Yonmi Park was born in North Korea in the late 1980s. She grew up in a communist country where she was brainwashed into believing she was destined to become a communist spy. She was so indoctrinated in the ways of the regime that she didn t even realize she was a free thinker until she went to college and learned to speak her mind. After graduating from high school, she became a spy for the North Korean regime and smuggled Western culture into the country.
00:00:00.000There is a place called Peace Village. It's a cardboard city on the North Korean side
00:00:06.540of the demilitarized zone. It's a facade. It's a lie. Propaganda meant to convince the world that
00:00:13.920North Korea is a legitimate force to be reckoned with and not some fledgling dictatorship that is
00:00:20.440slowly starving its own people to death because the actual state never stood a chance to begin
00:00:27.180with. Today's guest on our podcast knows all about the sophistication and brutality that goes
00:00:34.060into maintaining this illusion. You are about to hear an incredible story. It is the story of
00:00:40.880true freedom. It's right there in the midst of the title of her memoir, In Order to Live
00:00:47.540a North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom. North Korean state media has referred to her as a
00:00:55.360poisonous mushroom and a human rights propaganda puppet. She has since become part of what she
00:01:03.820calls the black market generation, young North Koreans that risk their lives to smuggle Western
00:01:09.180culture into the oppressive regime. It is something that unfortunately not enough Americans know about.
00:01:18.780The North Korean desire for freedom, anything, any desire is banned. Things like freedom of speech,
00:01:27.240freedom of religion, even freedom of movement are pipe dreams. They're delusions. And when you are
00:01:33.660confined to absolute oppression, actual oppression, basic humanity seems like an unattainable dream.
00:01:42.880For North Koreans, the freedom or the ability to even watch a movie made in the West is unthinkable. The stakes are so high. If North Koreans are caught with media or unregistered devices from South Korea, you can go to 15 years hard labor in a prison camp for that. If the media is from America or Japan, the punishment can be death.
00:02:11.600Let me say that another way. North Koreans can and have been executed for watching American Idol. It's not an exaggeration. Today's guest had a friend of the family killed for the crime of watching a movie from Hollywood.
00:02:27.960I don't care how much you might like Titanic, but your enthusiasm pales in comparison to the liberating enthusiasm of today's guest experienced when she watched a DVD of Titanic that was smuggled into North Korea at the risk of death.
00:02:49.060Titanic changed her life. It took her years to escape from freedom. And now she lives in America, 27 years old, but she is starting to have nightmares by the familiar authoritarianism that is now no longer even creeping.
00:03:05.880It is marching in the streets in our country. Today, I want you to welcome Yanmi Park.
00:03:15.420Hey, want to take a quick second and tell you about Bilt Bars? They are so yummy. It amazes me that they're healthy for you. In fact, I hate doing commercials for Bilt Bars in some ways because, I mean, the selling point, I guess, is how healthy they are.
00:03:30.960But they're candy bars. They really are. I swear to you. When you try one, you will be amazed is we've always been promised a fat pill where you take a pill and it melts away the fat.
00:03:41.500Well, that hasn't happened. But right underneath the fat pill and the flying car is really yummy things that are healthy and still taste like the really yummy thing.
00:03:57.280Bilt Bar is that promise. It's the official protein bar of the U.S. Olympic track and field team. That's why I eat them, because, I mean, you don't get a body like this easily. I'm telling you that it's an amazing protein bar.
00:04:13.080Go to Bilt.com and use the promo code BILT15 and save 15% off your first order. It's made with real chocolate. They are truly candy bars, but they're like 120 calories. They're four net grams of carbs. All the protein you could ever want. It's great. Use the promo code BEC15. 15% off now at Bilt.com.
00:04:37.480Yonmi, what a privilege and honor to talk to you. Welcome.
00:04:56.180Thank you so much for having me. I cannot believe I'm actually talking to you right now.
00:05:01.320Thank you. So, Yonmi, for people who haven't heard your story yet, can we start at the beginning? Because we must seem so grotesque to you as a society, the way we look at freedom so casually. Tell me what life was like in North Korea growing up.
00:05:31.320Yeah, I think. So, I was born in North Korea at the end of 1993. That was right after, years after the Soviet Union collapsed.
00:05:43.460And North Korea is a central government economy. So, it's a socialist. There's no private property.
00:05:50.080And, of course, you know, the regime tells you what to do, what to see, you know. Literally, they decide how much individuals should be fed based on your seongbun, which is a birth class.
00:06:03.660So, even though North Korea began as a communist country, the interesting thing is that they made a country into the most unequal society by dividing classes.
00:06:15.800So, based on what your great-grandfather did during the Revolution or during the Korean War, that your birth status determined.
00:06:24.100So, there's a big three categories of classes, and within three categories, they divided into 50 different classes in socialist North Korea.
00:19:24.080So, but luckily, I was living in the border town of North Korea.
00:19:29.540But if you see the satellite photos of North Korea at nighttime, it is literally the darkest place on Earth because they don't have lights at night.
00:19:38.800So, I was able to see lights coming from China at night.
00:19:43.840And then I was wondering, maybe if I go where the lights were, I might be able to find a bowl of rice.
00:19:51.380And that's how I decided to risk my life and cross that frozen river.
00:20:13.820I mean, I didn't even know what free was, like, so what freedom is, you know, how do I, how do you escape for freedom when you don't even know what escape is and, like, freedom is, right?
00:20:25.820Literally, for me, it was, okay, seems like there are some bright lights coming from China.
00:20:31.320And then if I go where there are, maybe I can find some food, right?
00:20:35.240But when you are so desperate, when in front of your death, there's nothing you cannot do.
00:20:43.820I did go one or two few semesters of school as a child.
00:20:50.140But even though it's a socialist free education that teachers demand you to bring bribes and money and supplies, if you don't, they beat you up.
00:21:01.440So, I was so poor to bring those things.
00:21:04.140I mean, there's no child rights either.
00:27:39.240There was a lot of times I'm grateful because without him, I would not have saved my parents.
00:27:45.520So, you know, it's always that I know at this point is that through my journey, most of the things I learned is what it really means to be a human being.
00:29:11.160Yeah, because in North Korea, you get punished for that.
00:29:14.540You do not have freedom to even know what kind of haircut you got.
00:29:17.880It was a joke for Westerners, but that's how little freedom North Koreans have.
00:29:22.360We don't even have a freedom to have a haircut that we want to.
00:29:26.820When every single clothes, the song that you listen to, how you dance, why you what, why you read, what you say, where you go, where you live.
00:29:36.480Every single thing decided by the regime for us.
00:29:41.000You didn't really, um, uh, you didn't understand freedom of, of speech at all.
00:29:49.420Did you, were there, when you have the classes, did you know that all of that or some of that stuff existed in Capitol City?
00:29:58.520Did you, were, or were you so separated from any kind of knowledge that you didn't know life was different even in your own country?
00:30:07.420I had also, my father was a, uh, did why he was a party member when I was younger until he was sent.
00:30:15.900So when he was, so when he was in the party member, because he was engaging in the black market trading.
00:30:22.420And in North Korea, black market means selling rice, dried fish, sugar, and clocks, because in social system, you cannot trade, right?
00:30:34.420Governments control the means of production and who gets what.
00:30:38.080So, but the thing is, after 90s, after Soviet Union collapsed, the regime is not, decided not to free the people, not to give us public rations.
00:30:48.320But then, instead, they start, still banning the trading.
00:32:22.920So, one of these missionaries helped us was helping, putting us in a shelter and taught us Bible.
00:32:30.740Several months of Bible studying, they told us, they could not literally go into desert with us, right?
00:32:36.900Only way for us to go to South Korea was getting out of China, but then we don't have ID or passport to get out of China and cross the border,
00:32:46.360which means then we had to walk across the frozen Gobi Desert from China to Mongolia.
00:39:58.420He's sitting over there, and they are just a decadent society.
00:40:01.540And America has nothing, and they're struggling for freedom, and they're all painted up like they used to be in France, and it's the kings and all of the wealth.
00:40:15.960And I saw that, and I thought, I think that's the way, at some point, we are going to be perceived as we have all this wealth, and we're just squandering our time, and we don't really appreciate what we have.
00:40:34.840But more importantly, we don't even understand what freedom really is because we've had it for so long.
00:42:27.480But instead of me trying to understand who they are as a person, as a character, and their contents, I am obsessed remembering their pronouns.
00:43:15.840When you were first sitting in class at Columbia University in America, what was the first thing that jumped out at you and you thought, oh, my gosh, I've seen this before?
00:43:31.520I remember at this orientation before even classes, at the student's mandatory orientation before your courses begin.
00:43:39.820And the first person comes in and then she was asking, oh, who, you know, this, like, oppression, this infiltration of this hatred is everywhere.
00:43:51.780Embedded in our constitution, embedded in every system that we see.
00:43:55.520But, for example, who likes to read Jane Austen?
00:45:16.060The reason is, why they have a problem with studying Western Civilization Music is that because white men who silenced and killed all minority groups.
00:45:25.700Because of their aggression, now we have to study these bigots who are like Mozart and Beethoven.
00:45:32.120And it's a shame that we are not studying some guy from China or, like, somewhere in Africa.
00:45:37.340And I was saying, like, I mean, as a Korean, we would not say studying somebody Korean musician, right?
00:50:17.220Like, I was not participating during the Korean War.
00:50:20.080I don't even know what the time looked like.
00:50:21.960It was my decision that I did not fight in the right side of the world.
00:50:25.760But you are forever doomed, forever punished.
00:50:30.040Which is the thing that really strikes me as so important to your story, the idea that not only if you commit a crime does your whole family pay for it in North Korea, but your great-great-grandfather committed a crime.
00:51:29.960And it's like they're saying, blaming these white people for slavery is the same thing we are blaming these little young kids who were born in Japan for Pearl Harbor.
00:52:04.840What they want is because this country has done things bad, therefore, only way to almost do that is tearing down this country, tearing down the U.S. Constitution.
00:52:16.800That's like what every single class talking about Colombia is like.
00:52:19.480That is the only way we are going to actually bring real justice.
00:52:23.280This is the only way we can do that is by tearing down everything that this country has built.
00:52:28.660You are when you are looking at people and you say, well, this is, you know, they're they're part good.
00:52:39.300They're, you know, you know, they're not all bad.
00:52:45.760It's the guy who was was having sex with you at 13, yet he saved your family.
00:52:52.820There is this thing in in people, whether they are actively engaging in what I would call evil acts unknowingly or if they just didn't know any better.
00:53:06.860It's you can't judge the person just for justice.
00:53:12.300You have to look at the entire person.
00:53:16.060And we are throwing out the the the majority of what the West has done because we made mistakes.
00:53:25.720Well, everybody makes mistakes and you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
00:53:30.640Exactly. I completely agree that it's like whenever I look at this man, right, he was also a gang member as a child.
00:53:39.680He's coming from a very poor family in the countryside.
00:53:43.700He didn't even have elementary school education.
00:53:49.240He never learned how to treat people better.
00:53:52.100And he never even learned how the world works.
00:53:56.040And if he wasn't born in that Chinese communist like country, oppressive country, he was born somewhere like nice in European country or America.
00:54:06.060He might become a completely different person.
00:54:09.180His environment was so harsh and different.
00:54:12.200And that's the thing, even though America has a very, very dark history at some part, is that the judging from our current perspective is is not the way to look at problems.
00:54:50.000Let me ask you a couple of questions here.
00:54:52.480And just just to get your point of view, when you see the push now to silence voices and to the White House calls it flagging for misinformation.
00:55:05.160But you can be banned from all platforms is what they're pushing for.
00:55:28.720So when you make people stop talking, it means you're going to make them stop thinking.
00:55:35.080If the population stops things, it's a lot easier for the authoritarians to rule the country and control the population.
00:55:43.280That is why whenever there is authoritarian rises, the first thing they go after is freedom of speech.
00:55:48.920Because that's how you control people's minds.
00:55:51.540That's how important it is for us to keep talking.
00:55:55.160That's how we only pursue and think and find truth.
00:55:59.480And this country now, it's almost like I think, you know, fish is in the water, never know that they are in the water because they were just born with it.
00:57:43.520Well, I do know education, bad education.
00:57:48.680When you said when you lose the freedom of speech, you lose everything else.
00:57:54.800Can I just go through just a couple of amendments that we are constantly violating now in our Constitution?
00:58:03.980The first one is freedom of the press, which includes the freedom to question your own country and say, what are you doing?
00:58:13.440We have a right to petition our own government.
00:58:16.020We have a right to gather on the streets and and freedom of association without fear of the government and and the freedom to not just speak out, but the freedom of the press to question the government and even get it wrong sometimes.
00:59:05.520So last time, a few years ago in Hong Kong, we all know that when the Chinese Communist Party taking over Hong Kong, 75 percent of the Hong Kongers went on the street and demanded freedom and independence from the central government.
00:59:21.780But Chinese regime still took it over.
00:59:25.180Nobody without even taking the tanks because nobody in Hong Kong had the guns.
00:59:31.860Imagine those 75 percent of people had the guns.
00:59:35.520Chinese government could not take them over like that.
00:59:39.620And right now, under Kim Jong-un, if the people, not even like 100 percent of the population, just even 40 or even 20, 30 percent of the population had the guns in their hands.
00:59:51.360The regime cannot do that to the people.
00:59:54.000And of course, you can say, yeah, yeah, then the government has, you know, nuclear bombs.
01:00:09.660And the thing is, even if, say, government is going to get rid of 80 percent of the population and 20 percent lives, but that 20 percent is so the bloodshed of 80 percent of their population not going to be a slave to the regime.
01:00:24.340They're going to fight to their death.
01:00:25.700So it's impossible for enslaving people like that, like North Korea, if the population owns the right to guard themselves and defend themselves from the government.
01:00:36.120And the thing is, like, it's about, like, even capitalism and, you know, a defense is that even money itself isn't bad.
01:02:27.040People have tried every single time it failed.
01:02:30.300And whenever government decides the means of production, because, I mean, people as a person being, I don't even know what I want all the time.
01:02:38.420How do you think government is going to know what is best for every individual?
01:03:13.400When you hear people here in America talk about China and and make excuses for it to say that, you know, our own capitalists here say that China is the model for the future for the West.
01:03:29.700And the fact that we are buying and embed with the Communist Party and we are using and accepting the use of slavery to make our products cheaper.
01:10:45.520And I think this is, like, what's the scary thing about without God is, when you don't have a God, people is willing to believe in anything.