The Eric Metaxas Show - Yeonmi Park

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

Yeonmi Park, author of "In Order to Live" and "While Time Remains," is in the studio to share her harrowing life story, including her dramatic escape from North Korea to another sad life in China.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, and a mushy banana. For your mind? Drink it all down. It's nummy. I wub, vanilla. I wub, I wub, vanilla. Here comes Eric Metaxus. Hey there, folks. Today, I believe, is Wednesday.

We have, oh boy, there's no way to describe this one. Coming up in both hours today, I'm speaking to Yomi Park. She has a story more harrowing, I think, than any we've ever had on this program. very, very, very important that every American know her story. I don't want to telegraph the punches. I will just let you listen to the conversation. I had her at Socrates in the city a couple of weeks ago. That's similar but different.

We get to go into things today that we didn't get into in the Socrates conversation. So we will air the Socrates conversation. at some point on this program, I don't know when, but in a way we got more time with her today and then tomorrow in our one tomorrow we'll play the last part of it. It's just vital that people hear this story, especially young people, to hear what she went through. I can't stress it enough. We're dealing with evil, and I think this is the new theme. We're dealing with evil. Now, we've always been dealing with evil, but I think what we're going to going through in America right now, more people are becoming aware of the fact that we're dealing

with genuine evil. We've not really seen it before. It's been hidden, but we're seeing it now. I spoke about this a little bit to General Flynn yesterday. I speak about this all the time, that we're seeing it more openly. The demonic, the darkness of the powers arrayed against God and God's purposes and God's people and God's truth. And the only solution is God. And I think a lot of people are waking up to that. Like, okay, here's the good news, folks. God is real. Here's the good news. He wants to help us. So, but we have to acknowledge our need for him. So the conversation today is, is really, really, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's, It's moving. It's powerful. It's very, very important. So I can't stress it enough. So that's today. Both hours I'm talking to Yomi Park. You just don't want to miss it. I mean, what can I tell you?

Tomorrow we'll be talking to John Smirak also. Yep. John Smirik. And now we've been talking about the film Nefarious, which opens in theaters, April 14th. What is that? This Friday. This Friday. Okay. Now listen to this. The film Nefarious, we've been talking about it. Both of us, And I have seen it. It is terrific. I mean, it's the kind of thing. Like, you hope that someday somebody will make films like this. Here's the good news. They did, and it's coming out Friday. It's educational in the sense that it helps you actually understand the spiritual reality behind reality.

And it's just done so well. Now, Steve Dase, who wrote the book and who is behind this film, was mysteriously stricken ill two nights ago, went into the emergency room, totally mysterious, totally bizarre. I got a call from John Zemirak yesterday saying, have you heard of what happened to Steve Dazda? And I had heard. And John was saying, it's kind of interesting here. He's promoting his film, which deals with the reality of the demonic. And suddenly, utterly mysteriously, he is. stricken, they don't know what it was. He goes to the emergency room. It was not looking good.

I'll be honest, spiritual warfare is real. And I remember when I first became a Christian and people would refer to this, I'd kind of like roll my eyes a little bit. Like, okay. Look, it is real. And if you don't understand that, you're a sucker because it is real. Now, the thing is, the devil wants us to say, oh, I don't want any trouble. I'll just back off, which is exactly what happens in the cancel culture. When you're bullied in the cancel culture, they say, just keep your mouth shut and it'll go well for you. You are obliged to do exactly the opposite. You're going to pray more.

You're going to fast more. You're going to do more of God, what God wants you to do, because that's exactly. the thing that the dark forces don't want you to do. They just want to shut you up and keep you quiet. And that's what I'm talking about in the national political situation. Don't say this, don't say that. Just go along, you know, do what they tell you. Hell no. And the real word, the Aramaic, is Gahena. Gahna, no. Because that's the point. That's the point. If you just want to keep your nose clean and stay at a trouble, not only are you being cowardly, which is antithetical to faith in God, but you're doing exactly the opposite of what God made you to do.

It's kind of like somebody saying, like, don't exercise, you'll get sore. You'll get sore. I'm telling you the next day you'll be sore. And you're like, well, here's the deal. That's the point. That's going to make me stronger. And you're scared of that. That's why you're telling me not to exercise. I'm going to exercise even harder. Okay. So I just had to say that the film Nefarious coming out April 14th. It is important. I hope everybody will go see it and pray for Steve days and for everybody's on the front lines. Pray for them. Yeah. Pastor Greg Locke as well. Pastor Greg Locke has made his film in Jesus name or come out in Jesus name. These are important things where something great is happening in the culture where we're seeing

the reality and we get to participate in. Okay. Now, several things to mention, several things before we get to Yom-Me. We have a lot of great guests coming up. Yesterday, I spoke to General Flynn. Oh, my gosh. If you did not hear that, we'll send it out via email today, I think. I'll put it on social media. General Flynn, I can't think of anybody more centrally involved in the battle against the deep state.

it is, I won't say anymore, you should just listen to the interview. But we're going to have him on again soon because we really only got the hour or the half hour or whatever it was. We need to talk to him more. We also have coming up next week, Dick Morris. We love Dick. Oh, my gosh. He is so, he's just, we love him because he's been in this world for a long time. So we love Dick Morris.

We love Brandon Strach. He'll be on, Victor Davis Hansen, a lot of great people. And no kidding. Foreman at some point soon talking about the film coming out about his life. All right. This weekend is Greek Orthodox Easter. It's Orthodox Easter. So I'll be up in Connecticut. My sister-in-law blows our minds by creating this. She's not Greek. And she just does the greatest, you know, so we're looking forward to that to being together as a family. Next week, I'm going to be in Raleigh, North Carolina, speaking at an event. I believe it's sold out. I'm going to be speaking also next week in Atlanta, Georgia, actually Marietta, Georgia.

I believe that's also sold out. But anyway, you can go to my calendar, Eric Mataxis.com. Yeah, you're speaking. The sellout crowds here. Well, that's true. Yeah. And then we're going to do a Soxed City event in Seattle with Michael Medved. I am crazy excited about doing Soxatine City in Seattle.

If you know anybody in the Seattle area, let me tell you, it's going to be at the Arctic Club. It's so great. It is so great. After that, I travel with my daughter to Alaska. And no kidding, I've never been to Alaska before. So I'm speaking in Anchorage at a church. That's the following Sunday. All kinds of crazy stuff coming up.

Yeah. Right? Exciting. Am I right? I want to remind everybody, if you're not following me on social media, I'm on Instagram. I'm on Twitter. Twitter's the most, if you want a news service, just follow me on Twitter.

Don't follow anybody else because I retweet all these other people. If you want to get the inside scoop, because people say, where do I turn? I don't know where to look. I don't know where to get. Well, I'm telling you, that's where to look. That's where to look. Okay. Also, I ask people to sign up for the Socrates in the city.

emails and for the Eric Mataxis.com emails because there is just so much information that we can't really share with you on this program, things, photographs, whatever it is, Socrates and the city.com. But more importantly, ericmetaxis.com. When we come back, folks, hold on to your hat. This is one for the ages. Yomi Park. We'll be right back. Legacy precious metals has a revolutionary new online platform that allows you to invest in real gold and silver. In a few easy steps, you can open an account online, select your medals of choice, and choose to have them stored in a vault or ship to your door. You have access to a dashboard where you can track your portfolio growth in real time anytime. You'll see transparent pricing on each coin and bar.

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I've told you a little bit about her story, but in case you're just tuning in, she escaped from North Korea. You don't need to say much more than that. I don't think. Yomi Park, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me here. It's an amazing thing that this headline that you've escaped from North Korea, you don't really need to say much more. than that because this tells its own story. But I think let's start here, because we were just touching on it a moment ago before the cameras turned on here. I think in America, and I spoke

to this at Socrates and the city the other day, because my mother and father grew up in Europe during the war, because they experienced hunger and danger and tyranny and communism, they They helped me to understand those things a little bit. And I said, and I always say, your average American has been so blessed that things like evil and tyranny, they don't seem real. And so it's important that anyone who's experienced those things talk about those things because those things are real. And in many ways, that's exactly what you have been doing, because you have experienced the darkest evil on planet Earth today, I think, is North Korea. And so I want you to tell your story and we'll explore.

But I think that's at the heart of it, is that you are a witness to evil. And we don't have many of those in America right now, as you've been noticing since you've been here. Yeah, I think it's like, you know, fish in the water to not notice the water, right? Americans were born into freedom, they have no idea what it means to live life without freedom. Thankfully, all right on a sadly, that pandemic was a great, I think, waking up moment for American people, that they realized a tyranny of big government and how powerless the individuals are in a big country like this. Yeah, for the first time, including myself, I said I have never in my life seen anything like this. I mean, most people didn't care who's the governor, who's the mayor.

And then suddenly with the pandemic, it was shocking the power that government have, especially what I will call rogue government. In other words, when they overstep their power and that you find even then it's almost impossible to do anything about it. So this was really the first taste. But I think, and I think that's where you're going with this, that this was a blessing to America to wake some people. up. Yeah. I think it was something needed kind of shock to us that what any government is capable of is not... Come closer to the mic because we want to hear every syllable. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. So I think even American government can be capable of becoming like a North Korean government.

I mean, the pandemic solution was literally copying CCP's policy. Say that, say that again? What America did was copying China. Oh, the CCP? Yes. Oh, I mean, you're not saying this metaphorically. I mean, this is exactly what happened. We said to the WHO and to the communist Chinese, hey, how shall, how should we deal with the pandemic? This is, this is naivete. In other words, I know when you say this, you're aware of the true character of the Chinese communist. No one is more aware than you of the evil nature of the Chinese communists. So it must have been difficult for you to see America respond so foolishly and to allow our enemies, the enemy of freedom in the world, to have the upper hand in helping us figure out what's going on. Yeah, I mean, this, it was

shocking to me that Chinese Communist Party, they are genocide. government. This is a communist party that does not respect human rights. The only thing they care about is their own survivor. However, they were leading the example of how to deal with the pandemic and America was copying them. I think that's when I was really concerned that how we were like lacking a leadership in America. Well, just so people understand why you have the authority to say the things you say, you made very clear at Socrates and City and in your books, which I want to talk about, that it is only because of the Chinese communist government

that the evil of North Korea is allowed to exist. If not for the Chinese government, the evil, and folks I'm not using the word lightly, the satanic evil, the enslavement of literally 25 million people, is only possible because of the Chinese government. So let's talk about both of those things. First of all, let's talk about the evil. Tell us a little briefly growing up in North Korea

because most people know nothing of what it is to live in what is really a slave state. Yeah, it's a, it's when I often say what North Korea is. It's more isolated than even other people. planet so far. We know that little about North Korea. It's a completely isolated nation by their own choice. By the leaders in the country, they chose to isolate people. And when I was growing up in North Korea, I had no clue that I was even oppressed because the oppression, the vocabulary was not part of the world that we were allowed to know. The regime controlled us to the point. They decided what words we can know and what words we cannot know.

I see when you say this, it sounds made up. I mean, it sounds like most Americans in high school read 1984 by George Orwell, and you think, oh, this is a dystopian novel, it's a crazy idea. But the fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the fact is that Yon Mi lived this. You're not exaggerating. This is true. And while we're sitting here now, it's happening now. Yeah.

People don't even know the word love in North Korea. Again, it sounds like you're making it up. You mean this literally. Yeah. The only love, though, we all right to know is like our love towards a dear leader. The dear leader. That is the only time we all right use that word. Not about like another human being.

I tell you, it's silence sometimes is the only response I have to some things you're saying because it's so difficult. We know communism is evil. We know big state authoritarianism is evil, but it has never been more perfectly accomplished than in the state, in the nation of North Korea. It has never been, there has never been a place in the world so perfectly isolated where the people are enslaved not only physically but mentally and emotionally.

Yeah. It's a North Korea has two, they massed two types of dictatorship. One is physical dictatorship, and that's a lot of control. is try, right? Like in Soviet Union in China, the people are not allowed to move different states. They don't have freedom of speech, they don't have a freedom of movement,

they don't have a freedom of religion. The second thing called North Korea coined this term, like emotional dictatorship. Nazi Germany had the dictatorship of the mind, where you literally enslaved people in their minds. And that's a lot of powerful dictatorship

and just physical dictatorship. And therefore, when I was living in North Korea, I was even afraid to think because I was I believe that the dictators could read my mind. See this is we can call it brainwashing and this is so evil it's just difficult for us it's why I I repeated over and over for people to understand how evil this is and I mean it's one thing if you hear a story of some woman is kidnapped and for some time someone is torturing her or abusing her or keeping her from ever seeing the outside world,

every one of us would say, this is a nightmare. This is what you have described, an entire nation in the world today of 25 million people now. For almost 80 years, it's been continuing, and it will probably continue if the world should do nothing about it. Well, I want to talk about your story. You grew up in this world. you talk about being literally hungry.

And again, when people say hungry, we always say, oh, I'm hungry. You know that many millions of North Koreans were forcibly starved to death. We are talking about starvation death, like in the Ukraine under Stalin. And you and your family were able to survive. But talk about eating bugs and leaves to survive, to put something. in your stomach? It's a, that's how I survive, you know, eating grasshoppers and dragonflies and eating plants and flowers.

But I think I'm a mother myself and thinking about it in North Korea, the regime does not accept a formula as an aid. Even the international community begging to give the regime formula medical supplies to people, they say no to the AIDS because they want us to be starving. They want us to be powerless. And if the mother were so malnourished and cannot make the breastmic and child dies. And for us, that was a norm. Like, we did not know what stroller was or formula was.

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Again, use code Eric and save mypillow.com. Welcome back. I'm talking to Yomi Park, who's the author now at the Tender Age of 20. 29 of two books. The first one, Yonemi, is your story. It's called In Order to Live a North Korean girl's journey to freedom. Of course, I've read it and we discussed it at Socrates in the city, but I have said many times, and I will continue to say over and over and over and over, that every young American must read this book. It will change America. It will change America. if every young American will read your book.

Because this is true. This is not fiction. You lived this. And most Americans cannot comprehend the suffering you and your family went through. So let's talk a little bit more about that. You were literally starving and you were forced to find bugs. It's not just that you ate bugs. You had to go look for bugs or leaves or anything to put in your stomach.

How old were you when this happened? I mean, my mom said I ate cockroach even when I was like one. And this was permitted by your family because this was food. So it was like not to the cockroach to my parents, but they were okay because other kids were eating it. So even when I was growing up, like even five or six, I remember the boys in our neighbor, they would like, you know, catch a cockroach and open up and inside there it looks like a little grain looking brown kind of grain things inside the cockroach and they said oh this is the most delicious part and they would give it to me and and that's a thing we don't have a snack we don't have food and

what we could find was rats and cockroaches yeah this is not just kids having fun because kids do crazy things everywhere but we're talking about survival yeah because that's the only anything we were allowed to eat. But you talk about going with your sister into the woods to look for insects, to look for leaves to eat. Yeah. It would say, it's like a daily life

for North Can people. So for me, it's like, why is this like amusing to you, you know? It's like that's not at all amusing. It's horrifying. But it's the point is most people would think, oh, you would do this for fun. You would do this because kids

do crazy things. But this was literally how you survived as a little girl. Yeah, so when we cook something, we find a little bit of grain, and then we need to amplify the portion, right? Because not everybody able to eat a solid food. So we add enough water into a little grain, and then we got to find enough plants to mix it around, three barks to mix it around.

So that scavenger job was my job or my sister's job, and my parents would try to find that grain outside, and we had to go look for those subsidizing food. Subsidizing food. So this is, yeah, we would call this scavenging, genuine scavenging, for almost anything to put in your stomach. Yeah. You talk about many difficult things.

There was, again, most of the, of this is incomprehensible to Americans, but when we're talking about a system of total state control, not sort of total state control, any kind of capitalism, trade is illegal. Everything must come from the state. Not most things. Everything is controlled by the dictator and the state. So even to trade or to have a little business is completely illegal and punishable by horrible things. Yeah, killing death. I mean, political prison camps or prison camps, the word profit is banned in North Korea. Because profit is not a good thing.

Okay, so some people are going to be thinking, what does that mean a word is banned? So what happens? If you use the word like that, what happens? Commoners don't know the word. They don't even know the word. Yeah. So when some foreigners visit North Korea, they tell them, like, don't use the word profit. And so commoners don't even know. That's not even our diction. We don't even talk about profits. But when you talk about, I mean, there are many things that are banned, but you talk what makes it a dictatorship of the mind.

And again, this is so dark, it's difficult for people to process this. but that if you said the wrong thing, your neighbors or your own family will report on you, that this was constant monitoring of every single thing you're saying or doing by people who feel they're loyal to the regime, and they must report on you. So whatever comes out of your mouth, including things you're thinking, you're afraid to think things.

Yeah. Because what would happen? In other words, your neighbor would say, Yon Mi or Yonmi's mother said this. How does that work? So, I mean, that's a thing. The first thing my mom taught me as a young girl is, like, don't even whisper because the birds and mice could hear me.

And, like, we were even afraid to be heard by a little buck. Because we say that even though this, like, normal wall has ears. The spies were everywhere. And even in family, the teachers tell you that if you sit down, something that is wrong, you need to report on parents. So there's no trust between people, including the family members. And if you say the one wrong thing, of course, it's like up to eight generations of your family. Say that again. If you say one wrong thing, it will affect eight generations of your family. Yeah, it's like three to eight generations. In other words,

they will punish if your grandfather did something wrong. And you explain that. in the book, they will punish your parents and you and your children for what your grandparents did. That's how deeply sick and controlling they are. I'm talking to Yonemi Park. It's spelled Y-E-O-N-M-I-M-I-Rq. We'll be right back. Folks, I'm talking to Y-M-M-M-I-Rq about her life story, the main story is told in the book in order to live a North Korean girl's journey to freedom. There's a new book, Wild Time Remains, we'll be talking about that for sure. But just to get back to your story, the fear of saying the wrong thing, the fear, I guess you learn to live with that.

You learn to control your thoughts. You control your words. But you said that one time your father, you described. your father in here. Of course he dies, and it's one of the most moving things in the book. But your father and you inherited this from him was very bright, very entrepreneurial, creative thinking, which is not good if you're living in a place like North Korea. In a way, he was able to use this to his advantage to help the family a little bit. Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, so I was born in 1993, and that's when after Soviet Union collapsed. So until Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea was doing relatively okay because they were getting heavy subsidy from Soviet Union. Once they go collapse and they stopped subsidizing North Korea's economy, and that's when millions of dying from starvation. And the regime just decided not to feed people. Not to feed people. We have to, again, I know people are annoyed because I'm interrupting, but I have to just process what you're saying.

Millions of people were starving. And dying. Millions of people were starving and dying. So while I'm going about my life in the United States, millions of people are targeted by the regime. They're going to die. We know they're going to die. We don't care they're going to die. We're glad they're going to die.

More, less mouths to feed. So you grew up at that time in the 90s as a little girl, and you say in the book that your father and others, they found creative ways. And in some ways, because you could bribe people, it was possible to work around this a little bit, to find ways to get food. Yeah, so North Korea is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. It's very unassuming. The law is so strict. But that's the thing when you live in the totalitarian governments, the officials who are with power, they become unbelievably corrupt. So the people like my father realize that, I mean, if the regime decided not to feed us, how do we learn? I mean, what do we eat? So they're like, okay, we got to engage in black market trading. We need to sell something and they make a little margin on it. So imagine you buy a fish from Fish Town. And then, then you go to inner lands and then you get a margin on top a little bit of that and selling the black market, right? So they started doing that work and that's how my father fed us through selling dried fish, grains, clocks, clothes, and later metals like copper and silver.

Okay, so this was totally illegal, but because the officials were so corrupt, they would get a piece of the action. They would get a bribe and they made this happen. And when things got very desperate, your father, who just sounds like he was an amazing man, he took dramatic risks and he started trading in metal, which became very, very dangerous. But he was desperate. Yeah, that was kind of the only way he could feed us, provide for his family. And so you described this, that this is so. daring, and this is why we have to figure out how to make a movie of your story, because it's so extraordinary on every level. But he used, talk about the railway car that he used.

Right. So in North Korea, has a railway system, but from one country to across another country, in South Korea, it takes like two hours and a half. In North Korea, it takes a month, because electricity runs out. A lot of times people have to push the train to move the train. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, we're not making this up. It is so broken that people literally, in many cases, push the train along the tracks. But this was your father realized this is high-stakes drama that he can smuggle some metals in the train car belonging to the dictator?

Yes, that the one cargo, each train needs to dedicate it to the regime, that needs to carry the goods from other provinces, take it to capital. Pyongyang? Yes, to Pyongyang. Where the dictator lives? Where the dictator lives. And that train cargo, usually even normal police cannot go in search

because of the virus, something they might. carry, like no people can access that train. So he bribed the guards who were in charge of that cargo and put a metal inside. Your father bribed the guards in charge of the dictator's train

car. Yeah. So that he could smuggle things. I mean, this is so daring. It's unbelievable. Yeah. But he was desperate. Because that was, he took a lot of risk. He knew he knew he was taking that risk. So eventually he was caught and taken to where?

I heard that he was sent to a, so before they sentenced you, they need to investigate you. And that's where muscle beating and torture begins. So he was sent to a in Pyongyang where the Investigation Center. And I heard that he was so. torture, then he got swollen like a balloon, and later he got malnutrition where he lost every hair on his head. And so from that point, I didn't get to hear from him. And in North Korea, we don't, you know, have, like, the working phone calls or mail or writing letter to anybody. And of course, prisoners don't even get that right. Normal people cannot even write a letter

to the other person. Nothing works. There's no post office that working in the country. Like, Nothing works. So we're just hoping that he was alive. Well, most Americans are not familiar with torture and anybody familiar with Nazi Germany or many of these dark regimes. It's tough for us to comprehend what other human beings suffer. But this is what your father suffered. When we come back, we're talking to Yomi Park. will continue the conversation. Yomi, how old were you when your father disappeared

when he was taken away? Between eight and nine. So you remember this, I think, vividly. I do. You do? Yeah. You spoke the other day of witnessing public executions. You were younger, I think, when you witnessed that.

I saw multiple. So when I was really young, I don't remember. My mom said she was like piggybacked me in the back of her, and that's how I saw it. But too little. But later, when I was aware of what was happening, that's what I remember. So you saw many public executions, and the public executions were hangings? Shooting. The one that I saw was with bullets.

Yeah. And this was the mother of your friend. And your friend was with you watching her mother be killed. Yeah. So this is life in North Korea. So when you decided somehow to leave North Korea, and this is really the beginning of many more terrible things, but how old were you at that point?

I was 13 years old. 13. Yeah. You happened to live on the border, near the border with China. So you had some awareness that there's a place beyond this border. What did you know about what's beyond the border? So it was very easy.

I was living in the border town of North Korea. And at nighttime, I was able to see the lights, electricity lights coming from that side. And that's when we just got a clue. Maybe if we go to China, they might have some food for us. It was that simple. It was that simple. You're not thinking about freedom, you're thinking about food. And we don't even know the world of freedom that time.

We don't even know the concept of freedom. So it was just simply searching for a bottle of rice. So there's much more, which is in your book, in order to live, which I fully demand everyone listening to this program, buy a copy, and pay your children, your spoiled American children to read the book. So when you're 13, your sister, who's a little bit older than you, somehow gets the idea to escape. She escaped. So she and I was going to escape together, but I got horribly sick.

So I was hospitalized. I forgot about this. Tell us the story. What happened to you? So one day, when we were preparing escaping together, walking downstairs, I got a horrible stomach ache. So they had to take me to the hospital. And of course in North Carolina, we don't have like emergency cars, you know, we don't have the phones. How do you even die?

You don't have ambulances. You don't have phones, so. Yes, so my parents just, like, piggybacked me and walked to the hospital. And a lot of children died that way. Now, your father was with you at this time. He was, he got out from prison for sick leave. So, which is like sick leave means he bribed the guards again. And if he once recovered, he had to go back to prison to serve the term.

Okay. And I don't want to skip over this. We just have a minute left in this hour. But when your father came home on sick leave from where he was, he was a changed man. Yeah. Because of the torture and the horrors that he had suffered. And how did you process that? Were you able to process that?

What happened to him? I think 1984 by Georgia Ova, that Winston. Whenever I read that book, I see my father in him. You know, it's a, it's not his fault. They broke into his soul and he forever changed afterwards. Yeah, it's when Winston, when they, when Winston Smith says, I love Big Brother. It's very, very bleak.

Well, we're getting to an important moment, so we're going to go to a break. We'll be right back talking to Yomi Park. The book is In Order to Live, a North Korean girl's journey to freedom. mandatory reading.