The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

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00:00:51.060 Welcome to Season 4, Episode 26 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. On this episode, my dad is

00:01:00.400 joined by Yeonmi Park. Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector and human rights activist trying

00:01:06.260 to shine a light on the atrocities that are still being committed in North Korea by the current Kim

00:01:10.760 regime. She wrote her experiences into the bestseller, In Order to Survive. She continues to tell stories of

00:01:17.840 her childhood and escaping to remind the world of how terrible things really are for North Koreans.

00:01:22.680 They discussed a variety of topics, including her story of escaping North Korea, being a slave in

00:01:28.040 China after her escape, and Yeonmi's current opinions on issues in modern Eastern and Western society.

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00:07:37.120 Hello, everyone. Something too serious today, really, I would say. I'm privileged to be talking

00:07:48.200 to Yeonmi Park, born in 1993 in North Korea, author of In Order to Live, 2015, a book which I just

00:08:00.600 finished reading today. And human rights activist and TED speaker Yeonmi Park grew up in a punishing

00:08:07.940 totalitarian society based on Stalinist and Maoist principles, perhaps the last Stalinist era

00:08:16.060 totalitarian state on earth, and devoted to the worship of Kim Jong-il and his family. But at the age of 13,

00:08:24.340 she and her family made a daring escape to China in search of a life free of tyranny and indeed a life

00:08:31.060 at all. In her viral talks, viewed online nearly 350 million times and in her book, Park urges audiences

00:08:41.500 to recognize, think about, and resist the oppression that exists in North Korea and around the world.

00:08:50.780 Hi there.

00:08:52.580 Hi, Dr. Peterson. It's an honor to be on your show.

00:08:55.400 It's very nice to see you. I finished about the last third of this book this morning, and it makes

00:09:02.740 for harrowing reading. There's no doubt about that. So you lived through some of the harshest times,

00:09:10.840 I would say. You and your family likely lived through some of the harshest times in North Korea in the

00:09:15.300 90s, after the Berlin Wall fell and the Russian communists stopped supporting North Korea's economy.

00:09:25.520 Maybe we could start, I think, by just allowing you to tell your story. So you can start wherever you'd like.

00:09:33.680 Thank you. Exactly. As you mentioned, after the Soviet Union collapsed, they stopped helping the North Korean regime.

00:09:43.360 And the North Korean regime is run by a central government economy. So they decide how much rice you can eat that day per person

00:09:52.720 based on their class. So even though the biggest irony of North Korea is that it was founded, the idea of equality,

00:10:00.640 to make everybody the same, the communism. And then they called it themselves as a socialist paradise.

00:10:08.080 But they made the inter-North Koreans into three big categories of classes. And within three categories,

00:10:15.520 they divided 50 sub-calories of classes. So it became the most unequal society that you can imagine

00:10:24.080 right now in our human history. I was born in the northern part of North Korea. So during this

00:10:30.640 a great famine that was man-made famine by the king regime, that's where most of North Koreans died, in the northern part

00:10:38.080 where I was born. And the people in Kyongyang, in the capital, they were still well fed. So the modern example

00:10:46.000 that I found was actually the Hunger Games. There is a capital and they divide 13 different districts.

00:10:53.600 They make everybody else outside the capital on the verge of surviving. So people do not think about

00:10:59.600 what is the meaning of life. What is freedom? All they have to think about is next meal. Like,

00:11:05.920 can I find food to feed my child? And in Pyongyang, they are really well fed and they have every intention to

00:11:14.160 maintain the system and the regime. So that's where I was born. I mean, in 1993, seeing the dead bodies

00:11:24.480 on the streets was literally everyday thing. I never knew that that was like weird words. And that's

00:11:31.680 what got me the first when I came out. People were saying, like, you know, why there's no revolution in

00:11:37.600 North Korea. And first of all, we don't even know the vocabulary revolution in North Korea. It's a

00:11:43.680 country where they don't teach us about the word love. There's no romantic love in North Korea. I never

00:11:49.680 heard my mom telling me that she loved me. The only word that we know love is that written form of the

00:11:56.640 word where we describe our feelings towards the ideal leader, not about another human. So there's no word

00:12:04.240 for love, no word for human rights, dignity, freedom. And that's why, you know, people in North Korea,

00:12:12.080 they don't know they are oppressed. They don't know they are slaves. You said the information

00:12:18.320 control was so total that you had absolutely no idea what was happening in the outside world.

00:12:24.240 And you believed at that time that, despite what you saw around you, that other countries were much worse.

00:12:30.160 So even here, right now, in this 21st century, North Koreans do not even know the existence of

00:12:39.360 internet. And we do not even have electricity. So, of course, in school, I never even seen the map of

00:12:49.440 the world. I never even knew. So in school in North Korea, they teach me that they don't teach me that

00:12:55.440 I'm an Asian. They teach me that I'm a Kim Il-sung race. And North Korean calendar begins not when

00:13:02.000 the Jesus Christ was born, when Kim Il-sung was born. So they've cut out entire information and

00:13:10.000 people literally get executed for watching foreign information. And that is a crime to be dead in North

00:13:15.920 Korea. So you do not have a freedom even to travel abroad. It's an entire block of information. You

00:13:23.360 don't know outside that cave what's happening. But of course, like the leaders like Kim Jong-un,

00:13:28.800 he went to school in Switzerland. The type elites go out. But the people in the bottom, most of them,

00:13:34.880 do not even never even seen the map of the world. And we don't even know what Africa, other continents,

00:13:40.000 other ways. And that was like me. And you described the conditions that you grew up in. So you're,

00:13:47.760 first of all, what what stands out, quite remarkably is the degree of hunger. So tell me a bit about what

00:13:56.240 it was like when you were a kid in the 90s in Korea, with regards to eating.

00:14:00.240 So North Koreans are on average three to four inches shorter than South Koreans because of the

00:14:10.720 malnutrition. And I'm like 5'2", but most of North Korean men are shorter than me. So if you are above 4'10 feet high,

00:14:20.960 you must go to military. So tons of North Korean adult men are around 4'10", like even below that right now.

00:14:28.320 So this severe malnutrition affects even our brain development. North Korea's average life

00:14:34.880 expectancy is like if somebody lives up to 60, we think they lived a really long life. Like my grandmother

00:14:42.400 who died from malnutrition before her 60, everybody thought, oh, you should live long enough to do that.

00:14:50.960 So it is a different plan that we are talking about. Being in North Korea, of course, like only

00:14:58.240 way for me to get my proteins were eating, you know, grasshoppers, dragonflies, a lot of insects,

00:15:05.440 tree barks, plants, flowers. And that's how we survive. And most people die in the spring because

00:15:12.640 that's when there is no like really insects and plants are. And that's where every spring there's

00:15:18.560 most people dying and majority of people dying that time.

00:15:21.600 Yes. And you said that for you and for the people around you, spring wasn't a time of hope and renewal,

00:15:28.080 but the absolute worst time of the year. And so maybe you can explain that.

00:15:32.320 Yeah. Yeah. So every spring, I remember my skin sort of like cut off from the like

00:15:39.120 vitamin lightness that I would get easy. And it's like season of death every spring,

00:15:44.400 the people who couldn't wait until the summer. So the plants grow. And that's when like,

00:15:49.920 we all know that tons of people are going to die. And I still remember I escaped in the spring

00:15:56.080 in the March of 2007. One day I had a really bad stomach ache and my mom took me to the hospital.

00:16:05.040 But in North Korea, of course, there's no electricity. There's no x-ray machines, none of that.

00:16:10.960 Literally a nurse using one meter to inject every patient in the hospital. And people don't die from

00:16:18.720 cancer in North Korea. They die from infection and hunger mostly. And the doctor literally told my mom

00:16:25.680 that she has appendix. I think we got to operate on her like right now in this afternoon. And they

00:16:32.320 do not use anesthesia. It's a very, like people don't use anesthesia in North Korea. So they would

00:16:37.200 come my belly open that afternoon. And I was fainting and they said, oh, she just magnified. She

00:16:42.960 got some infection. She doesn't have any appendix. But, and then they closed me back. And then

00:16:50.320 literally from our hospital to the bathroom, there were like parts of human bodies.

00:16:55.680 Piled up. And you see children like chasing the rats, eating, just rats eating human eyes first.

00:17:04.080 And then children catch these rats. And they eat and they somehow die from, I don't know what it is.

00:17:09.840 Then rats eat the children back. So this cycle of us eating rats and they eat us back is going

00:17:15.360 to continue and continue. Yeah. And you said that was happening in the hospital. You also mentioned that

00:17:20.320 in that episode that you woke up before the surgery was over because the anesthetic ran out.

00:17:28.160 It was, yeah, it was, it was not even like actually full anesthetic. It was more like a

00:17:35.840 dose of, I think, sleeping period, like a lot of tons of it. So, you know, most of people in North

00:17:42.160 Korea, right now, even when they cut their legs open, sewing their bones, they do not give any

00:17:47.040 anesthesia because the, it's a free healthcare and region do not provide anything for the people.

00:17:52.000 So yeah, you mentioned as well. And so we can talk about your familial situation that

00:18:00.320 in the 1990s, the average wage in Korea was the equivalent of $2 a month.

00:18:07.680 And so $1.90 a day is what the UN regards as the, the line between poverty, like absolute

00:18:15.200 privation related poverty and enough to barely subsist on $1.90 a day. And so North Koreans were

00:18:21.600 making as much in a month as the UN allows for poverty in a day. And you describe,

00:18:31.280 well, eating virtually nothing. Rice was a luxury. Other forms of food, especially protein,

00:18:37.680 were virtually unheard of, including fruit. And you, in some of the most memorable sections,

00:18:42.720 you described going out into the fields with some other children, and you were about seven or eight

00:18:47.440 years old, I guess, at this time and catching dragonflies and roasting them with a, with a lighter.

00:18:53.360 And that was where you got your protein.

00:18:55.120 That is, that's, yeah, I mean, I ate tons of grasshoppers. I remember always,

00:19:03.760 even though it was a free education, when we go to school, the, so in North Korea, there's no concept

00:19:09.520 of minor. They are, and there's no concept of I, they don't allow us to use the word I. So even though,

00:19:17.120 like I say, I like food, they say, we like food, we like our country. So, and in this scenario,

00:19:24.240 when we go to school, they all view us as a revolutionaries. And therefore, even the children,

00:19:30.640 when they go to school, even eight, seven, nine years old, we all have to work in a manual construction

00:19:36.560 zones. So therefore, children, even when they can afford to go to school, it doesn't really

00:19:42.960 mean much to them go to school. And most of children now in North Korea cannot afford to go to school

00:19:48.000 and stay at home. And that was like my job and parents go out to find food, children would like

00:19:54.800 clean and bring the drinking water, we don't even have sewage, and going to mountains and bring a lot of

00:20:01.600 the firewoods, because we don't have gas or coal or anything. We have to find anything we can find

00:20:07.600 in the nature to cook food. So it's an almost like 16th century of lifestyle that we go to the river

00:20:13.920 and we bathe in the summertime. And in the winter, we don't bathe. And only a few times we take bath.

00:20:20.240 And that's why I still sometimes cannot believe that this is the same life that I'm living in right now.

00:20:26.160 Yeah. So you mentioned earlier, the class distinctions that were drawn in North Korea,

00:20:34.400 and this is a characteristic of other totalitarian states, including those predicated on hypothetically

00:20:41.600 predicated on absolute equality. You saw this happening in the Stalinist era, and also in Maoist China,

00:20:48.720 where if your family members were associated with a group that was deemed oppressive,

00:20:56.320 then that still might impede your chances of survival, let alone progress three or four generations later.

00:21:04.400 So you, and I believe your family, if I remember correctly, your grandfather or great-grandfather was a landowner.

00:21:12.240 Mm-hmm. And so what did that mean?

00:21:15.600 So exactly, that's what North Korea does right now. They still have this thing called the guilt by association.

00:21:22.400 So if one person does wrong in North Korea, it doesn't mean just you are the one get punished.

00:21:29.280 Three to eight generations gets punished. So when there was one high-ranking official escaped,

00:21:35.760 they killed more than 30,000 people because of the one person's defection. And that's the cause that I

00:21:42.160 had to bear me speaking out afterwards of my three-generation family back in North Korea that

00:21:47.760 punished. So that's like that my great-grandfather, I think, were small landowner before the communists

00:21:54.800 and everything began in the 1900s, only that time. Because of that, then my grandmother, her status was

00:22:03.840 down. And the trickiest thing about North Korea status is that there's not even something called

00:22:10.400 marrying up. Some other countries, if you marry somebody from higher status, you can go up with

00:22:15.760 them. But in North Korea, there's only going down. If you're high status and marrying somebody low,

00:22:21.760 you go down with them. That's how they prevent mixing different classes.

00:22:26.720 Right. And so that's one of the consequences of this idea of group guilt. And so the system is

00:22:34.960 predicated on the idea, or was predicated originally on the idea that the landowning class was oppressive,

00:22:42.400 tyrannical, and, well, they were thieves. They were immoral thieves, essentially, as an entire class.

00:22:49.280 And then that class guilt became so pervasive that it wasn't escapable across generations.

00:22:56.480 That's where the idea of group guilt takes societies. And how would you contrast that to what you see in

00:23:03.920 the West?

00:23:05.840 It is so, so unbelievable. Like, I mean, I went to school in America to university and

00:23:14.640 or talk about this, you know, I mean, America also had slavery and like all those oppression, but now

00:23:21.200 they are collectively being guilty for their history. And how many generations ago was that even?

00:23:28.240 And then people still trying to punish people who were not doing it at the time. And how do you choose

00:23:33.840 your ancestors? I think that's what was the hardest thing for me to be in North Korea is that,

00:23:39.200 I mean, I wish I had an option to choose the things back then, but it's not within your control.

00:23:45.760 And now also in America, I see these trends of people going after people whose ancestors were perhaps

00:23:52.080 the slave owners, but how is it even relevant to that individual right now who they are?

00:23:57.760 It's not something they contributed back then. So this idea of like, you know, the

00:24:02.960 geared collectively, we associate them. And I just never knew that the rest of the world was

00:24:09.600 like this, in a different degree. But this is something that mainly North Korea holds against

00:24:16.000 these people. They literally call your blood tainted. Because your father, your great great

00:24:22.560 grandfather did something that means you are forever your blood is tainted, you are not like

00:24:28.000 redeemable. And almost now in America, I see that because some white people, their ancestors owned

00:24:34.080 the slaves, they are like redeemable, they should be forever guilty about their privilege.

00:24:38.880 And like, the idea of this word of guilt is also very, it's very hard to even look at this. And

00:24:46.800 it's so heartbreaking. Why would you cause that kind of shame on other humans? Why it's not there for

00:24:51.600 it at all?

00:24:52.240 Yeah, well, that's a good question. But why you would want that to happen?

00:24:59.200 Well, I think it's part of a demand for some hypothetical radical equality. I mean,

00:25:04.000 it is the case that some people are born, we're all born with different advantages and disadvantages.

00:25:08.960 And some of those are linked to our ethnicity and our race from time to time. And there's an attempt

00:25:14.640 to, at least in principle, level the playing field. But it gets very dangerous when you try to

00:25:20.000 equalize the outcomes. And when you enter the realm of guilt by group, that's a catastrophe.

00:25:25.040 Everywhere that's ever been instituted, it's just a complete catastrophe. Because exactly the same

00:25:29.360 thing happened in the Soviet Union and in Maoist China. Your family, your father in particular,

00:25:34.960 but also your mother, they and many, many Koreans in the 1990s, when things fell apart so catastrophically,

00:25:41.680 there was the emergency reemergence of free enterprise, in some sense. It was illegal, highly

00:25:49.680 illegal. But tell us what your father and your mother did to survive.

00:25:55.520 So as you say, in the 90s, until then, so in North Korea right now, you cannot own cars,

00:26:01.360 you cannot own houses, everything's private. So no private property in North Korea, you don't even

00:26:08.080 own yourself, everything is state owned. So therefore, trading is illegal, that is, you are committing a

00:26:15.760 crime. But after the 90s, the Soviet Union collapsed, people had to find their own ways to survive

00:26:22.880 outside of the North Korean government. So the regime created ideology called the Zuche ideology,

00:26:28.720 self reliance ideology. So they told the people, okay, you are alive on your own, we are not going

00:26:34.640 to give you public distribution, you should figure out on your thing. Then how do we figure out on

00:26:39.920 thing, we don't have freedom, we cannot even trade. So people started getting into this thing called the

00:26:44.960 black market. But also, so simultaneously, so what was happening in North Korea simultaneously was that

00:26:51.440 the centralized government distribution system collapsed completely when it was no longer

00:26:57.120 subsidized. And the North Korean government decided that everyone was now on their own,

00:27:02.400 while simultaneously making any ownership and any trade whatsoever illegal and punishable with extreme

00:27:08.800 punishments. So you were on your own, but forbidden to do anything that would get you out of your

00:27:14.080 condition of starvation and privation. Exactly. Now I'm thinking back, people said like, oh,

00:27:21.600 what were you allowed to do in North Korea? I literally sat down one day like, what was I allowed

00:27:27.360 to do on my own? Literally just breathing. That is the only thing that I was allowed to do on my own.

00:27:36.400 The regime literally tell you what to read, what to listen to. They even send you prison if you

00:27:43.680 dance in a wrong way. If you wear jeans, they say it's a symbol of capitalism, they send you prison.

00:27:51.200 If women wear like skirt, like pants, sometimes they say, oh, you got a women have to wear the skirt.

00:27:57.120 And if you watch wrong movie, and even the haircut, they tell you what kind of hair. It was a funny

00:28:02.400 joke for the Westerners. They, I cannot believe in North Korea, you have to follow the haircut line,

00:28:07.200 the guidelines. That's how controlling the regime is. They intervene every aspect of your life. And

00:28:15.040 literally, when there are some times when we have even electricity, they would give us this radio that

00:28:22.080 we cannot turn off. We can lower the volume, but can never turn off at home. So they force us to listen

00:28:28.960 to this propaganda. Right. And it's stuck on one channel. Yeah, there's only one channel. And you, and

00:28:34.640 you can't, you can't move it, move the station selector to listen to anything else. That's illegal as

00:28:40.400 well. Yes. And that's the thing, like the regime doesn't allow us to do anything. And then, but let us

00:28:46.400 somehow find a way to survive. And of course, that means breaking the rules in North Korea. My father was

00:28:53.120 involved in black market, where he started selling dry fish, sugar, rice, clothes, clocks. And then

00:29:01.600 later, the metals like copper, silver, copper. And of course, that was illegal. And that's how it was

00:29:07.760 sent to prison camp. Right. And so he started to trade. And you mentioned in your book that the trading,

00:29:16.000 as far as you were concerned, that the trading activity that emerged as a consequence of the black

00:29:22.000 market gave North Koreans, their first small taste of freedom. So what, what do you mean by that? Why

00:29:30.080 did that strike you that way? Because it's a trading is a very empowering act. Because until then,

00:29:38.400 North Koreans have to rely on everything from the region, like literally even the water, everything. But

00:29:45.600 when we started being creative, and they say, Okay, I can find the corn like a cheaper price in this

00:29:52.960 region, and then bring it to the other region, and bring on maybe fabric from this region to the other

00:29:58.240 region. So we start getting more control over like how we even think how to look and, but it was like

00:30:05.920 North Koreans marketization was extremely controlled, and still very limited. But that was almost just

00:30:13.040 giving the people now to think, oh, there is a life when I take my own control of my life. It's better

00:30:19.680 than relying on government, who just promise to take care of everything, but never does. So now the

00:30:26.080 younger generation has tasted marketization and thirst for more freedom to being in the market system.

00:30:33.360 So your conclusion was that there was a direct connection between

00:30:39.600 the, the act of engaging in, in free trade, say, at the personal level, and the idea of freedom itself.

00:30:47.680 Because it forces you to think for yourself when you trade. When you trade, it's not like you're

00:30:54.720 thinking about, oh, how am I gonna like become a better revolutionary for the region? You think for

00:30:59.840 yourself, like how is it gonna benefit me, my family, if I do this? But for North Koreans,

00:31:06.480 thinking for yourself was something so unheard of. Like when we are born, the first thing they teach us

00:31:13.120 how to bow properly and respect. And the first thing that my mom told me as a younger was not even whisper,

00:31:20.640 because the birds and mice couldn't hear me. She told me that the most dangerous thing in my body

00:31:26.960 that I had was my tongue. If you slip out a wrong word, that is end of our like entire family clan.

00:31:35.760 That's how much dangerous your tongue is. Yes. So you, you, you carefully discuss your experiences with

00:31:43.200 free trade and attribute to that the dawning idea of autonomy and, and individual freedom. Whereas the

00:31:51.040 act of trade is deemed illegal and immoral by the totalitarians, and that's associated in some

00:31:57.120 manner with their insistence that private property is theft and that capitalism by its nature, which

00:32:03.520 would include any free trade of any sort, is also corrupt and malevolent. Right. So, all right. So your

00:32:11.920 mother, you talked about the restrictions on your speech that even the mice had ears, so to speak. Your

00:32:18.160 mother was almost thrown into prison camp because of comments that an uncle of yours made. I believe

00:32:24.320 he was visiting from China. And he, so can you tell that story? So when I was really young, we had some

00:32:31.760 relatives from China. He came and told my mom and Kim Er-san, the first Kim died. And that he said he

00:32:39.040 didn't die from hard working for the people. Because when the Kims died, they told us that, you know, like

00:32:46.160 literally they tell the same people, Kims are starving like all of us, they cannot even sleep. They

00:32:52.160 work tirelessly for us. How grateful we are for having a leader who's that selfless. But towards my

00:32:59.280 mom, actually, he didn't die from like those exhaustion from hard working. Rather, he died from some heart

00:33:05.360 attack caused by medical condition. And then my mom was a true believer there. She was telling her friend, best

00:33:13.280 friend that can you believe how far on like bad people are saying like this ridiculous rumors about

00:33:19.280 our dear leader. And she was more like telling out of anger that she heard. It was like she was

00:33:25.200 questioning it. But even that was so in North Korea right now, like you and me and there's one person,

00:33:31.760 three of us sitting here. I'm watching you. And you're watching the other person. And that person

00:33:38.400 watching me. So even though I'm being a nice person not going to report on you, I know that someone

00:33:43.680 watching me going to report on me. But if that person is not reporting on me, then they're he's

00:33:48.480 going to be reporting by the other person. So you're being spied, and you're just spied on someone.

00:33:55.120 That kind of system made us to not trust in another human. It killed our like trust in another

00:34:02.160 person like we are always paranoid. So that's a good lesson for my mom to learn even she thought

00:34:08.880 all her life that was her best friend. She was a spy. And she told officers and my mom almost

00:34:15.840 like risked killing all of us. But the thing is, because she never slipped the water to another

00:34:21.120 person and she said enough from the intention of defending the revolution. They like pardoned

00:34:27.920 her and told her never ever say something like that ever to anybody. So even my father never knew

00:34:33.840 what was happening there. Right. So even though she thought the rumor was a lie,

00:34:38.400 and when she talked about it, she was outraged. That was still enough for a firm and a full

00:34:43.120 investigation with a tremendous amount of danger associated. And it was luck in large part that

00:34:49.600 she escaped from more severe punishment. And the fact maybe that she had small children.

00:34:54.080 Definitely. Like right in North Korea, like when you have a newspaper, every front page has to be

00:35:00.880 Kim's. But when you turn in the back of the newspaper, you don't see the photo of Kim's.

00:35:06.400 By mistake, if you read that newspaper, your family goes through the generation of this concentration camp.

00:35:13.120 So if you rip it. Oh, yeah. So it's like if you get a newspaper, you're going to be very careful

00:35:20.400 how the photo is going to be positioned. So every household in North Korea have them portraits of

00:35:25.760 Kim's. If your house caught on fire, the first thing is not you holding your child in one arm.

00:35:32.160 You have to hold the portraits to your death. Otherwise, it's going to kill the reasons of your

00:35:37.600 family again. So this is like the Kim's are gods to us. They are almighty who came with our thoughts.

00:35:46.480 I literally believe that it was like the North Korea copied the Bible. In his exact Bible,

00:35:53.360 Kim Il-sung was a god, loved us so much, gave his son to us, Jesus Christ, right, Kim Jong-un.

00:35:59.360 His body dies, but his spirit is with us forever and ever. Therefore, he knows how many hair I have,

00:36:06.960 what I think, what my future will be. So if we sacrifice ourselves right now for the revolution,

00:36:13.520 we are going to show him in the paradise after life. So North Korea, therefore, is number one

00:36:20.400 Christian persecution country because it's so, like, so they copied it so, like, similarly,

00:36:27.040 they cannot show it to North Korean people. There's some other ideology like that exists in another

00:36:31.440 country. So that's why they don't want a lot of religion in that way.

00:36:35.760 So you spent a lot of time when you were a kid completely on your own because your dad,

00:36:42.000 your father was eventually put in a prison camp and for a long time. And then your mother spent a

00:36:48.000 lot of time away from you because she had, well, she had to do what she needed to do to raise money

00:36:54.080 so that you could survive. But also she was trying to deal with the situation with your father. So you

00:36:58.880 and your sister, how much age difference is there between you two?

00:37:03.920 Three years.

00:37:05.120 And she's older?

00:37:06.560 Yes. I was eight years old and she's 11 years old.

00:37:10.240 And you spent a lot of time on your own.

00:37:12.320 Mm-hmm.

00:37:13.360 Months?

00:37:14.320 Years.

00:37:15.760 Years.

00:37:16.320 Years.

00:37:16.800 Years.

00:37:17.760 So what would, tell me, tell me about a typical day and a typical week when you were on your own.

00:37:23.760 So you'd get up in the morning, you said the roosters would crow, there's no electricity,

00:37:28.000 the roosters would crow. You were living in a city at that time?

00:37:32.240 At that time I was moving around a lot. So initially I was left alone with my sister when

00:37:37.520 I was eight years old and 11 with my sister. We were living like for three years and then our

00:37:43.040 relatives separated us. Our uncle took my sister and my aunt took me to the countryside.

00:37:49.520 That's how I lived my, also in our two years like that way. And so my typical day is like,

00:37:55.760 you know, when the rooster like cries in the summertime usually 5.30 a.m. and the wintertime

00:38:01.840 is 7 a.m. They're pretty accurate. So North Korea still cannot afford the clocks. And that's how we

00:38:08.000 follow the, you know, rooster, the timeline. We get up and we go to the mountains and do the daily work.

00:38:15.600 We go and the regime also assign the children to raise rabbits at home. And then we skin them and

00:38:25.680 give you skin to the regime so they can make the soldiers coats with it. So everybody gets assignment

00:38:32.960 with the regime. And also the thing is that they don't even have a fertilizer. So they make sure that

00:38:39.680 everybody brings their own bathroom stuff to the school. So tons of them. So even when you're a child,

00:38:48.400 you get tons of assignments from the regime. Every single one of them associated something

00:38:54.000 and get your assignment and get it done collectively. Yes. Well, you said that as a school child,

00:38:58.960 all of your, you and all of your, uh, um, your, your friends, your peers, well, as well as the adults

00:39:07.040 were set out all the time to collect dog waste and human waste. And that that was actually stolen

00:39:13.920 from toilets because it was valuable. It had to be handed over to the state because that was the only

00:39:20.240 source of fertilizer. Yeah. So even that, so I remember the, my, one of the, my culture shot was

00:39:27.440 when I was seeing the trash cans for the first time in my life, because there was no trash can in North

00:39:33.360 Korea. We literally had nothing to throw away and coming to the West where people are having these

00:39:40.400 trash problems. It's like, where the heck am I? And in North Korea, even your own poop is so valuable that

00:39:47.680 they fight for poop. It's like the war on poop. And if you don't bring the Korra,

00:39:53.040 you're going to be punished by the regime. So the kids is rather than they even school,

00:39:58.320 they don't study. They sent out us to hunting for poops and everywhere and gather them,

00:40:03.440 bring it to school afterwards. Right. Well, that was one of the most striking

00:40:07.280 parts of the book. I'd never, I've read a fair bit about poverty stricken existence

00:40:15.120 under totalitarian regimes, but that was the first time I'd encountered that particular

00:40:20.960 wrinkle, let's say. So, all right. So you're eight years old and your sister is 11 and you get up with

00:40:26.960 the roosters and you have work to do. What are you eating at that point? How much are you eating and

00:40:33.280 where do you get your food? It really depends. In North Korea, it's not when you eat it so random,

00:40:40.160 like what you get that day. It's a, you know, that's the thing. I never seen a cookbook. You

00:40:45.200 know, how do you find a half pounds of pork and flour and like scallion? We just eat whatever we have

00:40:52.000 at that moment. So if that day we had potatoes who were like frozen outside because we didn't have a

00:40:58.800 place to put them. Then they become very dark colors. We cook them and we put lots of water in it

00:41:07.680 and then some dried cabbage in it because, you know, usually water fills you up. So a lot of food

00:41:14.880 are, has a lot of soup in it in North Korea to fill you up. And, you know, we make sure that we have

00:41:22.000 enough food for the, for the evening. We divide each meal. So depending on how much food we have

00:41:28.240 that day in the morning, I'm always like to do public distribution for each one of us

00:41:33.520 and how much you can eat per like certain meal. And some days we just cannot eat.

00:41:37.920 And who was distributing it? I was the, my sister was the one more like chopping rules

00:41:43.840 because she was bigger. She was doing more manual work and I was the one more like cooking and

00:41:48.880 doing the domestic work. And where was the food coming from? Apart from what you gathered?

00:41:55.440 Apart, sometimes my mom, before she goes away, like for several months, she leaves us with a few

00:42:01.760 kilograms of corn and like other grains. Then we have to divide it for like six days. You know,

00:42:08.960 we don't know when she comes out or she will ever come back. Well, you told her, you told a story at

00:42:13.040 one point about your mother leaving. I believe she was gone for several months and she left you some money

00:42:18.320 and you and your sister spent it on sunflower seeds and, and something else, some cookies on the way

00:42:25.040 back from, from, from where your mother left from. And then you had no money for the, all the time that

00:42:31.280 she was gone. Exactly. So we learned that lesson. The first time she left us, gave us some money

00:42:37.760 and then we never had those kinds of money, big money in our hands. So on the way back, we bought

00:42:42.160 sunflower seeds and some cookies in the plastic bag. And then we had no, nothing left for us. And we

00:42:48.160 were not even, so in North Korea, we don't even have phones. It's not like you can call up somebody,

00:42:53.280 where are you? Like a lot of times they go out and they never come back. They might die in a, you know,

00:42:59.520 disease or station, like, or accidents. A lot of people never hear back from. So going on a journey in

00:43:06.720 North Korea is like higher chances of you never seeing them again. And so even though mom would

00:43:13.760 say, I will come back, but we never knew she would. And once that happened, the first time we learned

00:43:20.000 the lesson, mom would like leave us a few kilograms of grains, then we would divide as much as we could.

00:43:27.600 So we would not run out until she comes back.

00:43:29.280 And you said that all you ever thought about and your sister as well was food and that you dreamed

00:43:37.600 about bread and you fantasized about bread and you talked about how much bread you could conceivably

00:43:42.560 eat and that you were possessed all the time with, with hunger.

00:43:46.240 I know. I'm like still thinking as a child, like I never ate till I felt full because so I never knew

00:43:54.720 what was like limits on my own stomach was. I never knew how much should I be fed so I feel like full.

00:44:00.960 So as a young man, I literally thought if I even eat the mountains of food, I thought I would never,

00:44:07.280 never feel full. So we would compare how much I can eat more. So my sister said like I'm hungry,

00:44:13.440 I'm a thousand, then like a mountain and 10 million and whatever the number, whoever comes bigger.

00:44:19.120 And that's how we were just like dreaming of it. That was the only thing.

00:44:23.840 On your mind. So that's the thing. When people talk about like the civilization, right?

00:44:28.720 It falls when you don't eat. People like become animals. You lose all this dignity. All you're

00:44:34.640 thinking is just food, basic survivor. And that's what my people always telling me, the basic survivor.

00:44:42.560 Yeah. And you were at that time too, you were seeing death everywhere as a consequence of starvation.

00:44:47.520 Mm-hmm. It's I, I still remember like one day my sister and I walked by near the well. It's like

00:44:54.320 people bring the drinking water. There's a young man, I don't know, like maybe teenager. He lies down

00:45:02.320 and his intestines just comes out of him and he was still alive. And like, I'm hungry. Give me

00:45:08.960 something. But as a young man, I didn't even feel sorry. That's the thing that haunts me the most is

00:45:14.720 that I feel nothing all my life there. And because every single thing I saw was like that. And now I'm

00:45:23.360 thinking, was I a psychopath? Like how did I feel nothing about it? But that's like being so

00:45:30.160 disensitized North Koreans are. I think if you're in shock, you were in shock all the time. I mean,

00:45:37.280 you said in many of the experiences you had, for example, that you felt like you were outside your

00:45:41.680 body watching. And that's a classic sign of dissociative stress. And you were in a situation

00:45:49.120 like that all the time. All the time. So I don't think that you have to consult your conscience

00:45:56.640 about that. It's in your book itself. There's no shortage of empathy on display. So and I don't

00:46:05.520 think it's a comment on your character. It's a comment on the absolute horror of the situation

00:46:10.240 that you found yourself in. And obviously, you were capable of great loyalty to your family members and

00:46:16.400 even to some of the people that treated you very, very badly. I mean, the men that you

00:46:21.760 were involved with, in part, once you escaped from North Korea, you had ambivalent relationships with.

00:46:28.480 But I mean, in some, you were able to see their humanity despite the terrible situation that you

00:46:36.720 had been placed in by them. So I don't think there's any issue of you not having the full range of human

00:46:42.800 feelings. It's just, you were in situations that were so terrible that no one, fortunately, no one

00:46:48.800 in the West, essentially, can even imagine, imagine being in a situation like that. None of us to speak

00:46:54.880 of, or very small minority of us, have ever been hungry for ever, let alone for any protracted period

00:47:02.000 of time. And certainly not to the point of chronic malnutrition. That's just, that just doesn't happen

00:47:08.800 here. And so, okay, so you lost your, your father was imprisoned when you were about eight, seven or

00:47:15.600 eight. And, and what happened to him? What was the consequence, consequences for him? He was doing

00:47:21.920 quite well, in some sense, by North Korean standards with his trading. So he was, he was, he was good at

00:47:27.680 what he was doing. And your mother helped him. But he got imprisoned after, especially after he moved up

00:47:33.520 into more dangerous commodities, you said that he started to trade metals, and that he was hiding the

00:47:40.880 metals in cars, railway cars that were reserved for, for, I think I've got this right for, for Kim Jong Il.

00:47:49.520 Yes. Yes. And because they wouldn't be searched. Yes. So every train in North Korea, we only have one

00:47:57.600 train line, and that goes from one side of the country to the end, it sometimes takes a month to

00:48:03.360 go, because the low electricity, and the railways are very bad. So the, and that's why there's only,

00:48:10.480 always reserve one cargo that carries the things to Kim's. Yeah, and what's in that car, just out of

00:48:17.440 curiosity? I mean, we hear these rumors, they, they grow the, I mean, the parts of the country that has the

00:48:25.760 best land for, you know, growing apple or growing something like the best of the best from the

00:48:31.680 country that especially reserved for them. And nobody actually really knows what's even in there.

00:48:37.120 Even when the, those people who search that cargo cannot go and the people who guards it, they have

00:48:43.040 to do body search and health checkup for them. So that's how severe is controlled. So really nobody

00:48:48.960 knows what they're carrying inside. And my father was able to do something with them and then carry the

00:48:55.040 matters in their cargo hiding. And, and he was bribing, he was bribing guards to allow that to happen.

00:49:02.560 Yeah. And then he got caught. Yeah. And was put in a, so what kind, talk about the prison situations,

00:49:10.240 the print, because just normal life in North Korea is unbearable by all accounts, but the prisons

00:49:17.440 take that to a whole new level of hell. So what would have your father experienced in the North Korean prison camp?

00:49:23.280 So there are three types of prisons in North Korea. One is called the Gwali. So it is concentration camp.

00:49:32.080 Usually you're born there. So you're, because you grab, let me say one day my grandfather

00:49:37.760 committed some crime, then they take the old generation to there. And it is like permanent

00:49:44.000 living condition there. You live there forever for the rest of your life.

00:49:47.200 And you're born there. You can be born there because of the group guilt of your ancestors,

00:49:54.880 which never goes away.

00:49:56.000 Right. You can never, you can never redeem the, by the, your group, your, whatever your ancestors did,

00:50:01.680 forever you're there. So they don't even consider these inmates a human enough. They don't even teach them

00:50:08.080 who's illiterate is. They don't even know what Kim Jong-un is in that concentration camp.

00:50:13.120 They are just- You said they're not even allowed to look at the guards.

00:50:16.000 Yes. But that is every level. So where my father went was a prison camp. They, but those people know

00:50:23.840 what Kim Il-sung is. But the thing is, they too also treat them like animals. They don't let them

00:50:30.160 to ever see the guards eyes. And of course the, the conditions are, I mean, it's a Holocaust,

00:50:38.720 what the UN said. In 2014, the UN did three years investigation and the only resemblance that we found

00:50:45.680 in our history is the Holocaust. This is a Holocaust happening in North Dakota ever, like again.

00:50:50.880 And do you have any idea how many people are in the concentration camps, the worst of the prisons?

00:50:56.640 Do you know what the estimates are? They say around 200,000.

00:51:02.000 And what about the total prison population? Do you have any numbers for that?

00:51:06.080 Because so many are dying. So when you go to the prison, a lot of them die within three months.

00:51:12.800 So those like numbers are very hard to like get. And it's the most secretive country in the world.

00:51:19.680 Like even though you, the America cannot figure out North Korea. So those, we know that there are

00:51:25.680 positions. We can even satellite seeing those public executions happening, but it's very hard to estimate

00:51:31.840 how many going in and how many dying after like three months. It's hard to like calculate that numbers.

00:51:38.320 And so your father was in prison for how long?

00:51:41.120 Oh, he was sentenced to more than 10 years. Initially it was, I thought it was 17 years,

00:51:48.080 but North Korea showed the record. It was like, I think 11 years sentence prison camp.

00:51:53.360 He got out something for five or maybe years later for the sick leave, which means he was bribing.

00:52:01.920 That's the thing. Right. He played a trick on the ward.

00:52:04.480 Yes. Right. Right. So they, he think for the sick leave, once you get killed, you go back to prison

00:52:11.040 again. And he, he was a very like a businessman. He learned like guards and get him out.

00:52:18.160 And that's how he, he got him out during the, his sentence. And so you saw your father again,

00:52:25.840 after a couple of years, how many years were you without him? I think four years.

00:52:30.640 Four years. I saw him again when I was 12. Right. And you, and, and you described that in the book.

00:52:36.720 And so what did you see when you saw your father? What, what, what had happened to him?

00:52:41.200 Um, so when I was reading this book by George over in 1984, it talks about the man like Winston,

00:52:51.200 who had a lot of wits. And after that, all the torture, he became empty. Right. Like,

00:52:58.800 and a lot of people like read that book as a fiction to them. But for me, that was like my father.

00:53:04.880 When I saw my father again, of course he had no hair. He just got out of prison camp.

00:53:11.200 I mean, all he got was just bones, like literally skin on the bones.

00:53:15.840 And the thing is, I didn't even feel anything. That's like what I'm still like guilty. It's like,

00:53:21.600 I felt nothing. He was just so empty. His eyes were just hollow and empty. And then he was starting

00:53:29.680 singing songs like, I didn't do enough for my country. Like he was so guilty that he was not a

00:53:35.680 revolutionary or whole. And it wasn't him. And in some ways that was worse than killing him.

00:53:44.160 They killed his soul permanently that he never came back. Until he died, he felt guilty that

00:53:50.960 one day he committed for the regime. To his death, but he told me, never betrayed like the dear leader.

00:53:57.920 And I don't know what he did to him, but he came out as a completely different person.

00:54:05.840 So it was not long after that, that you and your family decided to leave North Korea to escape.

00:54:16.240 You were 13. Your dad died. He died of cancer. And it wasn't long after he got out of the prison

00:54:24.400 that that was the case. And then you guys decided to make your way to China.

00:54:30.080 No, I, I escaped actually. So my sister at 16, she escaped first with her friend. And I told you,

00:54:39.200 as I got my stomach ache, she left me a note to say, go find this lady. She will help you to escape.

00:54:47.040 Initially, we didn't plan to, I didn't plan to escape with my mom. I was going to escape with my own

00:54:52.320 sister. But because I got sick, my sister had to leave first. I found the note and found the lady with

00:54:58.480 my mom and told her that she told me, if I go to China, she said, I was going to find my sister.

00:55:06.800 Right.

00:55:07.920 And then, I mean, but when you're so desperate, like you don't even know what China is like,

00:55:12.560 we don't have internet to look search and what's going on in China. Just hoping, because China is

00:55:19.120 the only place that had the lights at night.

00:55:21.600 And if you look at North Korea from a satellite image, it's quite interesting, because the entire

00:55:26.720 country is black at night, and it's surrounded by the bright lights of South Korea and all of

00:55:30.960 Southeast Asia. But you have this immense territory, the whole north of Korea, that's completely dark.

00:55:36.720 And you talked about standing with your boyfriend at that time, looking at the lights in the distance

00:55:42.800 of China. But you didn't know anything about it at all, and had no idea what was going to happen

00:55:47.200 to you if you escaped into China.

00:55:50.000 No, I did not even know what was China. I just saw the lights. And maybe if I go where the lights

00:55:56.960 were, I thought maybe I would find a bottle of rice. That's how innocently we thought about it.

00:56:03.200 And right. And some of that motivation was direct hunger, right? You were you were hoping to find

00:56:08.880 somewhere where you could at least get enough to eat.

00:56:10.880 Yeah, it was that's the thing. It's the thing when people say you're so brave that you risked your

00:56:16.160 life for freedom. Like, no, I wasn't. I didn't even know what freedom was then. Like, how do I know

00:56:21.520 what freedom is? And I just was literally escaping to find some food to survive from hunger.

00:56:30.720 And that's how we crossed that frozen river that night with my mother and myself when I was 13 years

00:56:36.720 old to China, leaving my father behind back in North Korea.

00:56:41.440 So tell us what happened. Tell us about what happens to North Koreans as they move

00:56:49.280 with the traffickers into Korea. Because that's a whole story in and of itself. And it was something

00:56:55.360 you had no idea about.

00:56:56.560 I know this is a thing like people, the world is obsessed talking about slavery, but this is a

00:57:02.000 slavery that's happening just right now at this very moment that we are talking about this.

00:57:07.440 So there are like 300,000 North Korean defectors are in China, and they're all enslaved by Chinese

00:57:15.200 people. I was one of them. In 2007, we found this lady. Miraculously, she wouldn't help me to go to

00:57:23.760 China. I didn't even know why. She bribed the guards. So in North Korea, it's most heavily guarded

00:57:30.000 the border with the people with machine guns. And Kim Jong literally buries landmines on the border.

00:57:36.800 So people would not escape. So entire country is a concentration camp. Entire border is third.

00:57:43.520 We were luckily, private guards, we crossed the frozen river to China. Of course, the first thing

00:57:50.160 I see was my mom being raped in front of me.

00:57:53.840 And you said that your mother offered herself as an alternative to you.

00:57:58.480 Yeah. And you were 13 at the time. And that was your first introduction to sex of any sort,

00:58:04.080 because there was no sexual education or contact for young people. There was no sexual education and

00:58:09.840 no romance, no dating, anything like that. So that was your first introduction. I don't imagine you even

00:58:15.040 understood what was happening. No, I had the thing like, I go there and I was like something 60 pounds.

00:58:23.760 I was very manual, maybe 50 something. So small. And this man was like, I want to have sex with her. And

00:58:31.120 my mom's like, what do you mean? Like, she's only child. And then he's like, I want to have sex with her.

00:58:36.000 So she's like, just take me instead. And he was raping her in front of me. But I'm like, I just never

00:58:43.440 seen a sex video ever. Never even knew what rape was. That word was not even in my head. I was just

00:58:49.520 seeing something so horrible that I didn't want to see. And after that, they took us to this house where

00:58:57.440 they would like literally make us stand up, make us turn around, take our teeth and everything and

00:59:03.120 making price on our body. Yeah. Now, let me fill in a bit of background there. So

00:59:08.000 the way you lay that out in this in your autobiography is that there's a heavy demand for

00:59:15.680 North Korean women in China, especially rural China. And the fundamental reason for that,

00:59:21.840 apart from desire for labor is that China instituted a one child policy back in the 60s.

00:59:29.280 And many, many female female fetuses were more aborted than male. So there's a disproportionate

00:59:36.960 number of young Chinese men who have no partner and no probability of acquiring one because there's an

00:59:45.440 absolute shortage of women. And so you and your mother were valuable commodities because of the

00:59:52.880 shortage of women. Exactly. Yes, I've got that right. And there was a price on you were you both had a

01:00:00.240 high value. Yeah. And so and that's when you entered what was essentially the world of slavery.

01:00:06.640 Mm hmm. It's as you said right now in China, literally 30 million young men has no hope of finding

01:00:14.880 women in their life. 30 million men in China right now. So because of the regime, the Chinese regime

01:00:22.080 do not want this men to revolt even because of dissatisfaction with their lifestyle. In a way, regime,

01:00:28.720 Chinese regime does not cracking down on this human trafficking either. We are almost the price they

01:00:34.640 are using to pay for this make men not revolt. And then so when we go, I was 13 years old, I was a

01:00:44.160 virgin. So my price would be less than $300 in 2007. And my mom's price was less than $100. That's how

01:00:54.800 literal human being worth right now in this 21st century. And then each trafficker buys us price goes up.

01:01:02.640 So the second trafficker comes and buys us and then paying more price. Then they sell us to the Chinese

01:01:10.240 farmers or the men or to sell us to brothers or prostitution and like a lot of other like underground

01:01:19.440 words and sell us like products like commodity. And that's and then I remember that's the thing

01:01:28.320 like at 13, they were asking, so in China, in order to be here, you gotta be sold. And I didn't even know what

01:01:34.960 humanitarian trafficking was like, what do you mean you're selling a human? I'm not a puppy, like how do you

01:01:39.600 sell me? And they were like, no, you gotta be sold here. And they said like literally to me was that, oh, if you

01:01:46.720 don't want to be sold, you can go back North Korea, we can let you guys go back. But the thing is going

01:01:53.520 back to North Korea is a death. Like even though miraculously regime doesn't punish me, there's no

01:02:00.240 chance for me to find food. I mean, that's the hardest thing is that there's no place for us to go

01:02:07.360 outside of North Korea. Like if we leave that country, whatever the condition is, it's better than

01:02:12.240 being in North Korea, because at least in China, we are being fat. Doesn't matter we are raped,

01:02:18.080 tortured, we are at least being fat. And that's how we stayed in China and decide and they sold

01:02:24.960 me separately from my mom. Because you know, they can charge two people's price. So they sold my mom

01:02:32.240 and sold me separately. And that's how I got separated from all my family at 13.

01:02:36.480 Yeah, well, you said at the beginning, when you went into China, that you didn't tell

01:02:40.560 the smugglers, the traffickers, that you were traveling with your mother, you said that she

01:02:47.360 was younger than she was, and you said that you were older than you were. Exactly. Because they

01:02:52.000 weren't going to take you otherwise. Yeah, so the lady... And you had no idea what was in store for

01:02:58.640 you at that point, also. No, I did not know. She told me, oh, don't tell them you guys are

01:03:04.160 mother and daughters, just say you're maybe aunt or something. And told my mom, you're much younger,

01:03:09.440 you're much older. And because human trafficking was something that I didn't hear about in my life.

01:03:17.120 I was so sad because in North Korea, there's no bad news. Every news is a happy news. How amazing we

01:03:24.480 are winning in the revolution. So I never even knew what rape was. In America, if you watch news,

01:03:31.200 like somebody raped, you know what rabies. But in North Korea, they sent every information from you.

01:03:38.000 Like news is not actual news. So not knowing what rabies, not knowing what human trafficking is,

01:03:44.240 and just completely into a new, just another like planet.

01:03:50.000 But you had enough to eat. Yeah. And was that the first time in your life that you'd actually had

01:03:55.760 enough to eat? Were you able to find enough so that you could eat until you were full? Did you

01:03:59.840 experience that at that point? That's when I learned. Another thing is, it mattered. It didn't

01:04:07.360 matter that I had food to eat again, because I lost everything that mattered to me. Like I lost

01:04:13.440 everything. And so I want to kill myself. Like, I finally went to the place where there was food for me.

01:04:22.320 But then that means me being a slave. And I'm losing every single one of them in my life. And

01:04:30.000 I was going to kill myself. And at that point, this broker told me,

01:04:34.800 if you help me become my mistress, help me with my trafficking business,

01:04:40.240 that I'm going to help you with your own family. Why did you decide to stay alive?

01:04:45.520 What kept you going? Because my mother, he told me at that point, he said,

01:04:50.080 if I don't kill myself, and helping him, then he said he was going to buy my mom,

01:04:56.800 because he's the one who sold my mom to a farmer. Right. So at that point, you were separate,

01:05:01.680 and your mother was the enslaved wife, so to speak, of a farmer in a rural community.

01:05:10.560 Yeah. So she had to be bought back. And that's the deal he offered you.

01:05:14.560 Yes. And so you decided to stay alive, because you thought you could help your mother.

01:05:18.960 Yeah. It wasn't for you.

01:05:20.480 No, I, I was, yeah, it was my, then my life mattered to something where he meant something,

01:05:29.920 I could do something more than that. So he offered to my bring my father. And that's how I brought my

01:05:36.480 father to China from North Korea. And that October when I was turning 14. And that October 2007, I saw my

01:05:46.240 father again. And so then you were with this man, Hong Wei, was that his name? Hong Wei. And you describe

01:05:57.520 a very complex relationship with him. He was violent and a gambler. So he would spend vast amounts of

01:06:06.800 money raised by this trafficking trade and disperse all of it in gambling fits. And he was violent to you,

01:06:18.000 but you also believed that over time he came to love you. And so what do you make of that in retrospect?

01:06:25.200 It's an unbelievably complicated situation, to say the least.

01:06:30.160 You know, even though, actually, it's a thing. Last year, he came out of prison in China after 10 years

01:06:38.720 serving sentence. And I sent him money from the US to help him. And it was for me to, that's the thing.

01:06:49.840 And then I could actually, this morning, I woke up from this nightmare of my time with him, how violent

01:06:56.240 he was. All my day, I was like, so, it was hard of all those nightmares I went through. But the thing

01:07:02.880 is, like, nobody's a pure evil. Nobody's pure, like, anger. I think that's what it is. Like, as much as

01:07:11.040 he was so evil, I'm still haunted by nightmares. He still, I saved my parents. He still gave my father's

01:07:18.080 the last moment that I can cherish. And I think that's life, really. It's not that simple.

01:07:29.840 So you were with him for how long? Two years. And what occurred after that? You went to Mongolia.

01:07:39.360 What was the trek from him? Now, so he bought your mother back. And so you're together living with him,

01:07:46.320 you and your mother? Yes. You can't find your sister yet at that point? No, we couldn't find my sister.

01:07:52.400 Your father, is he still alive at that point when you're with Hongwei? So, yes, during the time,

01:07:58.320 after finding my mom, he brought my father six months later. And then my father died three months,

01:08:05.280 three months later, after I saw him again. And you said you had changed dramatically

01:08:10.960 after you left North Korea, you stopped being a child very, very rapidly. And you started to take

01:08:18.480 care of your mother and to make the decisions. And also, when your father saw you, once he came to

01:08:23.920 China, that he could hardly recognize you.

01:08:25.680 I, oh, it still affects me. I think that at 13, I became, I don't know what I became. It took so hard

01:08:36.960 for me to fear something again. Like, when I had my own son, actually in 2018, when I met you,

01:08:43.200 when I had that lecture, that is the year when I, for the first time, fear something. And like,

01:08:49.280 I was so grateful that I was feeling things ever again. And so, at 13, I learned how not to fear

01:08:56.400 ever. And I don't know how it was possible even. So, my father came and then he died. So,

01:09:04.160 I buried his ashes in the middle of the mountain. And after that, Hongwei is like,

01:09:09.200 he blew all his money from gambling. He couldn't even have it.

01:09:12.400 You said when your father did come, though, you did revert to being a child from time to time,

01:09:17.360 that you would sit on his lap and that you would turn back into a younger child and then go back

01:09:23.920 into whoever you had become when you went to China. Yeah. I think there were many versions of

01:09:31.040 me back then to survive. Whatever the version that was feeding me to survive, I think I became that

01:09:37.680 person. It just, it was so complex. I don't even know, like, who was am I? Which person was am I?

01:09:45.920 Like, I became so many persons. I still think, I just don't even know how that was possible. So,

01:09:53.360 because, you know, my father before he died, like, he was telling me about his childhood.

01:09:59.920 And, and I think he just really missed me being a child. And I think something may have brought that

01:10:09.920 out of me. So, so my father is very hard thing for me to still do it. But, so he died and then Hongwei

01:10:20.320 couldn't afford to have us. He couldn't even able to buy us even food in China. That's really bad. He

01:10:26.240 couldn't even able to feed us. So he was saying, Okay, I'm not gonna let you go.

01:10:32.400 And how do we go? Where do we go? Even though your mother at that point, she was insisting that you

01:10:37.840 sell her again, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I did sell my mom because I couldn't feed her. She

01:10:43.840 was saying only way for me to bet in China was being sold again. So I sold my own mom and then gave the

01:10:51.680 money to Hongwei and then he put lots of, you know, one night gambling. So three months later,

01:10:59.680 I brought my mom, make her to run away from the farmer that I sold her. And then we luckily found

01:11:06.560 the North Korean lady who operates in a chat room. I don't know, you know this, they bring these girls.

01:11:13.680 So it was better than brother. That's the thing. I had the option of going to prostitution or going to

01:11:20.000 chat room at 14. And I thought it's much better than being touched by men physically than going

01:11:26.320 to chat room. Well, you said that with Hongwei that, you know, that was your introduction to sex,

01:11:32.240 essentially, and that it was catastrophic for you. And so, well, and then you after, after Hongwei

01:11:41.760 could no longer afford to feed everyone, that's when you entered the chat rooms.

01:11:47.040 And, and you were in, you were working in the chat rooms for how long?

01:11:54.640 Maybe six, over half a year, maybe less than a year. I think so, like eight, maybe eight months or nine months time.

01:12:03.360 And the, and the people that organized the chat rooms took the vast proportion of the money.

01:12:08.240 Yes, all the money.

01:12:09.520 I think you got one dollar out of seven, was it something like that?

01:12:12.480 Something like, but even that dollar, we had to buy food and clothes and other things. So,

01:12:18.240 but the thing is still was better beer than going into prostitution. And in that chat room, we met

01:12:24.880 another North Korean fellow defector. And then she told me, there was way out of all this, which means

01:12:31.440 going to South Korea. And then they say, I told them, what do you mean South Korea? I thought South Korea was

01:12:37.840 colonized by America. It's like the horrible, horrible, capitalistic country. And she was like,

01:12:44.240 no, South Korea is free. And that is, I remember still the time I learned the word free that day,

01:12:51.440 I was asking her, what do you mean I'm going to be free in South Korea? And she, of course, did not

01:12:57.840 know freedom meant freedom of speech or none of that. She literally told me, oh, in South Korea, you can

01:13:04.240 wear jeans and you can watch TV and no one going to be arresting you for that. And that's how we

01:13:11.440 conceived the freedom as North Koreans, like freedom meant wearing jeans. So I asked her, then how do I

01:13:18.720 do that? And then she was saying, oh, then you got to become Christians. There were Christian like

01:13:24.000 operation in China. If we become Christians, they were going to help us. And it was ironic for me,

01:13:32.160 oh, why? Because I couldn't believe like, why do we have to keep believing something to survive in

01:13:38.320 North Korea to believe in Kim's. But now outside North Korea, we had to believe in God to survive.

01:13:45.360 But the thing is, we are so desperate. Like literally, if somebody took me or brought me

01:13:51.120 like a rock, they asked me to believe in rock, I would have believed. That is like how strong

01:13:57.120 my humans were to survive. And the Christians, the Christians that that you became associated

01:14:03.280 with in China, were those Chinese Christians or were they missionaries from Western countries?

01:14:09.920 Both. They were both. Some of them from South Korea and some of them from China. And they would

01:14:17.040 have these houses that make us to study Bible. And if we prove our faith to them,

01:14:24.080 they then help us to go to South Korea. And that was a deal that we become Christians,

01:14:30.480 and they were going to help us. So at 15, I became a Christian like I, they made us to go fasting.

01:14:39.040 I mean, like really like manage all our life, but they said God can do more than that. So they

01:14:44.240 go us like fasting with a three years old child in our group, a toddler. We go fasting and make us

01:14:51.280 memorize Bible verses. And they come check us like if we memorize it or not.

01:14:56.480 How do you view that interaction with the Christians in China in retrospect?

01:15:01.360 Was there any of that that was useful? Or was it just another belief that you you had to adopt to survive?

01:15:06.800 So, truly, honestly, Dr. Peterson, until I read your book,

01:15:14.000 Traverse for Life, I was, I was the atheist. I was so, so against religion. Because,

01:15:22.000 so right now, now I'm with Christians at 15, studying Bible. And then they found out about what I did to

01:15:29.920 survive in China. And the chat rooms? Yes. And they, I remember the pastor was saying,

01:15:38.080 you're so dirty, like you can never be washed. And he literally, like some Corinthians, some verse

01:15:45.040 telling me that how some sins can never be washed. And how I was so dirty for doing what I did to survive.

01:15:53.280 And that was actually a lot harder in some, in some ways to going through all that journey,

01:15:57.520 because when I was at least going through it, I didn't think that was a bad thing. I thought like

01:16:02.480 something you have to do to survive. Because my father always told me life was a gift. You have to

01:16:08.960 fight for it no matter what, how hard it is. You should never give up on like life. And then I'm

01:16:15.920 suddenly now with this missionary telling me what I did was wrong. I should have like died instead of

01:16:21.280 doing something that dirty to survive. So it was very tough to do. Like, keep thinking for the rest

01:16:29.760 of my life. Was it worth it? Well, but also you, you were at that point too, you said that the reason

01:16:34.880 that you didn't kill yourself was because you wanted to help your mother. You had other people that were

01:16:38.960 dependent on you. It wasn't just you. And you were still looking for your sister too. You had no idea

01:16:44.640 what had happened to her at that point. Yeah, I didn't. So, yeah. And, but the thing is now what

01:16:52.160 I'm thinking of them, no matter what he was, he was better than those people talking about

01:16:58.800 inclusion, all of that, because she risked his life to saving lives. Those pastors, those missions

01:17:05.680 who sent to prison for lifetime sentence in China, no matter what people saying, like you gotta see their

01:17:13.120 actions. And these people actually cared about humanity than anybody that I met having all this

01:17:19.360 flowery, loving language they are using. So that's the thing, like, it's so hard to understand humanity

01:17:26.880 that even though it hurt me so long, I'm like forever grateful for what he gave for us. And

01:17:34.800 namelessly, I'm like, I made name for myself. If I'm dying, people will know, but he never did. And

01:17:40.400 he didn't even tell me his name. If he asked him, like, tell us your name, so we can always thank you

01:17:47.440 afterwards. Like, no, it's not for making a name. I'm doing this because of love, love for Jesus,

01:17:55.200 that he loved us. That's why I'm loving you guys so much. So in a way that he was the only person who

01:18:02.160 showed me with the actions that humans can love another that like unconditionally. So it's just

01:18:10.480 very complex.

01:18:13.920 So it was his group that took you to you and your mother to Mongolia.

01:18:18.880 They told us how to go to Mongolia, because in desert, there's no way you can make it out.

01:18:25.680 It's like, it's a random luck. It's a pure luck. That's why I think maybe they were more

01:18:29.840 religious. They were waiting for God's sign to send us because it's not like guide taking us. If you

01:18:37.600 getting into the Gobi desert, most of chances, like mostly you're never going to be found by any

01:18:43.840 human being on earth. So you decided that you would just go into the desert and take your chances.

01:18:49.360 Yeah. And that was you and your mom. And then we have five other people in our group and one baby

01:18:56.080 with us. So it was eight people group. And then they told us, go follow northwest direction with one

01:19:03.760 compass. And then if you cross eight wire fences, hopefully that's going to be Mongolia for you.

01:19:10.640 It's a random chance of taking the luck.

01:19:15.680 And so why was Mongolia a reasonable target? Or were you just out of options?

01:19:22.160 Because it didn't cost money. If we wanted to go to other countries like Thailand, we had to pay the

01:19:28.320 brokers, but we didn't have money. So Mongolia was the by walking, we crossing the walks. When you walk,

01:19:35.680 you don't pay anybody. So now really nobody escaped through Mongolia. It's too dangerous.

01:19:43.120 Now most of the factors escaping through Thailand, but we were the last people who ever crossed the

01:19:49.040 desert to make it successfully.

01:19:52.720 So what happened in Mongolia? You did run across authorities?

01:19:57.120 Yes, we did. After how long? How long were you in the desert?

01:20:03.440 We were actually only there one day, but it was 2009 in February, minus 40 degrees.

01:20:10.720 Minus 40.

01:20:12.000 Yes, in desert. It's below Siberia. So usually guards would think like nobody's crazy enough to

01:20:19.680 cross desert right now in this temperature, because you can die within a few minutes. If you don't move

01:20:24.960 in desert for even 10 seconds, you're frozen there. You are constantly moving every second.

01:20:31.200 And you said you had very, you had almost no clothing at that point, because they told you to pack light.

01:20:37.520 Like my mom, how come you didn't freeze? I mean, minus 40 is unbelievably cold.

01:20:43.600 Yeah, it's a miracle. Life is a miracle. It's like some things you cannot explain in a human way.

01:20:51.200 It's just like people say it's a lock. Maybe you can say it's a lock. I don't know. It was,

01:20:58.720 I remember like everything was frozen and we didn't even have gloves or scarves. That's the thing.

01:21:05.520 And now I'm like complaining how cold Chicago is like, no, we were wearing these bare nose snow jackets,

01:21:12.800 none of that. And all I remember was we reminding each other, we got to keep moving because when you

01:21:20.560 are frozen, it gets very sleepy. And like, you're losing a lot of senses and then maybe you want to

01:21:27.760 rest. And then we were reminding each other, we got to keep going and like dragging each other,

01:21:32.000 moving every second counts. We got to move.

01:21:34.240 And did all eight of you make it and the baby as well?

01:21:36.880 We made it because initially we have to drug the baby. If the baby cries, the guard's gonna hear us.

01:21:43.600 So we would give him the sleeping period to make him sleep. But sleeping in that frozen, like weather

01:21:49.280 is so dangerous thing. So we have to constantly waking him up, like passing around between people

01:21:54.560 to keep him awake. And he made it too.

01:21:58.400 Huh. So you, you were, you were picked up by the authorities and you were put in a, a holding

01:22:07.680 camp, essentially. Yeah, it didn't seem compared to many of the other things that you had been

01:22:13.520 through. It, it didn't seem as awful. Is that reasonable? So tell us about that.

01:22:18.240 So the thing was in Mongolia, it wasn't something physical hardships. We went through so much,

01:22:23.840 it doesn't matter. But the thing is, they were, this is the thing. Later we learned like, so Mongolia,

01:22:32.080 they, they wanted to send us to North Korean side, I mean, to the Chinese side, and then send us back

01:22:37.520 to North Korea. So we literally brought the lasers and like poisons to kill ourselves in front of them.

01:22:44.400 And we thought like they were sending us to China side. But later we learned that these soldiers had

01:22:50.480 never intention, but this, they loved looking at our reactions. How are you to react?

01:22:55.760 Really? Yeah. That's the thing. Jesus. It's so unbelievable. I know. It's like, literally,

01:23:03.920 I remember like trying to come back to my mom, like we did everything we could to make it. And we,

01:23:12.480 luckily they stopped us right before we cut our reserves. But the team who came after us, they went too

01:23:19.200 far so she didn't swallow the poison. And then they took her to hospital and she became like,

01:23:25.840 mentally like lost a lot of her senses afterwards. So it was a game for a lot of people. It's like,

01:23:34.320 teaching us, you know, seeing someone like, and I think that's like those very hard at this point,

01:23:42.240 like to make sense of like being a human, like, you know, it's just so hard to know this is like

01:23:49.760 the same life that I've been having. It was like some dream or something.

01:23:54.960 So you were, after that, you were reasonably treated in Mongolia, but you were also subject to a lot of

01:24:02.480 interrogation. And why was that? Because one is they tried to screen the spies out. Because North

01:24:11.280 Korea sends a lot of spies disguising as defectors and send them. So they can assassinate like, like me,

01:24:18.160 someone who speaks out, or get information who my relatives are, and then send back to North Korea,

01:24:24.480 so they can punish the family members of the defectors. So a lot of defectors is like a spice can do.

01:24:31.520 But not only that, South Korea also had a very like heavy discrimination towards North Koreans.

01:24:38.000 And the country is still very, they blame the victims when it comes like the rape, you know,

01:24:43.920 days like because of you got rape, not the men. So I remember like during my interrogation,

01:24:51.120 he asked me like, do you have tattoo in your body? And I was 15 years old. And I was like, no,

01:24:57.680 I don't have tattoos. Like, they were looking for marks of that would prove that you were engaged in

01:25:02.800 prostitution. Exactly. So I was like, no, and it's like, I'm gonna take off your clothes here. Like,

01:25:07.840 are you sure? It's like, yeah. And that's when I realized, like, really, like, there was no angel at

01:25:16.320 all. Like, there's nothing better country. Like, of course, there's all degree of bad and good. And South

01:25:22.720 Korea actually is another hard place for North Koreans to adjust. And like, two years ago,

01:25:29.520 there was a mother and son died in the middle of Seoul, South Korea from starvation, because of the

01:25:36.480 ignorance from South Korean public towards them. They died from starvation in the middle of the capital

01:25:43.600 of Seoul. I mean, South Korea. So you went through this lengthy interrogation process in Mongolia.

01:25:52.000 And then it was decided and your mother was with you. And it was decided at that point that you were

01:25:57.040 genuine refugees. And you made it from there to South Korea. Yeah. And was that to Seoul?

01:26:04.400 No. From Mongolia, several months integration, they take us to another two months of the

01:26:09.840 integration at the South Korea's intelligence facility. Then they take us to three months of

01:26:18.400 re-education program. Right. And that's when they taught you

01:26:23.200 how to be integrated to some degree into South Korean culture. So talk about that too. That's

01:26:29.680 very interesting. Yeah. So they give us this three months of training periods where they introduce us

01:26:36.000 to this new planet. And that's once they've identified you as genuine refugees. Exactly. So then you

01:26:43.120 then you got in in that stream. Yeah. Once they are proven, proven, sometimes they even go through

01:26:49.920 those like light detectors with other defectors. They really make sure that you're not spy and saying

01:26:55.680 everything is true. Once that is proven, they process three months of training period where

01:27:02.240 they tell us what bank is. Right. In North Korea, we never know what bank or ATM machine is.

01:27:08.000 They tell us like how to ride a bus, how to ride a subway. You know, like that. What did you

01:27:14.640 what did you think of all that? I mean, you'd been in China for some time. So this wasn't the difference

01:27:20.080 between North Korea and other countries wasn't quite as shocking, I presume. But how what was

01:27:26.800 happening to you when you started to understand the massive difference between North Korea and the rest

01:27:32.240 of the world and and also the fact that everything that you had been taught since you were born and

01:27:38.480 everything your parents had been taught, all of that was every single bit of it was a lie. What was that

01:27:43.760 doing to you? That was the thing. Like, as you said, I remember they said, oh, Korean were started by

01:27:51.200 Kim Il-sung by Americans. And like in North Korea, literally, they tell us Americans are bastards.

01:27:57.360 They are the most evil thing. Right. And at that point, my reaction was, so if everything that I

01:28:04.880 believe was a lie, how do I know that what you're saying is not a lie? Like, how do I ever trust ever,

01:28:12.880 ever again? And it was the hardest thing ever trusting it. It took many years. And when I read

01:28:21.520 by George Orwell's book, The Animal Farm, that's when I realized, oh, what they're telling is actually

01:28:28.080 true. But until that point, I didn't trust what I was going to say. So why was George Orwell's book so

01:28:35.440 relevant to you? Why did it have that effect? Do you know?

01:28:39.760 It's, so I was reading this animal farm, not even knowing what that is. And it was, I was seeing my

01:28:47.120 grandmother in those older pigs, and these young pigs, the men, they like later when those young

01:28:52.960 pigs born, they don't even know what life was beforehand. They didn't even know the alternative

01:28:58.320 life looks like. Right. Because the first pigs were afraid to speak out. And all the terror, they

01:29:05.920 kept the silence. So until I was reading that book, I was only blaming the Kim dictatorship because of the

01:29:13.120 dictatorship that we suffered. But when I was reading that book, I could see all those people were

01:29:20.080 voluntarily, involuntarily supporting in this dictatorship by terror. They were silenced,

01:29:27.280 but it was therefore too, that we ended up in this. Everybody did something, contribute something,

01:29:33.920 make us North Korea into, you know, the perfect dystopia that we are reading in the book.

01:29:39.440 Contributing what? What do they contribute? By keeping silence.

01:29:43.840 But by keeping silent. Yes. When they had something to say.

01:29:47.680 Exactly. Because when it came to me, doctor, like, I didn't even know the word oppression. So if you know

01:29:55.920 you're oppressed, you're not oppressed. But to me, like in North Korean young generation,

01:30:02.640 we don't even know we're oppressed. What is that? But my grandmother knew she experienced before Kim,

01:30:09.920 she lived through Japanese colonialism, like she lived through before Kim's. But because of that,

01:30:16.800 their fear of losing their life and the loved ones, I'm sure they had a reason, like,

01:30:22.480 not to speak up. But because of the fear and not standing up for the right choice. Now,

01:30:30.080 North Korea in a point where people don't even know what life can be looked like.

01:30:35.040 Well, Solzhenitsyn was convinced that a totalitarian state could not exist unless

01:30:41.680 everyone was participating in the lie. And that the most potent anti-authoritarian

01:30:48.880 action is to tell the truth. And that means to say something when you have something to say,

01:30:54.480 because the, not because you're brave, but I think, but because the alternative is worse.

01:30:59.040 Exactly. Yeah, that's. And it was Orwell. It's so, so interesting to me that it was Orwell that,

01:31:05.680 that, that opened your eyes to that. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but, but it's still really

01:31:10.720 something. Yeah, I know. It's like that, like that book. I think that's when I realized, oh,

01:31:17.520 everybody was responsible. And that's when I started thinking about speaking out.

01:31:23.520 That's when you started thinking about speaking out. Yeah. I see. I see. And so you made a conscious

01:31:28.960 decision at that point. Yeah. Why? Why? Because I knew the price of silence. Because

01:31:38.240 like that, that was a price real pain, right? Like not even knowing. Like, that's the thing,

01:31:44.160 like when people say, why no revolutions? Because we don't know we are slaves in North Korea.

01:31:48.960 How do you fight to be free when you don't know you're a slave? And that's a different thing. Like

01:31:55.200 the fact that my people don't even know they're oppressed. That's the thing. Like what carries me

01:32:01.040 to this point about my father is not like he, I, of course I would be grateful he ever lived in

01:32:08.560 freedom even one day. But the heartbreaking thing is he didn't even know life could be this free and

01:32:16.480 life could be this beautiful. He didn't even know that. Like life could be so different for other

01:32:22.720 human beings. I just wish he knew before he goes so he doesn't remember this life so hard is filled

01:32:31.760 with the sadness, you know? And that's the thing with North Koreans. We are talking with different

01:32:36.800 degrees of oppression. You don't even know life can be this way. And

01:32:44.960 yeah, so that was my time of understanding what happened and started believing in this freedom.

01:32:54.640 So you're in the re-education process in South Korea, learning to be a South Korean, learning to some

01:33:01.840 degree how to fit in the culture, learning to some degree how to be free. Did you start reading at

01:33:08.240 that point? Or when were you, for example, when did you encounter Orwell? Was that when you went to

01:33:16.720 university later? Before my university, so when I was 16 I think, 16 years old. And how did you come across the

01:33:24.000 book? It was, uh, so I was in this de facto school because I was 15 years old, almost 16 years old.

01:33:32.320 They did a placement exam for me. And as you said, like, I don't even know the map of the world.

01:33:38.720 My grade came out like seven years old, like intelligence. Right. So you got out of, you got out

01:33:44.400 of the re-education process and then you, you lived, where did you live with your mother after you left

01:33:49.840 the re-education process? Plus, I mean, uh, like a public housing in the countryside, where a lot

01:33:56.400 of mentally ill people were living. And then that's when you decided that you were going to go back

01:34:01.440 to school. Yes, that's where I wanted to go to school. But then if I want to go to school, there's

01:34:07.280 no way I can be going studying with a seven years old. But even though some, a lot of defectors do that,

01:34:12.560 there's 24, they start studying with a seven years old in the same classroom. And I, I want to take a GED.

01:34:20.240 So I go to catch up quickly. And I went to special defector school where they would help us studying

01:34:26.720 in the, in a GED. And a bookshelf, there was just book, tiny book, like the animal farm. And I picked

01:34:33.920 it up because it looked very thin. Not big. I was like, it might be easy, could read. And that's,

01:34:40.400 I never knew that was the point where my life was going to be changed.

01:34:44.240 Hmm. That's, that's really something. So then you went to school.

01:34:49.520 Yes. And you, you had to convince the authorities to support your desire to be educated. Your plan

01:34:58.400 was to go to university. How in the world did you formulate that plan? How did you even find out

01:35:03.120 about university? I mean, I guess you knew that already in North Korea. You knew, sorry, you knew that

01:35:07.760 already, but why did you, why did you decide that you needed to go to university? What was driving you?

01:35:15.200 Oh, it was, so I remember that they were asking me, what do you want to do after like kids here,

01:35:20.880 after the re-education, what do you want to do? And I told them like, I want to go study. And it's like,

01:35:25.280 why, you know, like studying like South Korea's most competitive countries. And when it comes to

01:35:30.720 education, how are you going to compete? You know, there's no chance for you to survive. I wasn't even

01:35:36.480 speaking ABC, the alphabet English at that time as an adult. So, but I don't know. That's the thing.

01:35:44.080 Something was in me. It was thirst for knowledge that I always knew that I wanted to study. I wanted

01:35:49.680 to learn how the world worked. So I kept that and keep, keep getting back to books. I was reading

01:35:57.680 like a hundred books a year. And just, but also the reason I was reading books is like, because

01:36:04.320 there was such a high discrimination. Nobody wanted to be friends with North Koreans anymore

01:36:09.360 in South Korea. And everybody told me that I was failure before when I began this, like you are never

01:36:15.680 going to be competing. You are never going to be in this competition. So only the books were the

01:36:21.120 ones telling me that I could do it. The books were. Yeah. Only the books were telling you because

01:36:26.160 every book tells you can do it. Right. But everybody, the human being I met was telling me I couldn't do

01:36:31.040 it. So I just keep reading books. Yes. Well, you can make contact with great minds that encourage

01:36:37.440 you through books and thank God for that. Right. That's what they're for.

01:36:40.960 So, and, and you, so you got your high school equivalency. And how long did that take you?

01:36:50.240 I had to do the, from the elementary to high school. So it took like over just one year.

01:36:56.800 One year. You did all that one year. Yeah. So I went to college at 17.

01:37:03.200 At 17. So you passed your G and you'd only had two years of education in North Korea, but most of that

01:37:08.880 time you were like working, working at manual labor. Yes. Yes. Now you could, you, you, how was

01:37:16.560 your reading ability in Northern Korea? Were you already literate? No, a little bit, but then also

01:37:22.800 their vocabularies were so different in South Korea. Like the, like we don't know what shopping is because

01:37:29.920 we don't know shopping, right? Like what's the supermarket? What is dry cleaning? So I had to

01:37:35.440 like write down, like, it wasn't like English to South Korea was easier because I already knew the

01:37:41.760 concept, but like learning about gay, even I met somebody gay and telling me, he told, he hugged me

01:37:48.880 and he told me, baby, don't worry. I'm gay. And then like, what gay is understanding a concept takes

01:37:56.560 way longer than learning a language. So that took longer for me because it's exactly the 1984,

01:38:04.000 the Georgia where it talks about double speak, who controls the language, who controls thoughts.

01:38:09.520 So North Korea purposefully eliminated the words like stress, because how can you be stressed in the

01:38:15.840 socialist paradise? So they get rid of stress, they get rid of depression, they get rid of trauma,

01:38:22.080 they get rid of all these concepts that people know here. We don't have in North Korea. So I think

01:38:28.240 that was very challenging than even learning a new language.

01:38:33.440 So is it fair to say that you taught yourself to read and you got your GED equivalent? You did that in

01:38:40.480 one year. And so you were ready to go to university at the age of... How in the world did you do that?

01:38:44.880 How much time were you spending every day studying?

01:38:49.360 Oh, I didn't. So that was a funny story. I ended up in the ER. And then like, they were saying,

01:38:56.720 you're my nourished, because I didn't have time to eat. I forgot to eat. So even when I was sleeping,

01:39:03.920 I would turn on the like a TED talks or NPR. So I can like listen, my brain still kept working.

01:39:09.680 And even when I was sleeping, I would put the books behind my pillow. So the like knowledge

01:39:14.880 would go into me. I was obsessed. I was crazy. You were obsessed with... Yeah, I was completely

01:39:21.440 obsessed with learning. And how did you manage to survive economically during this time? How did

01:39:28.480 how did your mom and you make money? I know you got some money from the South Korean government,

01:39:33.200 right? Was that enough to get you through that first year? What happened? No.

01:39:37.200 No. They give... For the six months, they do. They help you to pay yourself for cell phone

01:39:42.320 beers and the house, like the amenities, right? You pay the utility beers. But after six months,

01:39:49.120 you are on your own. So you're completely obsessed with studying to the point where you're not even

01:39:54.720 eating. And we should also just stress here, it is definitely the case that the education process is

01:40:02.240 unbelievably competitive in South Korea, as you've already pointed out, far and above what people in,

01:40:07.600 in young people in North America can imagine, or in Europe, for that matter. And so you were facing

01:40:13.520 very, very heavy competition. So, but you got obsessed to the point where you weren't even eating.

01:40:20.080 That's amazing, because I would have thought that you would have been more motivated to eat after what

01:40:24.640 you eat food than virtually, but you were hungrier for knowledge than for food, despite, and you had

01:40:29.760 been starved of both. Exactly. I was working at this, I don't know, you know, something called

01:40:37.280 Daiso. It's like a $1 store in South Korea, the Japanese branch. So I was working there as a part-time

01:40:44.480 job, and I was a minor. So my mom had to give the, like, authorization that she would let me work. And

01:40:50.880 then I was working this wedding horse, like serving food as a waitress. So I was working, and then my mom

01:40:57.600 was also doing the dishes and helping me. And I was living in these rooms in Seoul because I was studying

01:41:04.640 where underground, I didn't even have a window. And I still remember those times, I was so happy because I

01:41:11.760 had to go, like, I was, you know, like this tiny room where you can stretch your feet like barely.

01:41:18.080 I'm like five times tiny in that room. I was like living there. All I had was books with me and dream.

01:41:25.920 Yeah. Well, a room full of books isn't small. Exactly. It was, it was large. Yeah.

01:41:31.760 Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you got your GED and then you applied to

01:41:39.760 university for, in a competitive program. And they, there was still trouble with you getting

01:41:44.480 in, but you managed it. How did you manage it? And how did you decide what you were going to do?

01:41:49.440 I was going to study criminal justice. It was, I saw so much injustice. And even in South

01:41:57.200 Korea, I saw so much of it. I really wanted to understand how that worked. You know, how,

01:42:03.040 how, what this thing is called justice. So I'm grateful. They gave me all the opportunity to study

01:42:09.920 that program. And, but now, uh, it's, uh, I, it's just such a, like, I don't know how I was going

01:42:17.920 through all of that, but somehow back then I had a drive that I didn't even knew I had.

01:42:25.280 And so you, you were at the university for how long, four years? Was it a four-year degree?

01:42:30.720 It was four years degree, but I only did three years and a half. Before the, my last semester,

01:42:36.720 I went to Columbia university in New York and switched my major there.

01:42:43.280 Okay. Okay. Now in Korea, was that at the same time, you were also working for,

01:42:49.200 at a Korean television station. Okay. So there's a bit of a detour there. You were,

01:42:55.200 you were cast in some sense as the North Korean Paris Hilton. Yeah. So that's extraordinarily bizarre.

01:43:02.640 So, so tell me about that. What happened? Now I'm seeing criminal justice in a top university,

01:43:09.600 very competitive program doing this physical training to become an intelligence officer later.

01:43:15.840 And then, uh, I get a call from TV producers saying they are trying to make a show because until that

01:43:23.600 point, North Korea was portrayed as very, just heartbreaking documentary, you know, people with

01:43:29.920 like, looks like a Roberts when their deal leader dies, really looks very inhuman, but they wanted to

01:43:36.560 make a show entertainment show, not a documentary entertainment show, bring young girls. They thought

01:43:43.120 it was pretty, putting in a beautiful designer clothes and studio, put them in a makeup and then talk

01:43:51.040 about their life in a lightly. It's just, so their show model was chat with different ladies.

01:43:57.360 And they had that before beauties from the Russia, Poland, America. Now they are going to do that with

01:44:02.400 North Korean young, young girls. I didn't want to go on. I was like, no, of course I'm not.

01:44:08.400 But then they told me, you know, South Korean shows are super popular in China and all of the East

01:44:13.520 Asia's because you lost your sister. You might be able to, your sister might be able to see it and

01:44:19.440 then find you in South Korea. And, but because before that I was looking for my sister on a one

01:44:25.360 education program and they saw me there and then found me how that's how, and they, they knew that

01:44:31.440 talking about my sister was going to get me. So that was a thing that was a deal for me to go on the show

01:44:37.600 and talk about my sister and hopefully she sees it and come to me because I was still looking for her.

01:44:43.040 But the thing is, uh, because I told them about my father's black market business before his arrest,

01:44:50.000 they thought, um, you know, of course, how do, how do I know who's Paris Hilton is? I don't know,

01:44:55.840 but they needed a character for each character in the show business. That's what they say. You know,

01:45:00.800 you cannot be complicated. You gotta be one simple thing. Everybody gotta have characters.

01:45:06.240 And then they name you. So I was going into, I don't know where to show business.

01:45:12.800 It is unbelievable. It is unbelievable. Well, it's also unbelievable. The role that you were cast in.

01:45:19.680 It's so, it has such a con it's, it's such a contrast with what actually, well, with what,

01:45:24.640 what the reality of your life in North Korea really was. But the thing is, in that show,

01:45:30.720 I learned actually what I went through was nothing. Talk to like, I was in a way of some sense of

01:45:40.560 Paris Hilton because they went through, like literally can cannibalism is a weird thing in North Korea.

01:45:48.400 And I, I, I would not want to, people say, oh, don't dehumanize the subject. Why are you talking

01:45:56.160 about those things? But like, what I went through wasn't even close to what other people went through.

01:46:02.800 And what my sister went through in China, who decided to never, ever talk about ever again in her life.

01:46:09.600 In that seven years, what I went through was nothing.

01:46:14.400 That's, that really, that three years of being on the show and hearing other, how other people managed

01:46:21.280 to survive made me was like, oh my gosh, I had it so easy. I'm so grateful.

01:46:30.800 I, I felt so grateful. Like I still to this, I don't know how I got that lucky.

01:46:39.680 So you're taking criminology and you're three years in and you're doing this TV show on the side

01:46:45.280 and you discover your sister. Yeah. She did come to South Korea and she saw the show.

01:46:52.320 Eventually she did. And you were reunited with her in South Korea.

01:46:57.040 Yes, she did. I, I found her when I was 20 years old, seven years later.

01:47:01.280 Do you see each other now? Now my sister is a teacher in South Korea and we see each other

01:47:08.080 often, but because we live in a different country, I'm in America, she's in South Korea.

01:47:12.800 Right. But you have a familial relationship. It's just distant.

01:47:16.480 Definitely. Yes. Yes.

01:47:17.520 Okay. So, so now you're now you said that you

01:47:21.840 ranked 30th, I think out of 94 students in the program.

01:47:25.920 Yeah.

01:47:26.400 So you were able to hold your own against the intense competition.

01:47:31.600 Yes, I did my best.

01:47:33.840 Yes, apparently.

01:47:35.360 And then, so what, how in the world did you end up at Columbia?

01:47:39.680 Yeah. Now you don't write about that. Do you write about that? Did I miss that?

01:47:44.080 No, I didn't because it was after.

01:47:46.080 Okay. Okay. So now we're getting to the point, this is past. So I just remind everybody that

01:47:50.640 we've gone over some of the details that, that characterize this autobiography in order to live.

01:47:58.080 So now we're moving a bit past it because it was published in 2015. So there's been six years,

01:48:02.880 six intermediating years. So how in the world did you end up at Columbia? What, what happened?

01:48:09.520 So, so one day I have a friend in America told me, do you want to go to this conference

01:48:15.280 called like the youth leaders gathering in Ireland? And in South Korea in 2014, I never even been to

01:48:23.440 Europe. And I don't even know what Ireland is it. I thought it was somewhere like in UK or something.

01:48:29.280 And then they say, oh, if you participate, they would pay your flight and lodging for free.

01:48:35.520 Every South Korean student's dream is going to backpacking in Europe. So it's like, oh my God,

01:48:40.320 I got this once a lifetime to go to Europe for free in my college. And then, so this is a conference

01:48:46.960 called the One Young World. They bring the youth leaders from every country. So they called the North

01:48:53.120 Korean embassy in the UK saying, can you send the delegation to us? And two, we just need two

01:48:59.840 delegates from each country. And North Korea regime told them, no, because they have to spy on the

01:49:03.840 show, we can only send three. So they said, okay, how about we sponsor two and then you guys sponsor

01:49:09.920 one so we can bring three. And then North Korea said, no, thank you. And that says, okay, then we're

01:49:14.560 going to look for defectors. Because they didn't want to sponsor for three people. That's how they found me,

01:49:20.080 through my friends. So in that conference, I applied to become a delegate speaker along with other 34

01:49:28.400 delegate speakers. I was a really average person. And then I did a lot of three times, like the

01:49:36.960 interview with them, I selected as a speaker at the end, and all the many, many speakers together.

01:49:43.280 And there I shared about what was happening to my people in China,

01:49:48.960 how the Chinese role on, you know, being silent, and still they are allowing this human trafficking

01:49:54.880 happening, right? Like, if you see the girls captured by Taliban, like Michelle Obama, have no

01:50:01.680 problem standing up for girls captured by Boko Haram. So many people talk about these girls, but

01:50:08.160 many come North Koreans, nobody talks about it, because they don't want to upset Chinese regime.

01:50:13.200 So my speech in that conference really became vital. And that's, and that's what you focused on in that

01:50:22.560 speech. Yes, I was only focusing on my, like the women's what we are going through in China.

01:50:30.000 And I didn't even plan to be that speech go to vital, nobody can plan it, it was a pure accident. I was in

01:50:37.040 the middle of university attending, I had to go back to Korea too. But that speech became very vital.

01:50:43.120 And then I got a book offer from Pink Random House. And then they, my agent was in New York,

01:50:49.600 that's how I went to New York. But while I was writing the book, I always loved learning. So I wanted

01:50:55.120 to study, I wanted to continue my study. And they told me there was university in New York,

01:51:00.240 called the Columbia. So that's how I applied there. And then went there to study.

01:51:06.080 And did you, did you finish your undergraduate there? Did you do an advanced degree, you finished

01:51:10.240 your undergraduate? I did undergrad four years there. So I did almost like eight years of bachelor.

01:51:16.480 Okay, so you had, you'd gone to university and came out of North Korea, then you went to university in

01:51:22.480 South Korea. So you got, you got to see that culture as an outsider. And then you came to the United

01:51:29.120 States, and you got to see Columbia University. So what did you conclude about your time in

01:51:34.480 Columbia University? What are your, what were your impressions? What do you have to say to people

01:51:38.880 about what you saw? I know you, oh my gosh, so that four years from 2016 to 2020,

01:51:48.720 it was a complete madness. I, I became very pessimistic about the Western world after university.

01:51:59.120 Because like, so literally in this humanity classes, even the economics, I was studying

01:52:06.080 economics for two years and later human rights. They, the professor would send me the like emails,

01:52:12.240 oh, this, this class, we're going to cover this, this, if it triggers you, you don't have to come

01:52:17.040 to the class or don't even do the reading. I'm a rape survivor. I'm a slave. I've gone through so many

01:52:23.360 things. And they say, oh, this can trigger the rape. This can trigger this. And then like they,

01:52:30.240 every before the class, they say, let's go through what do you want to be called your pronouns. And my

01:52:36.640 English is not that good. I sometimes mistakenly call him or she like, and then they started asking

01:52:43.040 me to say they, and then I don't know how to incorporate in my English that pronoun properly.

01:52:48.160 And it makes me so nervous to talk in the classroom. And one day I got into five with

01:52:55.760 my professor. She was saying, uh, you know, the fact that you're letting men holding door for you

01:53:02.160 is you are giving into their overpowering you. And I was like, no, it needs kindness. It's

01:53:09.040 decency. I hold the door for people too. It's not like I'm trying to signal that I'm powerful than you.

01:53:14.640 And she was like, you're so brainwashed from North Korea. Like, and I was scenario, of course,

01:53:23.040 my GPA is going to be affected. And it's like, okay, I got a really shut up. I got to try to do my

01:53:28.480 best to get a good GPA. So that four years, I learned to censor myself all over again. And it became

01:53:38.480 ridiculous. Like I literally, exactly. Like I literally risked my life to say what I think is

01:53:44.160 right. And now I'm like, you know, country where I have four years of time, try how to be create a

01:53:50.560 safe space and be sensitive enough. So, and like, where am I? Like where, and it gave me a lot of

01:53:58.800 chaos. Like, did I become free? Like, was it, where am I? Is there any truly free place in this world

01:54:05.280 or do I not? Well, okay. So you, you were in this university in Korea and Korean universities are

01:54:11.200 intense. And so how would you contrast the quality of the education that you received? And they're

01:54:17.280 very Western influence, the South Korean university. So they're a product of the Western university

01:54:22.320 system. So how would you contrast your experience at the South Korean university with Columbia, which

01:54:28.880 is in principle, one of the great Western American institutions, educational institutions,

01:54:35.280 it's, so I do think South Korea is way more technical. They are way more into trying to teach

01:54:41.680 you the skill set. Like if, you know, more giving you actual knowledge, but I think Americans are very

01:54:50.080 obsessed. That was my impression at Columbia. We're really trying to help you how to think,

01:54:55.360 but almost like you want to shape how you think. They are very into shaping your minds how you think

01:55:02.160 about something. In South Korean study program was more like, oh, this is a fact. This is what

01:55:09.680 happened in history. This is what we're going to do. This is a model you're going to apply to solve this

01:55:13.600 criminal case. Like, you know, this is how things work. But lately though, when it comes to sociology,

01:55:20.160 uh, it's been very influenced by the Western, like the mainstream education. So a lot of, uh, anti, uh,

01:55:28.880 Western sentiments was definitely there. And it's just, I, in Korea as well. Oh yes, definitely. All

01:55:38.160 those like sociology and those subjects is definitely influenced and South Korea is now becoming a communist

01:55:44.960 again. Definitely. It's, it, it is a start trying to see that like right now, South Korean youth demands

01:55:51.840 socialism and, you know, freedom is so fragile. Like it's, it's never gonna be there if you don't

01:55:58.160 fight for it. And South Korea's democracy is falling and there's speech, freedom of speech right now in

01:56:04.720 South Korea. Like doctor, if you send those leaflets that we use to send to North Korea to free people's minds.

01:56:10.960 So we use send those leaflets about like you, Kims are dictators. You are being right. And that was a

01:56:18.960 freedom, separate expression that was covered by South Korean constitution. But now that just got,

01:56:25.360 became criminalized in South Korea, like last few months ago. What exactly was criminalized?

01:56:31.360 Uh, advocating freedom in North Korea

01:56:34.640 Yeah. Because South Korea in the, but their defense is that because we, if we say we support

01:56:42.960 freedom in North Korea, then North Korean regime saying we are going to start a war over you about

01:56:47.280 that. So for the protecting South Korean people's freedom, you cannot advocate freedom for North

01:56:53.520 Korean people in the South Korea. And what do you think about?

01:56:57.280 This is another thing. There's going to be a price for being silent about something like this happening,

01:57:06.000 right? It's a, if, if they can come for this, well, how do we know they are not going to go after other

01:57:12.480 rights? That's how it, all this cycle begins. So it is definitely dangerous what they're taking to keep

01:57:20.480 saying in the name of protection, in the name of this, we are going to silence you. We're going to

01:57:25.760 silence this, this, this. And that's what North Korea did, right? In the name of equality, pure, pure

01:57:32.320 equality, you're going to get rid of, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of gathering, all of this.

01:57:38.240 And now they're left with nothing. Only people are allowed to do is just breathing.

01:57:44.240 So why did you stay at Columbia?

01:57:46.080 Uh, it was, uh, it was my father's dream for me to be college educated. He, I found it was not worth

01:57:57.360 it. It was so straight to the state degree that it was so sorry. It was so it was a waste of time,

01:58:03.680 energy and money. Really? That's a terrible thing. That's terrible. It was, it is. Honestly, I tell

01:58:10.960 like my son that if you want to study humanity in one of these universities, I'm never going to pay

01:58:15.920 for it. Like, I'm so clear on that to my son. I'm so embarrassed about that. I'm so embarrassed

01:58:22.000 about that. It's so awful to hear that. Those universities, they were great, you know, they were

01:58:28.480 great. Yeah. Yes, definitely. And it's not that long ago that they were great, that they did what

01:58:34.000 they said they were going to do. And if you went and got a humanities education, you got educated, you

01:58:38.640 learned to write, you learned to think, you learned history, you learned to be cultured. That happened.

01:58:45.200 It wasn't that long ago. It was when I went to university, it was still like that. When I taught

01:58:49.920 at Harvard, it was still like that. There were politically correct murmurings and rumblings, but

01:58:54.480 by and large, the university was still uncorrupted. And the humanities are at the core of the university.

01:59:00.640 If they're corrupted, if they go, if they've gone in the way that you're already describing,

01:59:06.000 there's no way the universities can survive. They're not technical schools. The core of the university

01:59:11.520 was the humanities. I mean, look at what Animal Farm did for you. That's what reading great books

01:59:17.360 does for people. You know, it illuminates their soul. It's not optional. And I'm so appalled that

01:59:24.880 that was your experience at Columbia. It's so awful that you went through all that and managed to get to

01:59:31.040 this great university. And, you know, and that you had to shut yourself down and that your basic conclusion

01:59:38.400 was that it was a waste of time. Now, did you have courses where that wasn't the case?

01:59:44.800 Did you have courses that were worth it?

01:59:48.800 I mean, so one class I remember in my senior year, it was called the Western Civilization,

01:59:55.360 the music art. One of the core that Columbia had is the Western art.

01:59:59.600 And the music has still, not for long.

02:00:02.400 Right. But then the, I was excited to learn about,

02:00:05.520 but I thought at the end of the day, this is still the West. America is in the West, right?

02:00:09.840 It would be funny if you wanted to study Eastern music at the end of the, in the core.

02:00:14.800 And professors like who has a problem with calling the Western civilization like art?

02:00:20.400 And then every single one of them all lived in their hands because they were saying there are so many artists

02:00:25.360 were greater than Beethoven and Mozart. We silence them, erase them all. And that's why we have to

02:00:31.920 now end up studying these like bigots, you know, who are racist. And I'm like, and then they were like

02:00:39.680 looking at me, why are you not putting your hands up? Somebody who doesn't have the problem with talking

02:00:44.240 about Western civilization. So that's just like, I was like, do I even have to do this to graduate?

02:00:50.960 And that was, of course, necessary to do that course to graduate. So every, every class had an element of

02:00:58.640 being politically correct and shaping you how you think. And I learned how to censor myself

02:01:05.440 so well at the Columbia. And then I was freaked out one day. It's like, what am I doing? This is

02:01:10.400 our escape, you know, it's just, and I'm so, I'm so ashamed of that. That's so awful.

02:01:20.400 I can't believe it. You know, it's no, it's no picnic to watch these great institutions hang themselves.

02:01:31.600 Yeah. I literally felt like it's a suicide of civilization. Like we are killing ourselves here.

02:01:42.400 And, and that's why, like, what, I mean, that's what scares me is that when I was so grateful to

02:01:53.280 going to South Korea was outside of North Korea, there was at least a place that was left to be free.

02:01:58.800 And all these people obsessed fighting for, you know, climate change, animals rights, gender equality,

02:02:08.160 transgender, whatever, all these things people fighting for. Wonderful. But then imagine when

02:02:15.760 nobody's free in this world, who's going to fight for us? And that's like what terror for me is like,

02:02:23.200 imagine all of us became enslaved, like North Koreans, all of us did in that system.

02:02:28.240 There's no one can stand up for any of us. And I guess because I'm always, I always knew that it

02:02:35.440 wasn't guaranteed. Like when I go camping with my friends, my friends somehow always have confidence

02:02:42.000 that they're going to find food, even though when they're going to the remote area. Not me, I always

02:02:48.080 packing this like energy bars, blah, blah, always with me, because I know, like, you can end up not

02:02:54.080 having our food. So maybe this is a mentality that in the West, freedom was always there. Somehow people

02:03:01.280 think it's gonna be miraculously gonna be always there. And for me, it's like, no, it can be not

02:03:07.120 there. That's, you know, that's why we were supposed to be educating young people, we were supposed to be

02:03:11.280 teaching them that no, it's not always there. It's, it's fragile, and you better take care of it. Because

02:03:17.520 the default condition is authoritarian starvation. And if that isn't happening, it's a bloody miracle.

02:03:24.320 Yeah, that is. And that's, that's where I am at right now with North Korea. Well, of course,

02:03:32.400 I'm fighting for my people's freedom. But there's so much interest, like even Hollywood,

02:03:39.520 they do not want to stand up anything behind the thing is challenging Chinese Communist Party.

02:03:46.480 No mainstream, no Hollywood stars. Now, nobody in America want to be behind the movement that

02:03:53.040 challenged Chinese Communist Party. Well, I've seen this over and over in the universities too,

02:03:57.920 you know, it was often the case that it was my psychology classes where the students learned about

02:04:02.880 what happened in Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China. They hadn't been taught at all. They hadn't

02:04:08.000 been taught that tens of millions of people died in China. They hadn't been taught about what happened

02:04:12.880 in North Korea. They hadn't been taught about what happened in Russia. It was like that never existed,

02:04:17.520 even though the Cold War was all about that. And it was, it's appalling. It's, and I think you see

02:04:25.200 exactly the same thing while you're pointing out exactly the same thing. How blind can we possibly be?

02:04:30.800 I know. It's like the people say like, oh, Hitler killed so many people, but do you know actually

02:04:37.680 Mao killed the most human beings on earth? He killed like 50 to 60 million people. The Chinese communism

02:04:45.040 killed more people than anybody ever did in our human history. Yes, and the Chinese Communist Party

02:04:51.360 still controls China. And the only reason people aren't starving to death there now is because they

02:04:56.240 adopted, because they had no choice, essentially, because people did start to rebel to some degree.

02:05:03.760 They introduced free market transformations. It's the only reason that China has emerged as powerful

02:05:09.680 economically as it is. So what's next for you? You're, you're, you've graduated from Colombia. When

02:05:22.000 did you graduate? Uh, January of 2000, uh, last year. I gotta, I gotta ask you again. I gotta ask you again.

02:05:30.800 Wasn't there at least one course that you took there taught by someone that taught you what you wanted to learn?

02:05:42.960 One course?

02:05:45.920 You should know, like if, if there was, you'd know. You'd know.

02:05:50.320 I, I knew, I liked about the evolution class, about how the humans, uh, we became who we are. Uh, you know,

02:06:00.640 going through, you know, homoeractism, like, have this, or the humanity journey. But then, of course,

02:06:06.560 they always had a political crime as elements, always in the textbook everywhere. So, there's not,

02:06:13.680 I like the economic classes a lot, because it really helped me understand how the world worked in some other

02:06:19.120 ways. But then, of course, it's all about, like, the payment, gender inequality payments, blah, blah,

02:06:25.920 all that, like, macroeconomics has that thing. So, it, I mean, it, I think it filtered out, it was,

02:06:34.480 it was good, but I don't think it was worth of that amount of money, especially, and the effort to go.

02:06:40.800 You can't take them on, like, online.

02:06:42.800 Look, I had professors. I had lots of professors who were great. Like, I went to this little college

02:06:49.120 when I was 18, uh, 17, I guess, because that's when I went to college. And it was just an adventure

02:06:55.600 for me. You know, I, I got, the people who taught me, I had an English professor. Um,

02:07:04.000 his name escapes me at the moment, unfortunately. Dennis Wheeler was my political science professor. I

02:07:08.160 learned, I remember that from 30 years ago. Um, I can't remember my English professor's name,

02:07:13.360 unfortunately. I had a philosophy professor named Langenbach. Like, six or seven professors.

02:07:21.200 And it was a small college. It wasn't an elite institution. Um, and they loved to teach. And

02:07:27.760 I had a group of friends that loved to learn. And it was great. Like, it was great. I learned a tremendous

02:07:32.960 amount. I learned that I didn't know how to write. And they taught me, uh, Robin,

02:07:37.920 Robin Burke. That was the English professor's name. He gave me a D on my first paper. It shocked me to

02:07:43.440 death because I'd got good marks in high school. And I didn't know what I was doing. And he pointed

02:07:48.400 it out and helped me learn to, to write. And these people were very serious. They were,

02:07:53.440 we walked through Plato and Aristotle and, and Hobbes and Rousseau and the full breadth of, of

02:07:59.440 Western philosophy. And, and, and it was exciting. And, and there was no politically correct nonsense.

02:08:05.600 And that doesn't mean that it didn't cover the political spectrum. A lot of my professors were

02:08:10.720 democratic socialists, not all of them, but plenty of them were. So they covered the political spectrum.

02:08:17.120 So, and, and I would say too, when, when I was at Harvard and at the University of Toronto,

02:08:23.920 for that matter, that there were no shortage of professors who were providing genuine education

02:08:30.720 that wasn't contaminated with propagandistic nonsense. And so I'm, I'm stunned to hear that

02:08:36.640 you can't bring to mind a single example from your four years that where you got, see,

02:08:42.720 you should have been exposed to people that had the same effect on you as George Orwell's animal farm,

02:08:49.200 at least people who walked you through literature of that caliber and who had respect for it, that

02:08:54.800 the, at minimum, you should have got that.

02:08:58.320 Yeah. But they said towards me not to read Jane or, um, Jane here, because they had a colonial mindset

02:09:05.440 that doesn't brainwash you, you know, without you knowing it. So the problems of reading the Western

02:09:11.680 classic is they were all like bigots and racist and believed in slavery. So, uh, it was,

02:09:19.200 it's an amazing, it's an amazingly, it's a, it's a lie that's so profound that it's absolutely

02:09:26.080 staggering. It's staggering to me to hear again, even though I've been watching this for the last

02:09:32.400 20 years, watching it develop, it's staggering to me that it's, that, that this can actually be the

02:09:38.240 case, that, that that's what taught, what's taught about this tradition that actually produced

02:09:44.480 the first emergence from slavery that's ever existed anywhere.

02:09:51.440 I know. It's just like we, we, in, in North Korea, history was forgotten. Like we, our history begins

02:09:58.240 when Kim Il-sung was born and everything before. We don't even know what Big Bang was. We don't even

02:10:04.000 know who Shakespeare is. Like we don't know who Romeo and Juliet is. And everything was forgotten other

02:10:09.840 than Kim's revolutionary history. And when I came out, what I loved about was that the continuation

02:10:19.200 of life, that life before Kim's, that was amazing. There was things beforehand, way, way beforehand. It

02:10:26.640 was very humbling to those people who thought through things. And you were talking about Plato. I read

02:10:33.920 Plato's on love and how he brings these people talk about discussing what love is, it's mean for them.

02:10:41.440 And it gave me so much like just insights, you know, to understanding humanity. But now,

02:10:48.400 Well, that was kind of the point.

02:10:49.680 Yeah, I know. But going to Colombia, the first thing is like, who loves Jane? I said, yes. But

02:10:55.760 do you know, the problem is, you know, do you know that she believed in all those like ideas back

02:11:00.320 then over colonializing other people countries, and how that embedded in her literature work?

02:11:07.120 And that was like, whoa, I mean, I mean, so they expect everyone in the history to think the same

02:11:14.240 way they do right now at this point, exact same time. And yeah, which is to, which is to basically

02:11:20.400 memorize, you know, 20 platitudes that anyone intelligent can can memorize in 15 minutes, and then

02:11:26.800 to dismiss the entire world of knowledge. These books, when you were reading Orwell,

02:11:32.480 and when you were in that little room in North Korea, or in South Korea, and you had all those

02:11:36.800 books, what were you reading? So Orwell affected you? Who else? You've, you're, you've read now,

02:11:43.200 who's affected you? It's in a lot of ways. I remember that the Siddhartha, the novel,

02:11:51.760 it's a fictional novel. Yes. Yes, that book really gave me a lot of comfort and to think my,

02:12:01.760 how to think of my own journey, and how, how, what kind of things I need to focusing on,

02:12:07.280 like, I could be focusing on, oh, my God, what I went through that, because that was very horrible,

02:12:12.080 what could I focusing on? So I read a lot of classical books, actually. And I think now I'm thinking,

02:12:18.080 it was actually a good thing. I didn't pick up this political crime as books,

02:12:22.400 but rather going time way before then, like 18th century, a lot of literature. So I think

02:12:29.280 a lot of books shaped me in some, a lot, many, many different ways.

02:12:34.240 And now to this day, I was saying, like, reading your book was, of course, you heard that many million

02:12:40.880 times, but it was, you know, people said, like, you really know that you are not alone. And

02:12:51.120 that's the thing, when I was reading your book, it just reminded me of that, the struggle, that

02:12:55.920 shared the struggle that we have on there. Regardless, you're born in North Korea, in America,

02:13:01.440 there's still people kill themselves in America, life is unbearable for anyone. It gave me a lot of

02:13:06.800 compassion because after coming from North Korea to go to New York, like, right, all my 70% of my

02:13:13.280 friends going to therapy. And they tell me, I mean, you gotta go to therapy. And I was like, what is

02:13:18.400 therapy? And of course, coming from North Korea, what do I, what do you know what trauma is even?

02:13:24.560 And back then I was like, the word, the fact that you know, trauma is like, you are so privileged,

02:13:31.200 you don't need the therapy. That's how harsh I was. And I wasn't able to empathize with my friends in

02:13:39.280 New York, like they would go in line for two hours to get into this like delicious, like restaurant.

02:13:45.840 And food to me was always quantity, it was not about quality. It's like, why would I be sitting

02:13:50.960 here with you for two hours and get in the line, right? And, and just understanding all of those like

02:13:58.400 layers of, you know, emotions. And that was, that's why I'm very grateful for your book and how you shaped me.

02:14:10.640 What's next for you? What do you what do you want to have happen now? What, what are you aiming at?

02:14:17.680 So I'm, I'm on the target list of Kim Jong-un. I'm on the killing list. It's been a while, but

02:14:23.840 I mean, we know Kim Jong-un killed his half-brother in Malaysia. He doesn't absolutely care about

02:14:30.480 killing distance. Like even Saudis killed their Jamar Khashoggi and their counsel in Turkey and

02:14:36.400 chopped them off. Still, there's no consequences. The world has way no accountability for these bad

02:14:44.160 guys killing people now. And I think that's why this justice only keep always in my mind.

02:14:50.640 Well, if I'm lucky enough not to get cured, I definitely, I want to do everything I can to

02:14:56.640 raise awareness about Chinese role on enabling this dictatorship. People often think Kim Jong-un is

02:15:04.960 the one who to blame to running this, the biggest concentration camp on earth. But it is not. There

02:15:11.360 is an enabler behind that is China. If without China, North Korean region cannot even alive be with one day.

02:15:19.840 Right. And so we can say with no hesitation whatsoever that there's absolutely no excuse

02:15:25.680 whatsoever for the Chinese Communist Party's support of the North Korean regime.

02:15:30.640 Yes. It's a crime against humanity. It is a crime against humanity. And we have every,

02:15:37.840 every international community with their senses, they have to come together to tell China that.

02:15:42.640 But now everybody, everybody's bought by China. I mean, they own Africa, they own so many countries.

02:15:49.440 If America loses their ground with China and then gives in and do not stand up for what we believe in

02:15:56.080 in this country, we might lose a chance to be ever free and win with China. This is a very serious

02:16:05.280 battle that we are in. It's not a joke that like, and I think that's the thing, America's the last chance,

02:16:12.320 the Western democracy countries has a lot of chance to battle with China, but because until in the past,

02:16:19.280 we thought the democracy was going to prevail. But the thing, look at China, free market didn't have

02:16:26.080 the free politics. They are developing these AI machines to facial recognition to control people in

02:16:33.760 a degree where we never even imagined before. It is truly 1984 by Georgia where they can even look at

02:16:40.160 cameras to see who's there. North Korea started in their malnutrition state, they are buying these AI

02:16:48.320 machines, putting on the town, so it sees who's a stranger is in this town or not, putting these like

02:16:55.280 facial recognition cameras on the border and make sure everybody who's in the place right there.

02:17:00.480 So either we become forever enslaved to this totalitarianism or we break off the cycle.

02:17:08.480 And I don't know, like I can never be that person recklessly say we're going to win in this battle.

02:17:15.680 And to me, this is a very dangerous state we are all in collectively everywhere in this world that

02:17:21.040 we are not safe from this devouring of communism.

02:17:31.440 That's a good place to stop.

02:17:32.800 Yes. Sorry, that was very intense interview.

02:17:41.280 Thank you.

02:17:41.840 Yeah, thank you for-

02:17:43.840 You're quite the creature.

02:17:45.120 I really wish you would have had better professors.

02:17:50.400 You deserve them.

02:17:53.360 Thank you for everything you do, seriously, doctor.

02:17:57.120 It's been, you have no idea how it touches so many, us and me especially, and reminding me of like how

02:18:04.720 good still humans are, and really helping me not to lose my hope. So thank you for everything you do.

02:18:11.600 Yeah, you too, kiddo. Your book's deadly, and so are you. Keep it up. Keep it up.

02:18:29.160 You do it.

02:18:34.080 You do it.

02:18:35.760 You do it.

02:18:38.780 You do it.

02:18:41.280 Go, go, go, go.

02:18:41.600 Go, go.

02:18:45.880 Go, go, go, go.

02:18:49.960 Go, go, go.

02:18:52.800 Go, go.

02:18:54.200 Go, go, go.

02:18:56.060 Go, go, go.

172. Tyranny, Slavery and Columbia U ｜ Yeonmi Park

Summary

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