The Charlie Kirk Show - A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom with Yeonmi Park

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, one of the most powerful episodes in the history of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:10.000 We've been doing this for nearly four years.

00:00:12.000 We have done well over 1,200 episodes.

00:00:17.000 And I can tell you this is right up there as far as depth and power and impact.

00:00:24.000 I encourage every single one of you to listen to this episode.

00:00:28.000 And you will be moved at some period of time.

00:00:31.000 I guarantee it.

00:00:32.000 And when you are moved, you need to text this episode to a friend who disagrees with your worldview.

00:00:39.000 A Democrat, a liberal, somebody on the other side.

00:00:45.000 If more Americans hear this conversation, we will be in a much better position to win.

00:00:53.000 It is a conversation with Yeonmi Park.

00:00:57.000 She has a new book out called While Time Remains.

00:01:01.000 But her story is so unbelievably powerful.

00:01:05.000 She is only one of 209 North Korean defectors that have come to America in the last 80 years.

00:01:14.000 Only one of 209.

00:01:16.000 One of the most articulate, incredibly wise, and courageous.

00:01:21.000 I firmly believe it is the hand of the Lord that has put her in our country at this time for you to hear.

00:01:31.000 It should motivate you.

00:01:32.000 It should animate you.

00:01:34.000 Certainly did for me, and I've heard her talk before.

00:01:36.000 We talk about a lot of different angles when it comes to totalitarianism, including her time at Columbia University, and so much more.

00:01:46.000 So please listen to this episode and then text it.

00:01:50.000 Email it.

00:01:52.000 Share it.

00:01:53.000 If you are a parent of a child, require them to listen to this before you give them their allowance.

00:01:59.000 I think it's that important.

00:02:01.000 It should leave a permanent imprint on anyone that listens of where we are as a country and the moral need to fight.

00:02:12.000 Email me directly, freedom at charliekirk.com, and get involved with TurningpointUSA, TPUSA.com.

00:02:18.000 If you're motivated to get involved after this episode, which you should be, get involved with Turning Point USA.

00:02:23.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:02:27.000 And support our program at charliekirk.com slash support.

00:02:31.000 Thank you to Derek from Oregon, Isaac from Colorado.

00:02:36.000 Thank you to Susie from Maine, Monica from Alabama, Janelle from Colorado, Laura from California, Greg from California, Jessica from California, and Eric from California, Gretchen from California, Kay from Arizona, David from Illinois, and Alicia from Nebraska.

00:02:53.000 You can all support me at charliekirk.com slash support.

00:02:57.000 Support us, I should say.

00:02:59.000 CharlieKirk.com slash support.

00:03:02.000 Listen to this entire episode and share it.

00:03:06.000 It's that important.

00:03:07.000 It's beyond a wake-up call.

00:03:09.000 This might be our final warning from someone who nearly starved to death, lived in a country, didn't know what it meant to think, had never heard of the word love or God before.

00:03:25.000 And she has a warning for you.

00:03:26.000 Listen closely and carefully and share it with your friends.

00:03:30.000 It could make a big difference.

00:03:32.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:03:33.000 Here, we go.

00:03:34.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:03:36.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:03:38.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:03:41.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:03:44.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:03:45.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:03:46.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:03:55.000 Will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:04:04.000 That's why we are here.

00:04:06.000 Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.

00:04:09.000 For personalized loan services, you can count on.

00:04:12.000 Go to andrewandtodd.com, the wonderfulandrewandodd.com.

00:04:18.000 When I tell you that we are getting closer and closer to totalitarianism, I mean it, but don't take my word for it.

00:04:25.000 Our guest for the entire hour is someone who has lived in a totalitarian country, a legitimate totalitarian country, and was able to escape and is a defector.

00:04:38.000 Her story is chilling about how and why politics matters and why government matters, why we need to talk about morality and truth and goodness and beauty.

00:04:50.000 Our guest is Yanmi Park.

00:04:53.000 She is the author of a new book called While Time Remains.

00:04:56.000 She joined Dennis Prager for a full hour about a year and a half ago in one of the most powerful interviews that I have heard in quite some time.

00:05:04.000 And her story is remarkable.

00:05:05.000 Yanmi, welcome to the program.

00:05:07.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:05:09.000 It's an honor to be on your show.

00:05:10.000 Well, thank you.

00:05:11.000 So tell our audience about your story.

00:05:13.000 You grew up in North Korea and walk us through what that was like and then how you were able to escape.

00:05:20.000 I was born in North Korea in 1993.

00:05:24.000 And when I was growing up there, I never even seen a map of the world.

00:05:29.000 On my way to school, I remember seeing dead bodies on the streets everywhere.

00:05:35.000 And one thing that I still cannot forget to this day is there's a teenage boy or like young man, I don't know, who was laying down there.

00:05:43.000 And when you are so malnourished, all your organs, like everything opens up in your body and you see his intestines comes out of him.

00:05:51.000 And you see flies and dogs are trying to eat him once he dies off.

00:05:56.000 And but still when I go to school, my school teacher was demanding me to sing this song called Nothing to Envy.

00:06:03.000 The song is all about how we have nothing to envy in this world because we are living in a socialist paradise.

00:06:10.000 And of course, when I go to school, I was taught to believe that dictators, Kim Myersong, and Kim Jong-year, they were gods.

00:06:17.000 They had the power to do miracles.

00:06:20.000 They could do with my mind.

00:06:23.000 And therefore, there's always people who were afraid even to think.

00:06:28.000 And just when we wake up, then just our neighbors are gone.

00:06:32.000 And we don't know, like maybe space has something wrong or maybe they realize something wrong.

00:06:37.000 And so I was growing up there not knowing the world like this ever existed.

00:06:43.000 So you were taught that your leaders were close to gods before you left North Korea.

00:06:49.000 Did you ever have any doubt of the propaganda they were telling us?

00:06:54.000 Did you ever have anything like, this doesn't sound right?

00:06:58.000 I think that's why it's so scary right now, seeing the death of critical thinking.

00:07:03.000 In North Korea, they don't teach us what critical thinking is or asking us to using the inner logic part in our brain.

00:07:12.000 I mean, in some sense, it's helpful if you don't use that part because then you are going to be okay.

00:07:18.000 The first thing my mom told me as a young girl was, don't even whisper because the birds and mice could hear me.

00:07:25.000 She said my tongue was the most dangerous weapon that I had in my body because if I said one wrong thing, it was going to kill up to three, two generations of my family's lives.

00:07:36.000 So I never doubted.

00:07:37.000 And of course, we don't have even internet.

00:07:39.000 We don't have free press.

00:07:41.000 People have no freedom of speech or movement. 0.50

00:07:44.000 I had no clue that they were not gods.

00:07:46.000 It's a real thing that for Northern people believe that they don't even go to bathroom.

00:07:50.000 It's not a joke for Northern people.

00:07:52.000 There is a quote in 1984 by George Orwell, which is the only way to keep a secret from the government is to first keep the secret from yourself, which is very similar to what you're saying, which is don't even whisper because the birds and the mice might hear you.

00:08:13.000 And so your story gets to be just super powerful of what you had to do to escape.

00:08:23.000 Walk us through those details.

00:08:25.000 It's an extraordinary story of courage and resilience.

00:08:29.000 Walk us through it.

00:08:31.000 Yeah, so when I was, by the time I was 13 years old, we couldn't really find any more food.

00:08:38.000 The reason why we're starving is the regime decided to starve 90% of the population who are living outside of capital Pyongyang.

00:08:48.000 And Kim Jong-hye said that when millions of North Koreans were dying, when I was totally in the 90s, this is one of the horrible famines that happened in the modern history.

00:08:58.000 He said, it's easy to do socialism.

00:09:00.000 It's easy to control people when there are less of them.

00:09:04.000 So he would let us die on purpose.

00:09:06.000 So when I was by the 13th, we couldn't find any more food.

00:09:11.000 And the only way for us to survive was escaping.

00:09:14.000 And at night time, I was able to see lights coming from China.

00:09:19.000 And that's when we thought maybe if we go where the lights were, we could find something to eat.

00:09:24.000 And that's how I risked my life for a bowl of rice at 13.

00:09:29.000 So you were then on the border of North Korea and China.

00:09:32.000 Is that correct?

00:09:33.000 And it was, was there a river separating it or?

00:09:37.000 Yes.

00:09:38.000 I was living in the northern part of North Korea, a town called Heishan, and we had a border with China and there was a Yalu River between us that was flowing.

00:09:48.000 And so that's why we were able to see the electricity lights coming from China at nighttime.

00:09:54.000 So before I continue, I just have some other very basic questions about North Korea.

00:09:59.000 Do people own things in North Korea?

00:10:01.000 Is there private property?

00:10:03.000 No, that's the promise of communism.

00:10:06.000 When the regime came, Kim Myers-ong came to power in the 50s, he promised North Korean people, I'm going to get rid of inequality.

00:10:15.000 I'm going to feed you three times with the rice and misdu.

00:10:20.000 If I give that, could you give us the private property, freedom of speech, all your rights?

00:10:27.000 And for that little promise, North Korean people gave everything to this one guy, the Communist Party.

00:10:33.000 And then when they took everything from us, including property, he would not give us anything back.

00:10:39.000 And we became forever enslaved to this one man.

00:10:43.000 So growing up in North Korea and now looking back, do you think most North Korean citizens are happy?

00:10:51.000 It's not even a concept.

00:10:53.000 They don't tell us what that is.

00:10:55.000 There is no word of oppression in North Korea.

00:10:57.000 There's no word for love.

00:11:00.000 Kim Jong-un banned Mother's Day because he was paranoid that if we are going to love our mothers, we're not going to love him as much.

00:11:07.000 We don't have a word stress because how can you be stressed living in a socialist paradise?

00:11:12.000 It's like 1984 by George Ore.

00:11:15.000 There's a newspaper, right?

00:11:16.000 They control what you say, what you can think by controlling the language. 0.91

00:11:20.000 And I see it's happening in America, how they obsess what word we can use, what word we cannot.

00:11:25.000 But North Korea did a long time ago, eliminating those words, those concepts from people.

00:11:31.000 So we don't question about those things.

00:11:34.000 That's an extraordinary statement.

00:11:36.000 There is no word for love.

00:11:39.000 And if I understood you correctly, they got rid of Mother's Day because you can't have a relationship with your parent.

00:11:45.000 Remember, we talk about a lot on our program, the one commandment that ties to your nation of the Ten Commandments, honor your mother and father so that you may live long in the land of which you are in.

00:11:55.000 Totalitarians always try to break the bond between a child and a parent, and you lived through that.

00:12:01.000 And so then I must ask: growing up in this totalitarian country, this tyrannical country, what then motivated you to put your life at risk to go across the river and essentially smuggle yourself into a foreign country?

00:12:19.000 It just starvation.

00:12:22.000 I think hunger means death to North Koreans. 0.74

00:12:25.000 If you don't eat, you die. 0.95

00:12:27.000 And I thought, if I don't do that, I'm going to die.

00:12:30.000 And for a fact, if I didn't escape, I would be dead long ago by starvation at 13.

00:12:36.000 So there was no idea of me understanding what freedom was, or there's a world out there that, like, you know, like America existed.

00:12:44.000 I just thought, okay, let me go find some food to eat.

00:12:48.000 And that simple desire to survive got me to cross the frozen river into China.

00:12:54.000 For everyone listening, I've said this for quite some time.

00:12:56.000 It's honored to have you on the program, by the way.

00:12:58.000 Yanmi Park has one of the most illuminating and powerful stories.

00:13:04.000 Wait till you hear what she has to say about our own country, because we'll get there.

00:13:08.000 Because you would think that all of a sudden she would be around like, wow, everyone loves freedom here.

00:13:13.000 No, no, she knows what it takes to make a country go totalitarian.

00:13:17.000 And she has more than a warning.

00:13:19.000 She has a message for all of us.

00:13:20.000 But her book that I encourage all of you to get right now, While Time Remains, Ford by Jordan Peterson, we have so much to learn and we are so blessed to be able to have this story.

00:13:34.000 And there are tens of millions of people right now in an open-air concentration camp in a country called North Korea.

00:13:39.000 But I have to be told by pastors that politics doesn't matter, government doesn't matter.

00:13:43.000 Meanwhile, tens of millions of people starve to death.

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00:15:01.000 Yanmi, let me ask you, when you were being raised in North Korea, what were you propagandized to believe about America?

00:15:11.000 In some sense, it's exactly what Karen Left saying about America, that America is corrupt, poisonous, the dirty capitalist society where children cannot even study at school. 0.99

00:15:26.000 But then also they're saying that Americans are cold-blooded reptiles that eat North Korean children, rape our women, and torture us. 0.99

00:15:37.000 So they were saying how lucky we were having our dear leader defending us from these monsters. 0.98

00:15:43.000 But the thing is, in North Korea, the child, we don't have internet.

00:15:46.000 There's no way we can just Google and look up American.

00:15:49.000 Only thing we could see was a school poster showing these like monsters, barbaric people were pulling our teeth out.

00:15:56.000 And that's what I heard about America.

00:15:58.000 I did not know this country was this beautiful free country.

00:16:02.000 We will talk more about that in a second.

00:16:04.000 So let's then go through the story.

00:16:06.000 You then crossed the river into China, and then what?

00:16:10.000 Were you smuggled?

00:16:11.000 Walk us through the details. 0.97

00:16:12.000 There was a lady who were willing to help me and my mother to cross the river. 1.00

00:16:18.000 And turns out she was a human trafficker. 0.99

00:16:20.000 So she sold us to a human trafficker in China. 0.90

00:16:24.000 So when my mother and I got to China, it was 2007, the first thing I was saying was my mother being raped.

00:16:32.000 And then they were selling, they sold us as livestocks.

00:16:37.000 She was sold for $65.

00:16:39.000 They sold me just above $20 because I was a virgin and a child.

00:16:45.000 And right now, even to this moment, there are 300,000 North Korean young girls and women are being sold for the organ harvesting and being sold as sex slaves in China right now. 0.81

00:16:57.000 So you were then basically a sex slave. 0.92

00:17:02.000 And then what? 0.99

00:17:04.000 So just long my longest two years of my life living this sex slave life. 0.89

00:17:10.000 One day, miraculously, I met a Christian missionary coming from South Korea. 1.00

00:17:16.000 They were risking their lives to rescue North Korean women to freedom.

00:17:21.000 And these missionaries told me that if I walk across frozen Gobi Desert into Mongolia, I might be able to go to South Korea from there.

00:17:30.000 So I joined the mission group.

00:17:32.000 I studied the Bible for two months.

00:17:35.000 And once we thought we were ready, we went to the northern China and we started walking across the frozen Gobi Desert into Mongolia.

00:17:45.000 So, but as you were walking across the Gobi Desert, then what happened?

00:17:50.000 Luckily, it was like minus 40 degrees in 2009 when I was 15 years old.

00:17:56.000 I somehow didn't die from that cold.

00:17:59.000 I did not get killed by the border guards.

00:18:02.000 And they were eventually assisted us to go to fly to South Korea as refugees.

00:18:08.000 So that's how I became free after that two years of China. 0.94

00:18:12.000 So, but then the story gets very interesting.

00:18:17.000 Explain to us the integration process that you had to go through in South Korea.

00:18:25.000 Explain that to us.

00:18:27.000 So, yeah, I think a lot of people think, okay, wow, that's got to be a great story that, you know, now you're in a good country that is South Korea.

00:18:35.000 Actually, I remember like being free for the first time.

00:18:39.000 That was a very painful experience.

00:18:41.000 And at some point, I was thinking, if the regime doesn't care me and give me enough at least some potato to eat, I would go back to North Korea.

00:18:51.000 Say that part again.

00:18:51.000 No, just say that one more time.

00:18:54.000 I was thinking if the regime would not execute me for defecting and then give me enough at least frozen potato to eat for the rest of my life, I would rather go back to North Korea than being in free South Korea. 0.62

00:19:06.000 I mean, that's incredibly powerful.

00:19:08.000 And it's true. 0.56

00:19:09.000 I mean, again, in the Bible, when God's chosen people were freed from slavery in Egypt, it just took a couple chapters before they told God, bring us back to Egypt, because at least we ate meat and we knew what we were doing all day long.

00:19:23.000 And so once you went to South Korea, though, it wasn't like they just said, hey, welcome to Seoul.

00:19:28.000 Didn't you have to go through a lot of interviews and almost pseudo-interrogations?

00:19:34.000 Yeah, that's as soon as we arrived there.

00:19:36.000 The first place they take us to is actually a hospital.

00:19:40.000 Because North Koreans, even though we have supposedly free health care, there is literally nothing worse. 1.00

00:19:46.000 So in the hospital, they use one needle to inject every patient.

00:19:51.000 When they do operate, people don't have anesthesia.

00:19:54.000 And most of people die from infection and fever and malnutrition, not from actual disease in North Korea.

00:20:01.000 So they took us to hospital and do the full body check and make sure that we do not bring any new disease to the country.

00:20:08.000 After that is clear, they put us in isolation of two months.

00:20:13.000 You got to check out this book, While Time Remains, Yonmi Park.

00:20:18.000 You hear about totalitarianism.

00:20:19.000 You should send this interview, by the way, and this book to a liberal friend of yours.

00:20:26.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:21:33.000 Yami, let me ask you, so you were put in isolation in South Korea during the reintegration process.

00:21:39.000 Explain.

00:21:41.000 So during this process, some of us even going under through the lie detectors.

00:21:46.000 The North Korean regime sent some spies among the defectors and disguised them.

00:21:52.000 So they have to verify our stories thoroughly.

00:21:55.000 They had to make sure that we are actually North Koreans or not.

00:21:58.000 And after two months of the interrogation, once we get verified that we are not spies, then we sent to three months of kind of a education center where they teach us that, you know, first of all, Americans are not bastards, that they live in a flourishing democracy.

00:22:15.000 And they tell us, there is for the first time I heard about Kim Jong-yeo was a fact dictator.

00:22:21.000 And I couldn't believe it.

00:22:22.000 Like I, all my life, I believed that somehow he was starving just like us and working tirelessly for protecting our people.

00:22:30.000 And then in South Sky, they were telling me that, no, he's a bad dictator.

00:22:35.000 So in that, of course, that three-month period, I was learning about how to even take a bus.

00:22:40.000 You know, I was almost different, coming from a different planet, time traveling and learning about modern technology, learning about what internet is for the first time.

00:22:51.000 When you were going through all this process, one of the most powerful things I heard you mention to Dennis Prager that I remembered, I want you to explain it, is you, it took a lot of effort to think.

00:23:08.000 What do you, that's, that's just such, that's something we don't, I mean, consider.

00:23:15.000 What do you mean it took effort for you to think once you got out of North Korea?

00:23:20.000 Yeah, I think this is where people don't understand how deep the tyranny can get.

00:23:25.000 There are two types of dictatorships.

00:23:28.000 One was physical dictatorship.

00:23:30.000 Of course, they put you in a jail or in a country surround the border.

00:23:34.000 You have no freedom to move or you don't have a freedom to choose your clothes or haircut.

00:23:39.000 That's a physical dictatorship.

00:23:40.000 What Nazi Germany or even North Korean regime did is something called dictatorship of the mind.

00:23:47.000 This is the real hard type begins.

00:23:50.000 They control what you think.

00:23:52.000 They never teach you how to think for yourself.

00:23:55.000 And somehow in America, people think that when we are born as a kid, we are going to know what injustice is, what justice is, what democracy is, what human rights is.

00:24:06.000 These are all conventions of the enlightenment.

00:24:09.000 We invented these amazing ideas and we need to teach the children to understand what these are.

00:24:15.000 But North Korean children are not taught of these topics.

00:24:19.000 Therefore, thinking for yourself is never a thing.

00:24:22.000 And I remember in South Korea, I was thinking for myself, like, even what I'm going to wear, right?

00:24:27.000 What I'm going to wear, I mean, what I'm going to like do in my life.

00:24:31.000 Then I was so exhausted.

00:24:33.000 Like, oh my God, I need to take a break after thinking for 30 minutes.

00:24:37.000 So you would have to physically rest because you had to just think, what am I going to eat?

00:24:45.000 What am I going to do?

00:24:46.000 You had to rest from thinking.

00:24:49.000 Yeah, I mean, literally, I think every day I was like, okay, I'm going to think just two minutes today.

00:24:54.000 And then I take like a few hours break.

00:24:56.000 Okay, this time I think for more than five minutes.

00:24:59.000 That's how gradually increased of me.

00:25:01.000 And it took many years for me to come to be comfortable with thinking for myself.

00:25:06.000 Initially, it was so difficult that I remember I was just exhausted from thinking.

00:25:12.000 So then, to kind of speed up the story, and there's so many elements.

00:25:16.000 I'd love to have you in person in the studio and examine all this.

00:25:19.000 But for a lot of our audience, this is the first time they're hearing this.

00:25:23.000 You come to America and you believe, hey, home of the free and the brave.

00:25:29.000 If I remember correctly, you went to Columbia.

00:25:32.000 Is that right?

00:25:33.000 Columbia University.

00:25:35.000 And tell our now American audience what you, the defector from North Korea, were being taught.

00:25:43.000 It was shocking beyond anything that I could ever imagine.

00:25:48.000 The professors were saying exact same things that my North Korean teachers said in the classroom.

00:25:55.000 I was at some point thinking, did I transfer back to North Korean classroom? 0.55

00:26:00.000 In American classroom, they were saying that all the problems in the world we have is because of the greedy capitalism and white men.

00:26:09.000 And I was thinking, without capitalism, I mean, these kids are in there like a few hundred bucks yoga pants and then they're green just diktox.

00:26:18.000 Their problems are having too much food.

00:26:21.000 Without capitalism, they would not have any of those things they were having.

00:26:24.000 And they've been dead long, dead, long time ago from starvation.

00:26:29.000 And these professors were teaching these kids somehow that the worst thing in the world that can happen is inequality.

00:26:36.000 Worst thing that can ever happen in life is a poverty.

00:26:40.000 Inequality means there's a room to mobilize, to room to go further than you are.

00:26:45.000 That's exactly right.

00:26:47.000 And they are somehow teaching us to believe that inequality is a problem and therefore we need to abolish it, billionaires.

00:26:55.000 It's almost like what's yours is mine.

00:26:57.000 It's one of chapters in my book.

00:26:59.000 But teaching the entire mind, it's okay to steal from other people because they are rich, because they worked hard.

00:27:06.000 They had three jobs.

00:27:07.000 Like you look at Elon Musk, they innovate, they have three jobs and working tirelessly.

00:27:12.000 And somehow these people who don't do anything have a right to steal from those people.

00:27:18.000 The subtitle of your book is a North Korean defector's search for freedom in America.

00:27:26.000 How did you possibly process Americans telling you that Marxism is the answer?

00:27:36.000 How do you deal with that?

00:27:39.000 This is where, I mean, they say the only solution is a common revolution to all the problems that we have in America right now.

00:27:48.000 And I was like, for the last two years, I was raising my son in Chicago and downtown, where governments have such a control that the governments are forcing my son to wear a mask up to here, eight hours a day in daycare.

00:28:04.000 And street clubs are open, the clubs are open, and dog parks are open, but they close down the children's playground.

00:28:13.000 So children have less rights than adults and these dogs.

00:28:18.000 They have freedom to go get drunk and do whatever they want to do.

00:28:22.000 And dogs run around, but not my child, because he's a human being, have no right to go to play outdoor in the sunshine in summer in the playground.

00:28:32.000 And I think that's when I really understood.

00:28:34.000 It's not a joke.

00:28:36.000 It is tyranny people in this country.

00:28:38.000 And I have nothing to protect my son from this.

00:28:42.000 And that's when I really determined to write this book to wake up America that we do not have that much time left on us to fight this bat. 0.77

00:28:51.000 I mean, that's so powerful.

00:28:53.000 Can you just list a couple of specific examples of what you see happening in America where you say this is going to become North Korea very quickly?

00:29:08.000 One is that dividing people based on collective guilt.

00:29:14.000 It's a North Korean ideology.

00:29:16.000 When I spoke out against the regime, the regime went away to punish three generations of my family. 0.94

00:29:23.000 And in America, my son, who is half white and half Asian, he's so screwed because now people are saying he's privileged. 0.96

00:29:30.000 He's guilty. 0.96

00:29:32.000 We are punishing people for something not they individuals did, but collectively some of their ancestors did.

00:29:39.000 In this system, there's no redemption.

00:29:42.000 There's no change because how do you change your ancestor?

00:29:45.000 How do you change the history?

00:29:47.000 That's an impossible task.

00:29:49.000 So in America now, we are divided based on who's oppressed and who's oppressed, based on what our ancestors did.

00:29:55.000 And not only that, now they are saying that hate speech is a violence, that we need to shut down the free speech.

00:30:03.000 And that's how North Korea did, that we cannot give a platform to bigots and capitalists and intelligentia to speak. 0.60

00:30:11.000 We got rid of free speech.

00:30:12.000 And in America, they are doing the exact same thing and following the same path.

00:30:18.000 And lastly, what I'm afraid of is people don't realize how unusual this country is.

00:30:25.000 Coming from North Korea, I cannot imagine the world without America, what this country stands for.

00:30:31.000 This country stands for what's possible when individuals are left alone from the government tyranny, what we can achieve.

00:30:39.000 Like New York City is a testament to that.

00:30:41.000 But they are going after exactly that.

00:30:44.000 And I think it's just, I don't know, I'm just like praying every day, like this cannot be real.

00:30:50.000 I mean, these people have everything they need.

00:30:52.000 Their problem is not having a problem.

00:30:54.000 And they're creating injustice out of thin air, literally.

00:30:58.000 Oh, that is so perfect.

00:30:59.000 Say that again.

00:31:00.000 Their problem is not having a problem.

00:31:02.000 Yeah, it's a problem.

00:31:05.000 I never understood that not having a problem with the actual problem.

00:31:08.000 That is so sad.

00:31:09.000 That is poetically put.

00:31:10.000 Please continue.

00:31:12.000 Their injustice, their oppression is somehow that we cannot follow their non-grammatical, ever-growing pronouns.

00:31:21.000 And my classrooms at Columbia in tears and telling me that I'm a bigot because I cannot use they in my sentences perfectly, them being a gender like fluid thing, something every second they can be anything they want.

00:31:34.000 And for them, this is the end of the world.

00:31:37.000 That's the oppression they are facing.

00:31:38.000 And therefore, they want to destroy this matter, this country, in the name of some madness.

00:31:45.000 I hope you all understood that that is a student, an American student at Columbia University, who is calling a young lady who was raised in North Korea, had to flee because of starvation, sold into a sex slave to watch her mother be raped to barely escape in negative 40 degrees in the Gobi Desert to South Korea, calling her a bigot because she doesn't use the pronouns that she prefers.

00:32:13.000 Let me ask you just very briefly, how much, I mean, do you, this is an urgent time for America?

00:32:22.000 Would you agree?

00:32:23.000 Do you think that what needs to be done?

00:32:27.000 I think this is a time for Americans to realize this is our time to found, like become founding fathers, find our country back, fight for the country that what made us unique, what made us great.

00:32:41.000 Our founding fathers bled their blood, they gave their life for the liberty that we have today.

00:32:47.000 And I think this is our time.

00:32:48.000 Our time of speaking up right now is losing our jobs, getting demonetized and censored and calling bigots.

00:32:56.000 But that is nothing to compare what our founding fathers did or North Korean people do to become free.

00:33:02.000 So therefore, we need to realize freedom is truly not free.

00:33:06.000 And we need to go speak up and fight back with this tyranny that is rising in the American government, all you mainstream media everywhere that we see.

00:33:17.000 The country is falling apart.

00:33:19.000 And I'm being lectured by kids that their greatest concern is that their Uber Eats is four minutes late, that Marxism is the answer.

00:33:28.000 Maybe you should check your privilege and listen to someone who has lived through a lot about what's coming next.

00:33:36.000 The book is While Time Remains.

00:33:39.000 Boy, is that a powerful title?

00:33:40.000 A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America by Yanmi Park.

00:33:46.000 Yanmi, let me ask you, when you were living in North Korea, was God even a concept that was understood or taught?

00:33:56.000 You get executed if you ever own a Bible or read the Bible meet a missionary. 0.94

00:34:01.000 God, any other religion is not allowed. 1.00

00:34:04.000 The first thing that Kim Iron did when he to power was killing Christians and killed God in North Korea. 0.80

00:34:10.000 You say you get executed if you say you believe in God? 0.90

00:34:14.000 Or even just read the Bible once or read one word in the Bible or own the Bible.

00:34:19.000 It's not just saying I believe in God.

00:34:21.000 Just owning a Bible is execution along with three generations of your family. 0.71

00:34:27.000 So do you personally, I have no idea how you'll answer, do you, have you now entertained a belief in God now that you live in the West?

00:34:36.000 Do you think you are Christian?

00:34:39.000 Tell me about that.

00:34:40.000 I was, as I said, I was rescued by Christians in China when I was in the darkest place in the world. 1.00

00:34:47.000 These missionaries, they risked their life to rescue us, to go to South Korea.

00:34:53.000 And since then, I was on and off and I wasn't even sure, but I had my son five years ago.

00:34:59.000 And in that moment, I mean, how could you not believe in God?

00:35:02.000 It's a life's true miracle.

00:35:04.000 There's no way I made a child.

00:35:06.000 It was from God.

00:35:08.000 And I became a believer since that moment.

00:35:11.000 Secular people don't go to the Gobi Desert in negative 50 degrees to rescue sex slaves.

00:35:16.000 Religious people do.

00:35:18.000 So let me ask you, Yanmi, now that you see America becoming more secular and less religious, do you think that makes it more likely for totalitarianism to take hold?

00:35:30.000 Absolutely.

00:35:31.000 Think there is a really correlation between uh, god and communism, because communists when they first, when they go for religion, there's a reason, because they are replacing god with themselves, they replacing the communist party with the ideology, the god's words.

00:35:49.000 So now in America, more people becoming atheists.

00:35:52.000 I mean it makes sense, because they do not understand the meaning of freedom.

00:35:57.000 They don't understand that freedom without virtue it means anarchy and we lost virtue.

00:36:04.000 And, of course, people on the subway in New York City shooting themselves as a heroin and harassing people and they say that's freedom, that's not freedom, that's anarchy and we've missed.

00:36:15.000 Now we really misunderstand the meaning of freedom.

00:36:18.000 People don't understand that freedom comes with responsibility and that also is lost.

00:36:24.000 So we are witnessing this complete chaos that people lost meaning, not understanding what freedom is anymore.

00:36:32.000 They don't even understand what's how we need to live a meaningful life in life like it just looks like completely lost darkness that i'm seeing in America that yeah, how do we win?

00:36:45.000 We need to pray.

00:36:46.000 I think it's as a Christian, I think you know I pray the things.

00:36:51.000 That was not possible.

00:36:53.000 There are only 209 nursing defectors made it to America for the last 80 years.

00:36:59.000 There's a no, nothing in me, as you will see me in person.

00:37:02.000 I'm the tiniest girl you can see and it's not.

00:37:06.000 I fought harder.

00:37:07.000 Somehow there's a miracle that happened and god brought me to this promised land.

00:37:12.000 And like that, I think, if we believe in god and if we believe in the founding fathers and what they wrote in the constitution, as long as we defend those principles, we can bring the glory of America, glorious America, back to this country, back to this land.

00:37:26.000 What gives you hope?

00:37:27.000 That you see in America right now people, individuals like you, individuals that I meet every day and think my stomach.

00:37:37.000 I'm hopeful and I think the key is not losing faith in humanity.

00:37:42.000 And what shocks me about American left is their anti-human sentiment.

00:37:47.000 That's exactly like at Columbia, the professor saying that humans are disease.

00:37:54.000 We make the, our mother earth sick and this is what North Regime did. 1.00

00:37:59.000 They said if when we are dying from starvation, it's easy to do socialism, if there are less people, it's easy to control, if there's less people.

00:38:08.000 They don't believe that humans are made in the image of god, that we have the rights that give them from god, that nobody can take away from us, and the left is somehow spreading this idea that they pregnant women.

00:38:20.000 The babies are not real babies and somehow humans are toxic, that we need to get rid of a lot of us, and this is scary.

00:38:28.000 But despite that, we need to recognize that humans are gift and we need to protect life at all cost.

00:38:36.000 That's exactly right.

00:38:37.000 What is a human being is the most important question.

00:38:40.000 Genesis 126 and 127, young me.

00:38:44.000 We'll have you back again on soon.

00:38:46.000 Uh, check out the book.

00:38:47.000 While time remains and the hour is complete, it's better to always leave the audience wanting more than wanting less.

00:38:54.000 I definitely have more questions and we'll have you back on.

00:38:57.000 Okay, god bless you and keep fighting. 1.00

00:39:01.000 America, wake up.

00:39:02.000 We're about to become North Korea. 0.97

00:39:04.000 Don't take my word for it.

00:39:05.000 See you tomorrow.

00:39:09.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 17, 2023

A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom with Yeonmi Park

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