot of retreat even leaves but after May a lot of them become poisonous then we have to be very careful and then right now actually is a March and April and this is a time when I skate this is the season of death for North Koreans this was a big thing in the book you say that spring is considered a season of death of course is the opposite and most of the world people think the spring life is coming it's beautiful summer's coming but for you it was the season of death explain why that was so important in the father the dry the cabbage a lot of you know just plants survive and they eventually they run out through February and March and April if you go out I don't know if you notice those things plants are not long enough to eat and they are not there yet so now it's like we're a massive starvation begins from March to April and this was true of course in the in the 90s when you were little but it's true now yeah it's now now it works clearly so now the people started having a cannibalism over the last few years you um you you talk about your father um doing something which I didn't think it was possible to do but uh that there was an active Black Market in the 90s because things were so bad I guess I want to figure this out you did China stop subsidizing North Korea in the 90s why did things get I mean things have been very very bad for a very long time but but it was even more difficult in the 90s so a black market developed course unto you and now someone else's money right so it was that case for North Koreans socialism kind of worked until the late 80s because our economy was heavily subsidized by I mean Soviet Union and China and so you need a collapsed right so they start helping North Korea and the regime could not find any more a subsidy for the people and until that moment we are socialist Paradise we have free health care free education Free Housing free publication and then 90s Kim Jong-un hear about like starvation and then people saying like what are you gonna do people are dying and then he thought actually it's it's to the socialism when you have less people it's easy to control people and they're less so why don't you let them die so he decided to keep only 10 population who are in capital it's like Hunger Games right there's a district and there's a capital so that Capital people are loyal to me so in North Korea okay we have three different main classes we are a homogeneous country we speak the same language but regime divided us into three classes first class is Royal they call them tomato your red outside and inside that means your true communist middle class is called Apple you are read outside but inside is white so you're questionable you need a surveillance remaining is completely scored people you're great you're not in red outside so they call them hostile class so three these classes they divided into another 51 classes in the same people in the social Paradise where everybody should be equal and based on that classes they decide who gets fed who dies in from starvation so we were living in a Countryside we're not in capital and that's why in the 90s the massive family beginning millions of people died because of that millions of people died from starvation yeah more than 3.5 Millions from 1995 to 1998 when I was a toddler it's it's unbelievable I I assume you've heard about the the starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930s it's a similar it's man-made thing man-made killing by a starvation but the idea that this happened in the lifetime of those of us sitting here in North Korea is is horrifying so what did your father do to augment uh what you had so he decided to trade and this is why I learned later why all this communist countries stop the market because if the individuals start trading for themselves they really learn to think for themselves this is this is a big big piece of information when I read that I thought that's an amazing Insight when people start trading when there's some kind of a market it teaches people to think for themselves so this is one of the reasons one of the reasons that the regime is against any kind of Market or Trading so my father went to Black Market and you say black market seems like selling drugs and veterinaries Black Market in North Korea means you sell them dry the fish clocks and batteries and clothes that's how we got into you know selling dry fish and selling rice in the black market that's how he fed me that's how he fed you and your sister and your mother yeah um and how did the regime look the other way a little bit because they knew that we can't feed these people the regime did not look away but the officials did so Fishers are unbelievably corrupt nurse Korea is the most corrupt countries and if you go to any socialist countries so corrupt right even Soviet Union they have to drive the doctor to see the doctor in North Korea like that if you don't drive the doctor they will refuse to operate on you they would not save you even if you die so like the officials was receiving bribes from my father and letting him do the business so you you talk about this that it's it's a system of tremendous corruption I mean it's hard for us to imagine and but your father was in a in a very limited way thriving for a little while yeah how old were you when when things were going relatively well I say relatively because they weren't going well but compared to others in North Korea when I run six seven we were real I ate three times a day and for North Korean standard that's like out of this world I did not eat steak or like meat but I ate some grains and kimchi do you guys know I can choose yeah so yeah kimchi and some greens three times a day and that was very luxurious and what happened to your father that this was that this period ended it was no longer possible for him to do that when I was almost turning selling Prime metals like nickel copper and he got caught and he was sent to labor camp for that was a very daring thing for him to do and you describe it in the book and and I do mean it folks when I say that the the first book that you and me wrote In order to live this is like mandatory I'm begging every one of you to read this book because you need to know the details you'll you'll see when you read it um you describe that things were so desperate that your father didn't care that he's doing something tremendously risky he knew he can lose his life yeah when he goes to this next level because first he's trading simple things but then um he has to he he and I think do you say that he used the the smuggling became very dangerous he was using the uh the railroad car of the deer leader yeah it's like it's unbelievable yeah yeah so in North Korea train like every train is funny one country to one country in fact in South Korea takes two hours from one end to end North Korea takes more than a month because trains like we don't have electricity a lot of times people have to push the train to move wow so literally it's like I remember my job was going to a train station to find out when train arrives and I had to walk to train station for like an hour and here the train comes in a week and not never comes any week so in that whenever the train runs one cargo has dedicated to carry the things for the dictator in Kanye so in that cargo is like literally in North Korea they draft youngers called the pleasure Squad and there are three groups of pleasure squad one is a satisfactory group where you perform sex act to the dictator and the officials second is a happiness group where you uh give the massage and acupuncture third one is a dance and singing but below that three group is like subgroup is not quite pretty enough but you're still looking these girls are recruiting these different Resorts around the country more than 2 000 of them Kim Jong-un has his own private resorts they read their entire year raise Peaks and porks and hand massage these animals because anything that fits to dictator has to be special most like care you know thing they have to like water plants different way so this cargo she was taking those precious things to the dictator and my father used that cargo to carry the matters and that's why I was so dangerous so it's a simple issue of corruption if you bribe the right people you're okay but that's the that's the magic was that if you bro if you can bribe the right people um and So eventually your father was caught yeah yeah and what happened oh I mean North Korea we don't have a word for lawyer we don't know what that is you don't have a word for lawyer yeah I never knew you don't like defend them how to defend anybody like you know so he got arrested and I heard he went through an unbelievable amount of torture and then sent to prison camp so I there's no trial or like anything like that and North Korea we don't have the internet we we don't write emails like we don't write letters nothing works so I just didn't ever get to sing afterwards for a long time when you were 11 you started trading yourself you started you entered business as an 11 year old uh-huh tell us a little bit about that was providing the window light it's very murky drink you know alcohol that you make and then I bought it and gave it to the old child card and then I bought the Persimmons I carry them and then store them in the black market so you bribed the orchard guard with alcohol but you had to use money to get the alcohol my mom lent me a to pay for the alcohol to bribe the orchard guard to get a few Persimmons to sell yes and my mom shut down the business because we had to walk the oil chart right and it Mars miles takes like six hours to walk there and come back six hours so my shoes didn't run off my mom is like the money you're making not even enough for me to buy you a pair of shoes so she eventually shut down the business when did your you have one older sister yeah and I'm trying to remember the details did she Escape first she did how old were you when she left she escaped my four days later for this land March 30th today actually 2007. four days later yeah so how old were you I was 13 years old 13. so when somebody says they escape from North Korea you did and you didn't in the sense that what happened to you after that you were still enslaved we'll get into that but you you were 13 and how is it possible because most people would think when you describe the situation that it's not possible to get out so how was it possible to escape in 2007 so this is a really surreal for me right now sitting in this room along with all this many American bastards that was a one word for me at school and like you said you know Escape it's not a concept for North Korean and so in North Korea we don't have Internet so we don't know what the world will look like I did not even know how many countries in the world existed and they did not even tell me that was Asian they told me I was Kimber song race my dictator it's his own race yeah and North Korea is a different calendar our calendar begins where kimerson was born Jesus Christ was born so of course I had no idea how the world existed I wanna I I want to interrupt you just to to because there's so many interesting things have I mentioned you need to buy this book yeah and you need to read it but in this book there's so many extraordinary details we'll never get to tonight but this is amazing you said in second grade we were taught simple math but not the way it's taught in other countries Eve in North Korea even arithmetic is a propaganda tool a typical problem would go like this if you kill one American bastard and your comrade kills two how many dead American bastards do you have I mean this is amazing it's funny and horrifying yeah that even to teach little children basic math they're giving you propaganda about the West yeah but this infused the whole your whole life there's no there's no aspect of your life as you describe it that was not like that yeah I mean even the songs that I sang you know people literally get executed for watching a wrong movie you get executed you know like one of the public executions I saw was a my friend mother watched Hollywood movie and she shared with her friends and that was a crime in North Korea you get executed for she was publicly executed yeah and you saw the execution and with my friend with my friend that was her mother they sit the children first of all because we are the shortest so they put the infants first and the little kids and then as your High girls you go the backwards that's how it means mandatory every human being needs to attend the public Executioner's career and now after Kim Jong-un he decided that we don't even deserve bullets bullets are too precious to use on his own people so he used something called hot boxing in a hot metal box he put the human beings in it and let them dry to death yeah there are things that you say that's in this in the end part of the second book that um they're they're almost impossible to talk about what they um what people suffered and I think you know when I I talk about Socrates in the city we ask questions and one question is is there such a thing as evil because there are many people who don't believe in that idea but when you read what is done by some people to other people there's no other category except to say this is evil this is evil and it's hard to say why we know that but we know that it's so horrifying that it goes beyond error mistake bad there's something deeply evil and you describe in the end of the second book some of these things some of these executions which I don't really want to go into right now because it's uh it's so horrifying but what does it do to you to live with that I mean you're saying you're a little girl and you're forced to attend the execution of your friend's mother how are you supposed to behave in A Moment Like This I mean traumatized that's the definition of privilege like in North Korea you don't have World depression because how can you passively depress and socialist Paradise doesn't give you the word depression to describe that and now I came to America I was writing that first book my agent to New York was asking me yummy you need to go to see a therapist you're traumatized you have PTSD and I was like what's a trauma right and she's like here's the thing Americans do you know talk to somebody I asked her like how much is it she normally charged 700 bucks but like 250 for you special rate Espino thank you you survive in a country humans are very resilient there's so many people go through you know even seeing their own mother getting executed and come out of very strong so I think for me it was not even a challenge for me and in North Korea like there was a norm I think that the body is like looking a tree nobody told me that I was like that wasn't abnormal I just only learned here that that's abnormal so um so your father is is taken away you don't know where he is at 13 your sister somehow decides to get out now so how how did she get out and how did you get out into China we want to escape together and luckily we are living the boulder town of North Korea and if you see North Korea and pictures I like pictures it's like the darkest place in the world I keep telling my friends who are very passionate about climate change like go to North Korea we have Earth Day every day we don't have non-impacts whatsoever with insects you know we don't put your cows there so Paradise but because of the darkness I was able to see the lights coming from China and that's when we got some clue maybe if we go to China we might find a bowl of rice so when I was escaping from North Korea I United Escape for freedom I was just skipping for a bottle of rice you um your your sister went you said a few days before you and your mother because I got sick so I couldn't go yeah you you were misdiagnosed yeah uh because socialist medicine is not perfect as we've been told and you were misdiagnosed you did not have appendicitis but you were treated for appendicitis so so I was very stomach ache so my mom took the hospital in North Korea literally nurse inject every patient to the one needle same needle same needed to be patient they use beer Butters as a drop you don't have Extreme Machines we don't have any of that and then doctors rubbed my belly and he said she might have appendicitis so they opened me up without any anesthesia that they it's a common in her skirt they like cut your bones out like that and then when they opened it it was just malnutrition and infection so Dr still decided it was in Balance right take my appendix out he was embarrassed yeah so he figured we opened her up might as well take out the appendix I'm gonna swim yeah yeah so you were recovering from this your sister escapes and then this is when you insist to your mother we must go Oh no I got out and I found a note that my sister left me in a pillowcase she said go find this lady she would hurt me to come find me in China so I found a note I went to find that lady with my mother that morning and when we found a lady she just miraculously said I can help you to go to China to find your sister and they will have food for you and they will have food for you okay so this is the trick they are these are corrupt people yeah and they know that they can sell you into sexual slavery and so they use the bait of food so you and your mother believe this woman uh because your sister obviously went through the same thing and she said if you if you she left you a note that if you go to this woman she will help you yeah yeah so I think this is where people don't I think hard to understand even though it's horrificed treatment trafficking is to me I think I talk about in my book that two things I'm most grateful for one is that I was born in North Korea one that I escaped and that means that I was told if she didn't stand me I would not be here I'll be dead so she even sold her on her own daughters because if she didn't set her daughter still die from starvation in North Korea so to be clear the way this works there's a market for women to be sold because tell me if I'm wrong China aborted so many human beings most of them girls so there's a shortage of girls in China so they have opened the idea to a market of women to be sold from North Korea and this is happening and they're allowing the Chinese are allowing this to happen the government the Chinese government of course so that is how you and your mother were sold into China yeah so like I said they're China 33 million adults men not encounting young children not growing up that Gap gonna keep going up you mean that you mean the Gap you mean between ratio between men and women right so currently 33 million men in China cannot find wives right and they gotta find some air so they look for sex slavery from North Korea and the reason why the regime Chinese government is helping is if they catch the North Korean women and then if they will help must go to South Korea who would not be sold there but they catch us so you are very vulnerable so when we human traffickers set us kill us take our organs out we have no place to go so the Chinese government knows this is happening yeah and they're cynically using this they're they're not interested in helping someone like you or your mother this is give me someone they're helping the dictator that's the pack they made so Kim Jong-un learned that the factors Escape like me speak out expose their Vision because journalists cannot go to North Korea and just start feeling in my North Korea is a I mean it's like it's hard it's harder than going to the Moon to North Korea right now we have a easier chance to travel to moon in our lifetime than to visit North Korea people so so he knows that the factors are threats so it's like catching a Jewish person and thinking of the r streets like that Chinese regime if there's a slave hunters in China if you report the Norse candy Factor you get money by the CCP you get rewarded so people are looking for the factors so we have to hide and only people who are willing to hide us are the traffickers and it's being sold actually as a sex slave slave is not even the worst thing there are three places that we will end up one is a organ Harvesters they buy us and take our audience out and discard our body and second place is a prothers they put a girl in the room has not even mean the tiny little room and let her get beauty of up to 500 times a day and the last less than six months and they die last one is where the village men shipping and biogrant with them rotationally or brothers in the family by then raped them so that's the place we end up and there are we not 300 000 of them in China so this is this is China today it's continuing right now during the pandemic I was so bored in Chinese website like their Google play too it's like a uber it's you order a North Korean girl just feed button and delivered to your door to get cured and get raped by you right now um there are many people in America making a lot of money off of China and doing business with China and we never hear these stories the media does not talk about yeah what you've just shared we know you're not making this up last year I was was my first book that you just have was going to be made into a movie by the one of the Hollywood Studios producers and his producer sent me a script and then the script is that China was my Promised Land China was protecting me and gave me a roughage and I called him like what are you talking about like this is not what happened and he says this is the only way we can make a movie about North Korean Hollywood that's why there's so many movies about Holocaust but not even more single month the original side of Congo I mean Hotel Rwanda right nobody there to touch North Korean genocide because of Chinese influence in Hollywood and American mainstream so you were 13 when you made your way to China and your mother and initially you were not you weren't allowed to say that your mother and daughter and you were not allowed to say that you're 13. because they wanted to believe you were 18 to buy you to be his wife so on in the level of Horrors that you've described this was less bad than many things that could have happened but this is to say that but this was the same broker willing to sell to the brothers or gonna have visitors who gives him the most money okay so the broker who buys you as his wife he was telling these people was selling other women to organ Harvesters brothers and to brothels yeah and so you were forced to live with this man [Music] Han poker Chinese spoke about me he was by then like third broker so we go through the human trafficking ring each time we are sold they make a bit of margin on us so initially my mother's price was 65 they sold my mom 21st century and they sold images over 200 because I was a child virgin and that's something precious for these people it's perverted people and then by this hand Walker like he got me and he was very impressed I was still a virgin because normally women don't keep the opportunity because they get attacked so many times and luckily I had my mom unto him so my mom offered herself every single time and they're trying to rape me and she was raped informed me inside of me you you describe that in the book that your mother was raped in front of you and there was the first that was your first experience of any kind of the sexual act was watching your mother being raped um and this happens every time there's a transaction and so where did you end up eventually in this uh hand Brokers he pulled me and then he said if I become I was going to kill myself you said you were going to kill yourself yeah I was as a knife I was like you know I lost my mind I I could not live like that so I was like ended my life and he said if I become his mistress he was going to help me buy my family back to me he was going to help me my family and in some way as as bad as he was in some way he was true to that word to this promise to you which is an interesting part of the story I think you say this that even the worst person has some good of course and well you say of course some people don't see it that way I you're correct it's fascinating that this person who did great evil nonetheless did help you yeah to find your father my mom he pulled my mom back from the farmer that he sold and and rescued your mother from because he said if you if you don't kill yourself I will do this for you yeah so you're you're reunited with your mother and how did you see your father again uh uh so the torture he got from looking cat so he passed away I don't know if you guys remember pacing Olympic in 2008 I remember word was celebrating it it was like huge huge Festival and as a redfish in China saying all these signs like he he died right before that in 2008 and I couldn't even cry because he could not let people know that somebody died somebody would hear us and he he was buried in this middle of night I buried him in the mountain in his ashes the story of your father dying um because I'm a father and I have a daughter it's very uh it's very beautiful it's very very moving um and the idea that he somehow gave you hope and courage somehow your father to continue I know it's like my second book starts like this like he said my father said um people with their names and they die in the world and tigers leave their skin he told him always make your name Long and Lasting like what kind of North Korean thinks about that everybody thinks about finding next meal and then he told him he told me so many things in life even in North Korea in that situation he told me that I had to become like a lolypoly dog you know there's a door always comes back up no matter how many times you hit it no matter how many times I've hit you you have to and to me going in China like I did not know what like exist I did not know this day was coming for me and I said to be hopeful and that lesson stopped me um after you left um after your father died you eventually were able to make your way to Mongolia yeah to close the desert that was the real Escape that was the one Escape for freedom in other words when because when you escape from North Korea into China you escaped into slavery sex slavery um how was it that you eventually were able to go from China to Mongolia which has complicated relationships with different countries but you knew that if you can get to Mongolia you're out of China so here is a it's a man who bombed me I'm very like he was gambling so I come addicted to that then for some reason he was letting me go and even in China somebody lets you go where do you go I was going to restaurants and begged them like I can wash the dishes I can work clean just give me your place to eat and sleep in my mother they would not give me that job to even washing dishes and then we heard there's a place something called a camera and so basically they give you a refuge to stay short to where you get fat and you have a place to sleep instead of that you need to perform success involve the camp cameras like a chat room chat room yeah and then I was thinking it's better than getting raped physically right and that was best option I had in China to survive so I ended up in the chat room with my mother in this chat room there's another lady in the other room and she said there are some missionaries from South Korea willing to help us and I did not have a world missionary was and she was like they're Christians like what's Christian like I don't know what that is and we had a call with this pastor over the phone and his we don't know even how to pray that I'm gonna pray for your protection at the end of you have to just say Amen and I was laughing it's like somebody's praying to something nothing right and then he said if you want to be rescued that you gotta come to the shelter at home we're gonna teach you about Bible so we left a chat room and then we joined him in qingdao China we joined them with eight other people in our team and I was studying Bible for several months and then it's our price to be rescued by missionaries was believe in God and it's funny to it's like I was I thought it was as unbelievable like what do you mean like there's a God and shoes and they said my uh de facto lady so you don't worry about it think about God as a Kim yourself he loved us so much he was giving us kids on Kim Jong here his body dies but his experience with us forever because North Korea copied the Christianity even 10 Amendments right so everything was same Theory just names were switched but I mean by then I was so desperate to survive obviously you will say anything of course I would believe in like rock if somebody asked if you believe in rock I'm gonna rescue yeah I would believe in a rock so I became a Christian and then they said if you want to escape China you have to walk across Frozen Gobi deserts you have to walk across the Frozen Gobi desert in -40 degrees in 2009 in February when I was 15 years old and that needed a miracle that's why they needed to pray the chance of surviving was not even one percent there so they said only God can rescue but it's not even us we need a miracle so we prayed we prayed and that's how I survived the desert so you you got through the Gobi desert yeah to Mongolia and how do you end up in South Korea so I didn't die and then you didn't die I didn't die luckily yeah we were all guessing that you didn't have to oh I crossed I guess 16 wire fences in the desert didn't get electrified and got Mongolian side and soldiers captured us and they contacted South Korean Embassy and few months later they sent us to South Korea as refugees so that's how I became free it's extraordinary there's so there's so much where we're leaving out of course because of time so you find yourself now with your mother yeah in South Korea you are free yeah um you still had not found out what happened to your sister well I still ask her how did you find your sister when I was set seven years later when I was 20 years old she came to South Korea not knowing that we made it to South Korea and in South Korea when we entered the country they have to check out information and make sure that we are North Koreans and we are not spies very very serious in integration they do you know so it matched with our names and my sister names so they found us like that the data center did you ever worry when you were in South Korea that Kim Jong-un would have people in South Korea to kidnap you to bring you back now you do because uh when I was in South Korea I was informed by NIS South Korean national intelligence I've been on his killingness for a while and then we were on his killing list yes for a while yeah good for you exactly one achievement he hates me Kim Jong-un knows me and he's been trying to kill me for some time but that's why I had to avoid countries like Malaysia countries that like in the South America that is to hire him man I mean they killed Kim jong-nam in Malaysia by hiring hitmen so I cannot travel many countries they killed who sorry his half brother his mother's half brother yeah yeah right at the airport so uh but I don't know if America like protect me I got cancer by FBI last year and in South Korea exactly thank you South Korean intelligence said you should reach out to FBI they should protect you now you're American yeah I became American last year congratulations thank you [Applause] and parents ask her intelligence will say no no you're their responsibility I'm sure FBI gonna protect you sure so when they reject me to come give a speech I was excited it was finally they're gonna protect me and then two days before my speech the head of diversity calls me the head of diversity at the FBI yeah yeah and why you're not diverse enough and then she's like yeah because of your political opinions and this is so funny and that time I became American and in my American interview citizenship interview my interview asking me this exact question have you ever persecuted anybody for their political opinion you know if you said yes you cannot become American but you but you can become FBI exactly citizen right now we know the FBI is not as American as it used to be we don't want to say controversial those people can go to hell so you you're in South Korea yeah how did you end up did you ever want to come to the United States I mean what's fascinating about your story and again I'm talking about the first book mainly is how you discover things I mean you were you were so totally brainwashed yeah that you keep having these Revelations of things as time passes that what you believed was not true and you didn't even know of the existence of the outside world you didn't know about the existence of the United States when did it occur to you maybe that you would visit the United States uh Christians the there was a Tyler Texas do you guys know you through the mission youth for the mission why Wham yes yeah and they were in Tyler Texas yeah so until that point I still was very afraid of America I mean open till my life American so I saw like posters we were like big nose Green Eyes Cold Blooded reptiles I had no idea I mean again this is the propaganda in North Korea was so strong yeah that even all these years later you still had it in your mind that Americans are these monsters yeah I did and I landed at there's a layover in Houston to Tyler at the airport and then I just got out of airplane so afraid and there's this guy in a hoodie eating chips was it a senator because I I'll be honest with you I'm very scared of him also yeah he's very frightening very Twilight Zone yeah um but uh So you you're even though you're in Houston you're still afraid of Americans you're still believing some level of what has been taught to you by the propaganda the thing you believed in North Korea was a lie and I was thinking so if everything was a lie how do I know what you're telling me is not a lie right it's like it's very hard you know when you go through something like that you really lose faith in humanity you don't know how to trust again and I found the trust through books books have saved me saved me it has been my Refugee it has been everything to me and reading JoJo wears Animal Farm that's when I finally understood what happened to my people what happened to North Korea and so yeah through those books it was a gradual change so you come to Tyler Texas with why Wham yes and uh you did you consider yourself a Christian or you're just going for the going along for the ride I mean they're nice people so initially for me going to who I am was I was a little bit of instance with the pastor in South Korea in China yeah and I told the pastor about things that I had to do to survive in China but in a chat room all of that he said I was 30 I was a sinner yeah and now I'm thinking about it like Christian is saying everybody's sinner right he didn't really I guess didn't mean that what I did was sinner but I don't know he just said what I did was very very dirty I can never be quite okay it was condemning yeah so I think that's when I heard words never gonna forgive me if I tell them what I did to survive yeah and then I became very resentful of that but then I still thought like I owe it to them I need to at least know color Bible properly because they made me promise that if we rescue you really have to give a chance for God and I said I promise yes so I came for that too learning about Bible again so that's why you went to Tyler Texas yes and so how did you decide to stay in America I didn't I went back to South Korea again I I did a DTS and I went to South America uh for the program and then went back to South Korea and then I had a speech to give in uh Dublin Ireland and that speech got really viral oh that's what that's right so I was invited to write a book in New York that's how I came back here in 2014. yeah and so how and how long have you been in the United States eight years eight years yeah so you went to Columbia University that's what you write about to some extent in the in your new book um while time remains and what you describe when you achieve this dream um something similar happened to me in the 1980s at Yale right it's the it's the dream of immigrants to go to a place like this this is success when you describe what you encountered even your first week first thing your first day it sounds made up it sounds like this is made up but I know it's not made up I know it's true talk about what you encountered uh in at Columbia and elsewhere where do I begin yeah seriously uh I mean my classmates perfectly lovely people they're in there like a Lululemon 100 like yoga pants or they're like green juice detox I mean for me in North Korea I ate plants to survive with my bunny now they eat like salad to skinny I was very offended in America people was starting to do that right I did not know the problem in America is having too much food and they were telling me they're oppressed like Colombia the women wearing the 100 Lululemon pants and my mom's like ten dollar green drinks were saying they're oppressed yeah and I was asking them why are you oppressed so in Colombia every class before class we have to introduce ourselves not about who you are your name or your major it's about first thing you have to do is your pronoun your pronoun and what year was this 2016. holy yeah but I learned English by watching friends laughs in 2014 two years fire in France they don't have day as a pronoun they have a z x y and it's like none of that pronouns exists so I go to Colombia and then I uh name day as he as a biological man and in tears how I make them feel threatened and then my professors were saying uh who likes to read I mean give me examples you need to be walk and I thought like my English was not good I thought I'm awake I'm awake right like why is she saying I need to be work and she's like let me give the example of being walk like who likes to read Jane Austen and I love reading and Jane last night I learned so much about being a human through her book so I like raised my hand and she said you're Shane Austin was like you know living an era of why colonialism by Supremacy by reading her work you convey a message that only white men are capable of reasonable thinking and that's how you oppress minority people are reading Jane Austen Austin you oppress people by reading Jane Austen and then we have a consent orientation everybody need to take a Colombia and you begin to college another rape Survivor you appreciate that they teach you how to get consent from your sex partner and then after these two long hours of lecture they give us examples so you and I are going to Colombia together you and I got a drink at the bar we both of us are beer we had consensually like agreed to make love and the next day we got I feel I think it was under the influence I made a mistake now I can call that rape because I was under influence but what about the guy he used to train too and I was thinking this is an insult to rape survivors this is not what rape is they are redefining the word oppression they're redefining the word of rape and racism and they say math is racist it's made up and I was thinking this is what my teacher told me as younger in North Korea she said what's one plus one and I said two my dear my teachers are wrong my dear leader when he was a kid discovered that if you add one drop of water to another drop of water what does it become speaker one it does not become two that's how math is made up by white men to control the minorities Colombia they were saying the exact same thing I mean I'm I'm amazed that already in 2016 in your freshman year these things were being pushed so aggressively yeah yeah because we know they they're out there but the idea that you have had your experience and you come to this place and they are shoving this down your throat these ideas very aggressively and it's amazing to me how did you survive four years at Columbia it was last year my senior seminar I I would studying economics and then human rights and political science and then this is a human rights course right and they were telling me I mean they redefining the world the human rights again you know human rights means free health care free education I mean you're so entitled to everything so my everything should be free for you and I mean the people who are actually fighting for human rights it's a different thing but she asked me she's saying like you know there's no difference between men and women and I thought like I can never be a man I or spider I gave a birth I was a mother like I know what my body can do and my guys body cannot do and she said who told you that you cannot be a man I said I don't know I said okay somebody brainwashed you you are brainwashed and they would just shut me down like that so I learned and then they said Colombia is a safe space it's not about physical safety it's emotional safety and before the classes Professor sent this trigger warning emails don't come to class and don't do the reading and if it triggers you in any way don't even tell me why so you don't need to go to class you need to do the reading then why on Earth are you in college to get that fake degree exactly yeah it's it's extraordinary it's extraordinary I mean it's been bad for a long time but it's obviously gotten so bad that to hear you say these things uh so that's a main reason that you wrote the new book uh wild time remains with a forward by Jordan Peterson um because you're convinced that similar things that you experienced in this Nation a brainwashed cult in North Korea have come here and you're speaking about it yeah I think the reason I write all my book was living through pandemic especially until then my agent was protecting me you know let's still try to reach out to laborers you know they were like I'm sure they're gonna do something about China I met Jack Bezos I flew in the same private jet with Harvey Weinstein right before the me too and talking to these people they say they care about black lives matter they care about the racism and they want to end the slavery I talk to them in person they say I'm sorry what you went through but don't even tell people that you know me they say that's how cowardly these American Elites are and then living through the pandemic I was living in Chicago my son who was like two learning to walk even they would put him in the like mask up here eight hours a day they are opening a strip clubs next door and then I go to park they open the dog parks but as a child mother I cannot take him to the playground the actual animals have more rights from the pandemic than my son had my child had and I did one day I got robbed in Chicago in the middle of day this is um you have to tell this story because this is some this is unbelievable so you were briefly living in Chicago for three years you have your son with you yeah okay I was walking in the Michigan Avenue in the afternoon during the day some few black women come pushing me and punching me and took my wallet away that's okay I mean anybody the people raped me were Asians I mean it's not about wasting here right anybody can be anything it's not always still just happen to be a black woman it's fine but what happened there was that the crowd what people did on the street that day I pulled my phone out trying to call the police for help I was a young mother being punched by these people and for my son these people circled me on people on the street saying the person color don't make them like a thief you're racist like why are you doing this why are you trying to call the cop so that's why you were calling the cop on the women who did this punching me and take my wallet away Chicagoans came to you and said you are a racist for making this phone call yeah so and then they almost a circle so I couldn't do anything and then they let them run away from me and that's when I was like in something I give to Madness of craft it's always not just Colombia gone crazy this country collectively going crazy now I mean like I even North Korea is not this is crazy China even is not crazy they're a bad horrible regime but Common Sense still there you are part of the victim not the criminal it's like in North Korea like how America Works Finance your people divide it based on their skin color they call my son who's a half nursing half Americans have fight a privileged child because it's a half-wife and because your skin gone and it's like who chooses their ancestors okay you cannot punish people for something they did not choose that's why racism is bad right you punish for something like skin color and now we are doing that racism against white people and they told me that I cannot possibly understand oppression because I'm a white passing person so that is a white passing person so now they say Asians are whites there's no difference between eliminated from that topic so I was thinking like in North Korea we were divided based on what our ancestors did like if my great-grandfather was a capitalist and landowner they said your blood is Tainted your genetics is oppressive and now they say whites being why you're oppressive to other people and exact same tactic and the obsession on what we can say what we cannot say like North Korea in North Korea we get executed in America if you say the wrong thing you lose your job you lose your character and dignity your livelihood is ruined so of course we are not North Korea but you're getting there so at some point we need to turn back well you you continue to speak out and that's why I was so thrilled to have you to read to read your books to have you as our guest here because you uh you give other people hope because you will not be quiet you continue to speak and and listen uh as bad as Colombia is as bad as downtown Chicago is most of America is not that crazy and there are many many people around the world and certainly around this country that are grateful for voices that are speaking the truth because they understand that a man can't become a woman and men cannot give birth and they understand these things and we're living in a time when simply declaring them is suddenly considered a brave act which of course is ridiculous but um you do seem still to have hope otherwise you wouldn't be talking about these things why do you have hope why do you talk about these things so when I was escaping from North Korea at least it was I you know I had a place to escape to America right I think it's harder for Americans to Imagine This just imagine the world without America it's a dark place this country is a hope for Humanity it's not because I'm American saying because the outsider coming from that country those countries the world look up to America not because this country is worthy and like that the value this country stands for this dedication to protect individual dignity and freedom that's very rare because if you're the smallest minority that is individual and there are so many countries dedicated to protect yourself to Collective and you don't matter if you're individual when North Korea came up attacked me they said she was individualistic when she was a kid for North Korea that is the worst criticism you can give to somebody that's helping individualistic is a worse thing and this country made a constitution out of that to protect individual liberty so I mean like if we lose America where do we go I wouldn't Escape North Korea are we skipping to the Moon I mean that's the kind of the only option right now so I think that's why we have to protect this country I have no option other than fighting for it and I'm not gonna run this time like when I was reading uh Animal Farm until that point I hated the dictator I was thinking how horrible these evil guys are enslaving people doing this these people become a new Reader book it's it's a process the like when I was born in North Korea I did not even know that I was oppressed like how do you fight to be free if you don't know you're a Slave and North Korea came down to point so when it came to me I could not even fight because I did not even know that was an option my grandmother knew though they knew the time before give me a song they knew the time before Columbus Revolution because they wanted they were scared they didn't speak out we came that far so why do we know this is wrong I think this is a time to push back yeah we um we're basically out of time uh fortunately I have a radio show and I get to talk to you more um and but we are so grateful to you um you know me for for being here I want to tell everyone that um I I really do mean it um you will be blessed if you read these books the reason I say read the first book first is because it sets up what yonmi says in the second book which is very powerful some of the stories that you tell you and me in the new book are hilarious because the idea of you earnestly speaking to people like Hillary Clinton personally Harvey Weinstein personally and other people and believing that they will help you and then finding out that they're not exactly making that their first priority there's something tragic and very funny in these encounters that you you have in in this book so it's extraordinary you were able to have these experiences and then to tell the world about what the cultural Elites actually think about victims of rape and oppression around the world how about another round of applause for one of my favorite people thank you

Channel: Socrates in the City

Views: 64,947

Keywords: Yeonmi Park, Eric Metaxas, North Korea, Socrates in the City, While Time Remains, In Order to Live

Id: kKQQU03Mr3Y

Length: 82min 2sec (4922 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023