The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 172. Tyranny, Slavery and Columbia U | Yeonmi Park

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

On this episode of the Jordan Peterson Podcast, Jordan was joined by Yeonmi Park. Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector and human rights activist trying to shine a light on the atrocities still being committed in North Korea by the current Kim regime. She wrote her experiences into a bestseller, ‘In Order to Survive.’ She tells stories of her childhood and escaping to remind the world of how terrible things are for North Koreans.

Welcome to season 4, episode 26 of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. On this episode, my dad is joined by Yanmi Park. Yanmi Park is a North Korean defector and human rights activist trying to shine a light on the atrocities that are still being committed in North Korea by the current Kim regime. She wrote her experiences into the best seller in order to survive. She continues to tell stories of her childhood and escaping to remind the world of how terrible things really are for North Koreans. They discussed a variety of topics including her

story of escaping North Korea, being a slave in China after her escape, and Yanmei's current opinions on issues in modern Eastern and Western society. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Traveling has given me a new appreciation for my mattress. Helix Sleep has a quiz that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. You also get an option where they can make half of the mattress a different way so that your significant other who likes it super soft can have a different type of mattress on their side. Helix has soft, medium and firm mattresses, mattresses great for cooling you down if you sleep hot, and even a Helix Plus mattress for plus sized sleepers. I took the Helix quiz and I was matched with

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two free pillows for our listeners at helixleap.com slash Jordan. That's helixleap.com slash Jordan for up to $200 off and two free pillows. Enjoy this episode. Hello everyone. Something too serious today, really, I would say. I'm privileged to be talking to Yon Mi Park. Born in 1993 in North Korea, author of, in order to live 2015, a book which I just finished reading today. And human rights activist and Ted Speaker, Yon Mi Park grew up in a punishing totalitarian society based on Stalinist and Maoist principles. Perhaps the last Stalinist era, totalitarian state on earth, and devoted to the worship of Kim Jong-il

and his family. But at the age of 13, she and her family made a daring escape to China in search of a life-free of tyranny and indeed a life at all. In her viral talks, viewed online nearly 350 million times, and in her book, Park Urges audiences to recognize, think about, and resist the oppression that exists in North Korea and around the world. Hi there. Dr. Pyrrhus, it's an honor to be on Newshia. It's very nice to see you.

I finished about the last third of this book this morning and it makes for harrowing reading. There's no doubt about that. So you lived through some of the harshest times, I would say you and your family likely lived through some of the harshest times in North Korea in the 90s after the Berlin Wall fell and the Russian communists stopped supporting North Korea's economy.

Maybe we could start, I think, by just allowing you to tell your story. So you can start wherever you'd like. Thank you. Exactly. As you mentioned in the Ethers of the Union class, they were stuck in North Korean regime. And North Korean regime is like run by central government economy. So they decide how much rights you can eat that they per person based on their class. So even though the biggest irony of North Korea is that it was found the idea of equality make everybody the same,

the communism, and then they called themselves as a socialist paradise. But they made the internal Koreans into three big categories of classes, and within three categories, they divided 50 subcarriages of classes. So it became the most unequal society that you can imagine right now in our human history. I was going the Northern part of North Korea. So during this fat gray famine that was man-made famine by Kim Rijim, that's where most of North Korea started in the Northern part, where I was born. And people in Kyeong-Nyang, in the capital, they were still very fed. So the motor example that I found was actually the hunger games. There is a capital and they divide 13 different districts.

They make everybody else outside the capital on verge of surviving. So people do not think about what is the meaning of life, what is freedom, or they have to think about is next meal, like can I find food to feed my child? And in Pyongyang, they are really worth that. And they have every intention to maintain the system and the regime.

So that's where I was born in the 1993, seeing the dead bodies on the street was literally every day thing. I never knew that that was like weird words. And that's what I got me the first when I came out, people were saying, like, you know, why there is no revolution in North Korea. And first of all, we don't even know the vocabulary revolution in North Korea. It's a country where they don't teach us about the word love. There's no romantic love in North Korea. It's a country where they don't teach us about the word love.

There's no romantic love in North Korea. I never heard my mom telling me that she loved me. The only word that we know, love, is that we conform of the word where we describe our feelings to us that I feel later, not about another human. So there's no word for love, no word for human rights, dignity, and freedom. And that's why people in North Korea, they don't know they are oppressed, they don't know they are slaves. You said the information control was so total that you had absolutely no idea what was happening in the outside world. And you believed at that time that other, despite what you saw around you, that other countries were much worse.

So even to a very 90s, 21st century North Koreans do not even know the existence of internet. And we do not even have electricity. So of course in school, I never even seen the map of the world. I never even knew. So in school in North Korea, they teach me that, they don't teach me that I'm Asian, they teach me that I'm a Kim your son race. And North Korean calendar begins

not when the Jesus Christ was born, when Kim your son was born. So they cut out entire information and people literally get executed for watching full of information. And that is a crime to be dead in North Korea. So you do not have a freedom even to travel abroad. It's an entire black hole of information.

You don't know outside the cave what's happening. But of course like the leaders like Kim Jong-un, he went to school in Switzerland. The type of elites go out, but the people in the bottom, most of them do not even never even seen the map of the world. And we don't even know what Africa, other continents, other race, and that was like me. And you described the conditions that you grew up in. So you're first of all what stands out quite remarkably is the degree of hunger. So tell me a bit about what it was like when you were a kid in the 90s in Korea with regards to eating.

So as a North Koreans are on average three to four inch shorter than South Koreans, because of the manitiation. And I'm like five to you, but most of North Koreans may not shorter than me. So if we are above four, ten feet high, you must go to military. So tons of North Korean Adore men are around four for 10, like, even below that right now. So this severe manifestation of facts in our brain development. North Korea's average life expectancy is like, if somebody lives up to 60, we think they live a really long life. Like my grandmother, who died from

almost a humanitarian before her 60, every dollar, oh, you should live long enough to do that. So it is a different plan that we are talking about. Being in North Korea, of course, I get only way for me to get my proteins or eating in the grasshoppers, dragonflies, a lot of insects, tree barks, plants, flowers, and that's how we survive. And most of people die in the spring because that's when there is no like really insects and plants are. And that's where every spring, the most of people die and majority people die in that time.

Yes, and you said that for you and for the people around you, spring wasn't a time of hope and renewal, but the absolute worst time of the year. And so maybe you can explain that. Yeah, every spring I remember my skin, so the like cut off from the like vitamin, like this that I would get these things like season, the season of death, every spring, the people who couldn't wait until the summer, so the plants grow. And that's when, like, we all know that tons of people might die. And as you remember, I escaped in the spring, and the March of 2007, one day I had a really bad summer game. And my mom took me to the hospital, but in North Korea, of course there's no electricity, there's no X-ray machines, none of that. Literally on nurse using one meter

to inject every patient in the hospital. And people don't die from cancer in North Korea, they die from infection and hunger mostly. And the doctor literally told my mom that she has a appendix that I think we got to operate on her right now in this afternoon. And they do not use any stature. It's a very, like, people don't use any stature in North Korea.

They would come out, barely open that afternoon. And I was fainting and they said, oh, she just manually, she gets an infection. She doesn't have any appendix. But, and then they close me back. And then literally from our hospital to the bathroom, there were like piles of human bodies piled up. And you see children chasing the rats, eating the rats,

eating human eyes first, and then children catch this rat. And the eatin' they somehow die from, I don't know what it is. Then rats eat the children back. So this cycle of us eating rats and the eatin' spines going continue and continue. Yeah, and you said that was happening in the hospital. You also mentioned that in that episode

that you woke up before the surgery was over because the anesthetic ran out. It was, yeah, it was, it was not even like actually a full anesthetic. It was more like a dose of like a sleeping pill like a lot of tons of it. So most of people in North Korea, right? Even when they cut their legs open, sawing their bones, they do not give any in-state share because the free health care and reason do not provide anything for the people. So you mentioned as well and so we can talk about your familial situation that in the 1990s, the average wage in Korea was the equivalent of $2 a month. And so $1.90 a day is what the UN regards as the line between poverty,

absolute deprivation related poverty and enough to barely subsist on a $1.90 a day. And so North Koreans were making as much in a month as the UN allows for poverty in a day. And you describe, well, eating virtually nothing, rice was a luxury. Other forms of food, especially protein, were virtually unheard of, including fruit. And you, in some of the most memorable sections, you describe going out into the fields with some other children, and you were about seven or eight years old, I guess at this time, and catching dragonflies and roasting them with a lighter. And that was where you got your protein. That is, that's, yeah, I mean, I ate tons of grasshoppers. I remember always, even though it was a free education when we go to school, so in North Korea,

there's no concept of minor. And there's no concept of I. They don't allow us to use the word I. So even though like I say I like food, they say we like food. We like our country. So, and in this scenario, when we go to school, they all view us as a revolutionaries. And therefore, even the children, they go to school, even 8, 7, 9 years old, we all have to work in a manner of construction zones. So, therefore, children, even when they can afford to go to school, it doesn't really mean much to them. Got a school and most of children now in the rescue cannot for the Dakota school and stay at home. And that was like my job in parents go out to find food,

children would like clean and bring the drinking water. We don't even have a switch and going to mountains and bring the lot of the firewood because we don't have a gas or call anything. We have to find anything we can find in the nature to cook food. So it's almost like 16th century of lifestyle that we go to the river and we bathe in the summertime

and in the winter we don't bat. And only a few times we take bath. And that's why I see sometimes cannot believe that, this is the same life that I'm living in right now. So you mentioned earlier the class distinctions that were drawn in North Korea. And this is a characteristic of other totalitarian states, including those predicated on hypothetically,

predicated on absolute equality. You saw this happening in Nostellanous era and also in Maoist China, where if your family members were associated with a group that was deemed oppressive, then that still might impede your chances of survival, let alone progress three or four generations later. So you and I believe your family, if I remember correctly, your grandfather or great grandfather was a land owner. And so what did that mean? So exactly that's what North Korea does right now. They still have this thing called a Gertwe association. So if one person does wrong in North Korea, it doesn't mean you are the one get punished.

Three to eight generations gets punished. So when there was one high ranking official escaped, they killed more than 30,000 people because of the one person's deflection. And that's the cause that I had to bear me spitting out afterwards of my three generation family back in North Korea that punished. So that's like that. My great grandfather, I think, was a small landowner before the communism, everything began in the 1900s, early that time. Because of that, that my grandmother was her status was down.

And the trickiest thing about North Korea's status is that there's not even so many colleagues marrying up. Some other countries, if you marry somebody from higher status, you can go up with them. But in North Korea, there's only going down. If you're high status marrying someone low, you go down with them. That's how they prevent mixing different classes.

Right. And so that's one of the consequences of this idea of group guilt. And so the system is predicated on the idea, was predicated originally on the idea that the land-owning class was oppressive, tyrannical, and while they were thieves, they were immoral thieves, essentially, as an entire class. And, and then that class guilt became so pervasive that it wasn't escapeable across generations. That's where the idea of group guilt takes societies. And how would you contrast that to what you see in the West? It is so unbelievable. I mean, I went to school in America to university and all talk about this. I mean, America also had a slavery and all those oppression.

But now they are collectively being guilty for their history. And how many generations of gold was that even. And then people still trying to punish people who were not doing it at the time. And how do you choose your ancestors? I think that's what was the hardest thing for me to be in North Korea is that, I mean, I wish I had an option to choose the things back then,

but you is not within your control. And now also in America, I see these trends of people going after people who's ancestors more perhaps the slave owners, but how is it relevant to that individual right now who they are? It's not only a contributed back then. So this idea of like, you know,

the geared collectively we associate them and I just never knew that the rest of the world was mighty or so like this in a different degree. But this is something that mainly North Korea holds against its people. They literally call your blood tainted because your father, your great-great-grandfather did something that means you are forever your blood is tainted. You are not like redeemable. And almost now in America, you see that because

some white people there, ancestors, owned the slaves, they are like redeemable. They should be forever guilty about their privilege. And the idea of this word, guilty is also very, it's very hard to even look at this. So heartbreaking, why would you cause that kind of shame on other human? Why it's not there for it at all? Yeah, well, that's a good question, but why you would want that to happen.

Well, I think it's part of the demand for some hypothetical radical equality. I mean, it is the case that some people are born, we're all born with different advantages and disadvantages and some of those are linked to our ethnicity and our race from time to time and there's an attempt to at least in principle level playing field, but it gets very dangerous when you try to equalize the outcomes and when you enter the realm of guilt

by group, that's a catastrophe. Everywhere that's ever been instituted, it's just a complete catastrophe. Because exactly the same thing happened in the Soviet Union and in Maoist China. Your family, your father in particular, but also your mother, they and many, many Koreans in the 1990s

when things fell apart so catastrophically, there was the emergency, re-emergence of free enterprise in some sense. It was illegal, highly illegal, but tell us what your father and your mother did to survive. So as it's in the 90s until then, so in North Korea, you cannot own cars, you cannot own houses. Everything is private. So no private property in North Korea. You don't even own yourself. Everything is stayed on. So therefore trading is illegal. That is a, it's a U.L. Committee not a crime. But after the 90s outside the North Korean government. So the regime created this ideology called the Zootie ideology, self-reliance ideology. So they told the people, okay, you alive on your own, we are not going to give you public participation, you should figure out on your thing. Then how do we figure out on things, we don't have freedom, we cannot even trade,

so people started getting into this thing called a black market. But also, right. So simultaneously. So what was happening in North Korea simultaneously was that the centralized government distribution system collapsed completely when it was no longer subsidized. And the North Korean government decided that everyone was now on their own while simultaneously making any ownership and any trade whatsoever, illegal and punishable with extreme punishments. So you were on your own, but forbidden to do anything that would get you out of your condition of starvation and privation. Exactly. Like you were not thinking bad, people said like, oh, what were you allowed to do in North Korea? I literally sat down one day, like, what was I allowed to do on my own?

Literally, just breathing. That is the only thing that I was allowed to do on my own. The regime literally tell you what to read, what to listen to. They even send you prison if you dance in a wrong way. If you wear jeans, they say it's a symbol of capitalism, they send you prison. If women wear like pants sometimes, they say, oh, you got to women have to wear the skirt. And if you watch a wrong movie, and even the haircut, they tell you what kind of hair

it was a funny joke for the westerners, they, I cannot believe in North Korea, you have to follow the hair cutides the guidelines that's how controlling the regime is they intervene every aspect of your life and literally they when there are sometimes when we have even electricity they would give us this radio that we cannot turn off we can lower the volume but can never turn off at home. So they force us to listen to this propaganda blood. Right, and it's stuck on one channel. Yeah, there's only one channel.

And you can't move it, move the station selector to listen to anything else. That's illegal as well. Yes. And that's the thing, like the regime doesn't allow us to anything. And then let us somehow find a way to survive and of course that means breaking the rules in North Korean. My father was involved in black market where he's studying dry fish, sugar, rice, clothes, clocks, and then later the matter is like copper, silver, copper.

And of course that was illegal. And that's how it was sent to prison camp. Right. And so he started to trade. And you mentioned in your book that the trading as far as you were concerned, that the trading activity that emerged as a consequence of the black market gave North Koreans their first small taste of freedom.

So what do you mean by that? Why did that strike you that way? Because it's a trading is a very empowering act because until that North Koreans have to rely on everything from the region, like literally even the water, everything. But when we started being creative, and they say, okay, I can find the corn, like a cheaper price in this region, and then bring it together region, and bring or maybe fabric from this region to the other region.

So we start getting more control over like how we even think, how to look. And, but it was like North Koreans marketization was extremely controlled and still very limited. But that was almost just giving the people now to think, oh, there is a life when I take my own control of my life, it's better than relying on government who just promised to take care of everything

but who never does. So now the younger generation has tasted marketization and thirst for more freedom to being in the market system. So your conclusion was that there was a direct connection between the act of engaging in free trade, say, at the personal level and the idea of freedom itself. Because it forces you to think for yourself when you trade. When you trade, it's not like you're thinking about, oh, how am I gonna become a better revolutionary for the vision. You think for

yourself, how is it gonna benefit me, my family, if I do this. But for North Koreans, thinking for yourself was something so unheard of. Like when we were born, the first thing they teach us had to bow properly and respect. Then the first thing that my mom told me as a younger was not even whisper, because the birds and mice could hear me. She told me that the most dangerous thing in my body that I had

was my tongue. If you slip out a wrong word, that is end of our entire family clan. That's how much dangerous your tongue is. Yes, so you carefully discuss your experiences with free trade and attribute to that the dawning idea of autonomy and individual freedom, whereas the act of trade is deemed illegal and immoral by the totalitarians. And that's associated in some manner with their insistence that private property is theft and that capitalism by its nature, which would include any free trade of any sort, is also corrupt and malevolent. Right. So, all right. So, your mother, you talked about the restrictions on your speech that even the mice had ears, so to speak.

Your mother was almost thrown into prison camp because of comments that an uncle of yours made, I believe he was visiting from China. And so can you tell that story? So when I was really young, we had some relatives from China. He came and told my mom and Kim was on the first king died. And he said he didn't die from hard working for the people. Because when the Kim staff, they told us that, you know, like literally they tell innocent people, Kim's are starving like all of us. They cannot even sleep. They work tirelessly for us, to help rape a real for having a leader who's death-affless. But toward my mom, actually, she didn't die from like those exhaustion from hardworking, rather he died from some heart attack caused by medical condition. And then my mom was a true believer still.

She was telling her best friend that, can you believe how far on my bad people are saying like this ridiculous rumors about our dear leader? And she was more like telling out of anger that she heard. It was like she was questioning it. But even that was, so in North Carolina, like, you and me, and there's one person, three of us sitting here. I'm watching you, and you're watching together person.

And that person watching me. So even though I'm being a nice person, not gonna be poor to renew, I know that. Don't want to watch me gonna be poor to me. But if that person is not reporting on me that they are, he's gonna be reporting by the other person. So you're being spied and you're just spied on someone. That kind of system made us to not trust in another human. It

cured our trust in another person like we are always paranoid. So that's a good lesson for my mom to learn. Even she taught her life that was her best friend. She was a spy. And she taught her officials and my mom almost risked killing all of us. But the thing is because she never slipped the wallet on other person and she sat in the front intention of defending the revolution. They pardoned her and told her never ever say something like that, ever to anybody. So even my father never knew what was happening there. Right, so even though she thought the rumor was a lie, and when she talked about it, she was outraged that was still enough for a firm and a full investigation with

a tremendous amount of danger associated and it was locked in large part that she escaped from more severe punishment. And the fact maybe that she had small children. Definitely. Like in North Korea, like when you have a newspaper, every front page has be Kim's. But when you turn in the bag of the newspaper,

you don't stop photo of Kim's. Buy me steak. If you rip that newspaper, your family goes through the generation of the concentration camp. So if you rip it. Oh yeah, so if you get a newspaper, you gotta be very careful how the photo is gonna be positioned.

So every household in North Korea have them portraits of kings. If your house caught on fire, the first thing is not you holding your channel one out, you have to hold the portraits to your death. Otherwise, it's gonna kill the regions of your family again. So this is like the kings are gods to us, they can, they are almighty, like the kings are gods to us, they can, they are almighty, they are who can without thoughts, I literally believe that it was a, the North Korea copy the Bible. In its exact Bible, Kim Yusung was a god, loved us so much, gave us his son to a steجiskrist, right, Kim Jong-un. His body dies, but his

space with us forever and ever. Therefore, he knows how many here I have what I think when my future will be. So if we sacrifice ourselves right now for the revolution, we are going to show you in the paradise after life. So North Korea, therefore, is number one Christian persecution country because it's so like so their coffee is so like similarly they cannot show it to those people there's some other ideas like that exists in other country. So that's why they don't also a lot of religion in that way. So you spent a lot of time when you were a kid completely on your own because your dad your father was eventually put in a prison camp and for a long time.

And then your mother spent a lot of time away from you because she had, well, she had to do what she needed to do to raise money so that you could survive. But also she was trying to deal with the situation with your father. So you and your sister, how much age difference is there between you two? Three years. And she's older? Yes, I was eight years old and she's 11 years old. And you spent a lot of time on your own.

Months? Years, three or four years. So what would tell me about a typical day and a typical week when you were on your own? So you'd get up in the morning, you said the roosters would crow. There's no electricity. The roosters would crow. You were living in a city at that time. That time I was moving around the land. So initially I was left along with my sister and the eight years old and in love with my sister. We were living like for three years and then our

relatives separated us. own crew took my sister and my aunt took me to the countryside. That's how I lived also on our two years like that way. And so my typical day is like, when the rooster cries in the summertime, usually 5, 30 a.m. and the wintertime 7 a.m., they're pretty accurate. So North Korea still can now afford the

clocks and that's how we follow the you know, research the timeline. We get up and we go to the mountains and to the daily work. We go and the regime also assign the children to raise a rabbit at home and then we skin them and give you skin to the vision so they can make the soldiers' coats for the day. So everybody gets assignment with the vision. And also the thing is that they don't even have a fertilizer. So they make sure that everybody bring their own bathroom stuff to the school. So tons of them. So even when you're a child, you get tons of assignments from the vision.

Every single one of them associated something and that you're assignment and get it done. Colleagues. Yes, well, you said that as a school child, all of you and all of your friends, your peers, well, as well as the adults, were set out all the time to collect dog waste and human waste, and that that was actually stolen from toilets because it was valuable, it had to be handed over to the state because that was the only source of fertilizer.

Yeah, so even that, so I remember one of my my culture was when I was seeing the trash cans for the first time in my life. Because there was no trash can in North Korea. We literally had nothing to throw away. And coming to the West, we're people having these trash problems. It's like we're the heck am I? And in North Korea, even your own pool is so valuable that they fight for the pool.

It's like the world pool. And if you don't bring the Korra, you're gonna be punished by the regime. So the kids is relevant. They even schooled, they don't study. They sent out us to hunting for the pool, just everywhere and gather them, bring it to school afterwards.

Right, well, that was one of the most striking parts of the book. I'd never, I've read a fair bit about poverty, stricken existence under totalitarian regimes, but that was the first time I'd encountered that particular wrinkle, let's say. So, all right. So you're eight years old and your sister is 11 and you get up with the roosters and you have work to do. What are you eating at that point? How much are you eating and where do you get your food? It's really depends. In North Korea, it's not when you eat so random, like what you get that day. It's a, you know, that's a thing. I never seen a cookbook, you know, how do you find the half pounds of pork and flour and

like scallion? Like we just eat whatever we have at the moment. So if that day we had a potatoes who were like frozen outside because we didn't have a place to put them, then they becomes very dark colors. We cook them and we put lots of water in it and then some dried cabbage in it because you know usually water tears you up so a lot of food has a lot of soup in it in North Korea to fill you up and you know we make sure that we have enough food for the for the evening we divide each meal so depending on how much food we have that day in the morning I'm always like to do public distribution for each one of us and how much you can eat per lesser to meal and some days we just cannot eat and who was distributing it?

I was the my sister was a one more like chopping rules because she was bigger. She was doing more manual work And I was a one more like cooking and doing the domestic work. And where was the food coming from apart from what you gathered? Apart is sometimes my mom before she goes away like for several months She lives us with a few kilograms of corn and like other grains Then we have to divide it for like six days. We don't know when she comes out. Well, you told her back. You told the story at one point about your mother leaving.

I believe she was gone for several months and she left you some money. And you and your sister spent it on sunflower seeds and something else. Some cookies, yeah. Some cookies on the way back from from from where your mother left from and then you had no money for the all the time that she was gone. Exactly. So we learned that lesson the first time she left us gave us some money and then we never had those kind of money big money now. So on the way back we bought some flour seed and some cookies in the plastic bag and then we had nothing left for us and we were not even...

So in North Korea, we don't even have bones. It's not like you can call up somebody where are you. Like a lot of times they go out and they never come back, they might die, you know. You know, disease or station like or accidents. A lot of people never hear a background. So going on a journey in North Korea is like, higher chances of you never seeing them again. And so even though mom would say, I will come back, but we never knew she would. And once that happened, the first time we learned a lesson,

mom would like to leave us a few kilograms of grains and we would divide as much as we could. So we'll narrow now until she comes back. And you said that all you ever thought about and your sister as well was food. And that you dreamed about bread and you fantasized about bread and you talked about how much bread you could conceivably eat and that you were possessed all the time with hunger. I know I'm like thinking as a child I never ate till I fell. So I never knew what was like eating it so my stomach was. I never knew how much should I be fed

so I feel like full. So as a young man I literally, if I even eat the mountains of food, I thought I would never feel full. So we would compare how much I can eat more. So my sister said, I'm 100,000, then I'm like, a mountain and 10 million. And whatever the number of people comes up bigger. And that's how we were dreaming of it. That was the only thing.

Only my soul, that's the thing. When people talk about the civilization, right? It falls when you don't eat. People like become animals, lose all the dignity. All you thinking is just food, basic survivor. And that's what my people always do to me, the basic survivor. Yeah, and you were at that time too too you were seeing death everywhere as a consequence of starvation. I remember like one day my son I walked by near the well as I got people bring the drinking water. There's a young man I don't know like maybe teenager he lies down and his intestines comes out of him and he was still alive and like I'm hungry. Give me something but

As a young mind, I didn't even feel sorry. That's the thing once me the most is that I feel nothing for my life there like And because everything we think I saw was like that and now I'm thinking was I was like psychopath like how'm thinking was I a psychopath? Like how did I find nothing about it? But that's like the so-distance ties those Koreans are. Like, if you're in shock, you're in shock all the time. I mean, you said in many of the experiences you had, for example, that you felt like you were outside

your body watching, and that's a classic sign of dissociative stress. And you are in a situation like that all the time, all the time. So I don't think that you have to consult your conscience about that. It's in your book itself. There's no shortage of empathy on display. So, and I don't think it's a comment on your character. It's a comment on the absolute horror of the situation that you found yourself in. And obviously you were capable of great loyalty to your family members.

And even to some of the people that treated you very, very badly. I mean, the men that you were involved with in part once you escaped from North Korea, you had ambivalent relationships with, but I mean in some, you were able to see their humanity despite the terrible situation that you had been placed in by them. So I don't think there's any issue of you not having the full range of human feelings. It's just you were in situations that were so terrible that no one fortunately, no one in the West essentially

can even imagine being in a situation like that. None of us to speak of, or very small minority of us, have ever been hungry forever, let alone for any protracted period of time. And certainly not to the point of met of chronic malnutrition That's just that just doesn't happen here So okay, so You lost your father was imprisoned when you were about eight seven or eight and and what happened to him

What was the consequence? Consequences for him. He was doing quite well in some sense by North Korean standards with his trading So he was he was he was good at what he was doing quite well in some sense by North Korean standards with his trading. So he was he was he was good at what he was doing and your mother helped him. But he got imprisoned, especially after he moved up into more dangerous commodities. You said that he started to trade metals and that he was hiding the metals in cars railway cars that were reserved for, I think I've got this right for Kim Jong Il. Yes. Yes.

And because they wouldn't be searched. Yes. So every train in North Korea, we only have one train line and that goes from one side of the country to the end. It sometimes takes a month to go because of the the law electricity and the railways are very bad. So, and that's why there's only always a reason for one cargo that carries the things to Kim's from. And what's in that car just out of curiosity? I mean, we hear these rumors, they grow, I mean, the parts of

the country that has a best land for growing up or growing something like best of the best from the country that is especially reserved for them. And nobody actually really knows what's even there. Even when those people who search their cargo cannot go and the people who are guards, they have to do body search and it has check up for them. So that's how surveillance controls. So nobody knows what they're carrying inside. And my father was able to do something with them and then carry the matters in that cargo, hiding. And he was bribing guards to allow that to happen. Yeah. And then he got caught. Yeah. And was put in a... So what kind of talk about the prison situations? The... because just normal life in North Korea

is unbearable by all accounts. But the prisons take that to a whole new level of hell. So what would have your father experienced in a North Korean prison camp? So there are three types of prisons in North Korea. One is for the Gua Li, so it is a concentration camp. Usually you burn there. So you, because you grab, it is the one day my grandfather cumbersome crime, then they take the order, the generation to there. And it is

like a permanent living condition there. You live there forever for the rest of your life. And you're born there, you can be born there because of the group guilt of your ancestors, which never goes away. Right. Now you can never really be the bite of your group, your whatever your ancestors did, whatever you're there. So they don't even interested in the culture of the culture. They're not interested in the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture of the culture But those people know what Kimi's song is. But the thing is, they too also treat them like animals. They don't let them to ever see the garlic eyes. And of course, the conditions are, I mean, it's a Holocaust. What the UN said, in 2014, the UN did three years investigation. And the only resemblance that we found in our history is Holocaust.

This is a Holocaust happening in North Korea again. Do you have any idea how many people are in the concentration camps, the worst of the prisons? Do you know what the estimates are? They say around 200,000. And what about the total prison population? Do you have any numbers for that? Because so many are dying, so when you go to the prison, a lot of them die within three months. So those like numbers are very hard to like get. And it's the most secretive country in the world, like even though the America cannot figure out North Korea. So those we know that there are positions we can

even sound like seeing those public executions happening but it's very hard to estimate how many going in and how many dying after like three months. It's hard to like calculate that numbers. And so your father was in prison for how long? He was sentenced more than 10 years. Initially, it was I thought was 17 years, but North Korea showed the record. It was, I think, 11 years sentence, prison camp. He got out something four or five or four, maybe years later for the sick leave, which means he was thriving. That's the thing. Right. He played a trick on the ward. Right, right. So he think realistically once you get cured, you go back to prison again.

And he was a very big businessman. He learned like guards and get him out. And that's how he got him out during his sentence. And so you saw your father again after a couple of years, how many years were you without him? I think four years. I saw him again when I was 12. Right, and you described that in the book. And so what did you see when you saw your father? What, what, what had happened to him? to him. So when I was reading this book by George Eau in 1984, it talks about the man like Winston, who had a lot of wits and after that old torture, he became empty, right? Like, and a lot of people read that book as a fiction to them, but for me, that was my father.

fiction to them, but for me that was my father. When I saw my father again, of course he had no hair, he just got a prison camp. I mean, all he got was his bones, like literally skin on the bones, and other things, I didn't even feel anything. That's like what I'm still like, he's like, I felt nothing. He was just so empty. His eyes were just hollow and empty. And then he was starting singing songs like, I didn't do enough for my country. Like he was so guilty that he was not a revolutionary or whole. And he was him. And in so many styles of words, they than killing him. He killed his soul permanently that he never came back. And until he died, he forgot to come back and he came back for the regime.

To his death, but he told me never be afraid like the dear leader. And I don't know what he did to him, but he came out as a completely different person. So it was not long after that that you and your family decided to leave North Korea to escape. You were 13. Yeah.

Your dad died. He died of cancer. And it wasn't long after he got out of the prison that that was the case. And then you guys decided to make your way to China. No, I escaped. I should. So my sister at 16, she escaped first with her friend. And I told you, as I got my stomach ache, she let me a note to saying, go find this this lady she will help you to stay. Initially we didn't plan to, I didn't plan to escape with my mom. I was going to escape with my own sister, but because I got sick my sister had to live first. I found a note and found the lady with my mom and told her that she told me if I go to China, she said, I was going to find my sister. Right.

And then, I mean, when you're so desperate, like you don't even know what China is, like we don't have internet to look search and what's going on in China. Just hoping because China is the only place that had lights at night. And if you look at North Korea from a satellite image, it's quite interesting because the entire

country is black at night and it's surrounded by the bright lights of South Korea and all of Southeast Asia. But you have this immense territory, the whole North of Korea that's completely dark. And you talked about standing with your boyfriend at that time, looking at the lights in the distance of China. But you didn't know anything about it at all and had no idea what was going to happen to you if you escaped into China. No, I did not even know what was China. I just saw the lights and maybe if I go where the lights were, I thought maybe I would find a bottle of rice. That's how innocent we thought about it. Right, and some of that

motivation was direct hunger, right? You were you were hoping to find somewhere where you could at least get enough to eat Yeah, it was that thing it's a thing and we present you're so brave that you risk your life or freedom Like no, I wasn't I didn't even know what freedom was then like how do I know what freedom is? And I just was literally escaping to find some food, to survive from hunger. And that's how we crossed that frozen river that night we did my mother and my self-in-house

13 years old, the China living my father behind very North Korea. So tell us what happened, tell us about what happens to North Koreans as they move with the traffickers into Korea, because that's a whole story in and of itself. It's very moment that we are talking about this. So there are like 300,000 North Korean defectors are in China. And they are enslaved by Chinese people. I was one of them. In 2007, we found this lady.

Meal up to this list. She would help me to go to China. I didn't even know why. She brought the guards. So in North Korea, it's the most heavily guarded border with the people with the machine guns. And the only literally barracks land mines on the border. So people would not escape. So entire countries are concentrated in camp. Entire border is served.

We will luckily brought the guards across the frozen river to China. Of course, the first thing I see was my mom being raped in front of me. And you said that your mother offered herself as an alternative to you. And you're 13 at the time. And that was your first introduction to sex of any sort, because there was no sexual education or contact for young people. There was no sexual education and no romance, no dating, anything like that. So that was your manly. Maybe 50 something, but so small. And this man was like, I want to have a sex with her and my mom's like, what do you mean? Like, she's already child. And then he's, I want to have sex with her. So she could just take me instead. And he was raping her in front of me, but I would like, I just never seen a sex video ever never even knew what

rape was that really was not even in my head I just seeing something so horrible that I didn't want to see and after that they took us to this house where they would like literally make a stand-up make us turn on one take our teeth and everything and making price on our body yeah now let me fill in a bit of background there. So the way you lay that out in your autobiography is that there's a heavy demand for North Korean women in China, especially rural China. And the fundamental reason for that, apart from desire for labor, is that China instituted a one-child policy back in the 60s and many, many female, female fetuses were more aborted than male. So there's

a disproportionate number of young Chinese men who have no partner and no probability of acquiring one because there's an absolute shortage of women. And so you and your mother were valuable commodities because of the shortage of women. Exactly. Yes, I've got that right. And there was a price on you were, you both had a high value. And so, and that's when you entered what was essentially the world of slavery. It's a, as you said right now in China, literally 30 million young men has no hope of finding women in their life.

30 million men in China right now. So, because of the regime, Chinese regime do not want this meant to revol revolt even because of dissatisfaction with their lifestyle. In a way, regime, Chinese regime does not crack down on the human rights trafficking meter. We are almost like a price they are using to pay for this man not to revolt. And then so when we go, I was 13 years old, I was a virgin. So my price would be less than $300. In 2007, and my mom's price was less than $100. That's how literal human being worked right now in this 21st century. And then each trafficker buys us price goes up. So the second trafficker comes and buys us and then pays more price. Then they set us to the Chinese farmers or the men or they set us to brothels or prostitution and like a lot

of other like underground words and set us like products like commodity. And that's and then I remember that's the thing like it 13 they were asking so in China in order to be here you got to be soared. And I didn't know what you meant to have to keep me was like what do you mean you're selling a human. I'm not a puppy like how do you sell me and they were like no you got to be soared here. And they said like literally to me was that, if you don't want to be sold, you can go back to North Korea. We can let you guys go back. But the thing is going back to North Korea is a death.

Like even though we obviously, regime doesn't punish me, there's no chance for me to find food. And that's the hardest thing. It's like there's no place for us to go outside the North Korea. If you believe that what the condition is is better than being in North Korea because at least in China we are being fed. That's a matter of real big torture. We are at least being fed. And that's how we stayed in China and decided, and they sorted me separately from my mom,

because they can charge two people's price. So they sorted my mom and sorted me separately, and that's how I got separated from all my family at 13. Yeah, well, you said at the beginning, when you went into China, that you didn't tell the smugglers, the traffickers that you were traveling with your mother, you said that she was younger than she was

and you said that you were older than you were. Exactly. Because they weren't going to take you otherwise. Yeah, so the baby, and you had no idea what was in store for you at that point also. No, I did not know. She told me, oh, don't tell them you guys are mother and daughters to stay or maybe

aunt or something and told my mom you are much younger, you are much older. Because human trafficking was something that I didn't hear about in my life. I was so scared. Because in North Korea, there's no bad news. Every news is a happy news. How amazing we are reading in the revolution. So I never even knew what rape was. In America, if you watch news like somebody raped, you know what, rapies, by North Korea, they still have information from you. Like news is not actual news.

So not knowing what rapies, not knowing what human trafficking is, and just completely into a new, just another like planet. But you had enough to eat. Yeah. And was that the first time in your life that you'd actually had enough to eat, were you able to find enough so that you could eat until you were full? Did you experience that at that point?

That's when I learned another thing is it matter it didn't matter that I had food to you again because I lost everything that mattered to me like I lost everything and so I want to kill myself like I finally went to a place where there was a food for me but then that means maybe in a slave. And I'm losing every single one of them in my life. And I was going to care myself. And at that point this broker told me, if you help me, become my mistress help me with my path trafficking business, that I'm going to help you with your own family. Why did you decide to stay alive? What kept you going? Because my mother, he told me at that point, he said, if I don't kill myself and helping him,

then he said he was going to buy my mom because he is the one who sold my mom to a farmer. Right. So at that point, you were separate and your mother was the enslaved wife, so to speak, of a farmer on a rural community. So she had to be bought back and that's the deal he offered you. And so you decided to stay alive because you thought you could help your mother. It wasn't for you. No, I was, yeah, it was my, then my life mattered to something. When he meant something, I could do something more than that. So he offered to my, bring my father. And that's how I brought my father to China from North Korea. In that October when I was turning 14.

In that October 2007, I saw my father again. And so then you were with this man, Hong Wei, was that his name? Hong Wei. Hong Wei. And you describe a very complex relationship with him. He was violent and a gambler. So he would spend vast amounts of money raised by this trafficking trade and

disperse all of it in gambling fits, and he was violent to you, but you also believed that over time he came to love you. So what do you make of that in retrospect? It's an unbelievably complicated situation to say the least. You know, even though actually is a thing, last year he came out of prison in China after 10 years serving sentence in I sent him money from the US, tell me, help him. And it was for me too. That's a thing. And then I could actually this morning, I woke up from this nightmare of my time with him, how violent he was. Or my day, I was like, so, was hard of, like, all of his nightmares, I went through.

But the thing is, like, nobody's a pure evil, nobody's pure like anger. I think that's what it is. As much as he was so evil, I'm so haunted by nightmares, he still has my parents. He still gave my father's last moment that I can cherish. And I think that's life really really, it's not that simple. Yeah. So you were with him for how long? Two years. And what, what occurred after that?

You went to Mongolia. What was the, what was the trek from, from him now? So he bought your mother back. And so you're together living with him? You and your mother. Yes. You can't find your sister yet at that point. No, we couldn't find my sister. Your father is he still alive at that point when you're with the hallway. So he is during the time after finding my mom, he brought my father six months later. And then my father died three

months, three months later after I saw him again. And you said you had changed dramatically after you left North Korea. You stopped being a child, very, very rapidly. And you started to take care of your mother and to make the decisions. And also, when your father saw you, once he came to China, that he could hardly recognize you. Also, when your father saw you, once he came to China that he could hardly recognize you. I still felt to me that at 13 I became, I don't know what I became, it took so hard for me to fear something again. When I had my own son actually in 2018 and I met you when I had the lecture, actually in 2018 when I met you when I had the lecture that is so you were when I for the first time there's something and like I was so grateful that I was spilling things ever again and so at 13 I learned how not to fear ever and I don't

know how it was possible even so my father came and then he died so I borrowed these ashes in the middle mountain. And after that, home was like he blew all his money from gambling. He couldn't even have. You said when your father did come, though, you did revert to being a child from time to time that you would sit on his lap and that you would turn back into a younger child and then go back into whoever you had become when you went to China. Yeah, I think there were many versions of me back then to survive.

Whatever the version that was fitting me to survive, I think I became that person. It just, it was so complex. I don't even know like who was in my rich person was in my like I became so many persons. I just don't even know how that was possible. Because you know my father before he died like he was keep telling me about his childhood. And I think he just really missed me being a child. I think something may have brought out of me. So my father was very heartening for me to study the language. But so he died and then homework could not work. To have us, he couldn't even able to buy us even food in China. That's really bad. He couldn't even able to feed us. So he was saying, okay, I'm like, I'm going to let you go. Then how do we go? Where do we go?

Even though you're mother at that point, she was insisting that you sell her again if I remember correct. Yeah, I did sell my mom because I couldn't feed her. the only way for me to fend in China. I was being sold again. So I sold my own mom and then gave the money to Hong-E and he plused me one night gambling. So, few months later, I brought my mom, maker, to run away from the farmer that I sold her. And then we luckily found the North Kim lady who operates in a chat room. I don't know you know this. They bring this girl.

So it was better than broth or that's a thing. I had the option of going to prostitution or going to chat room. And for Kim and I thought, it's much better than being touched by men physically than going on a chat room. Well, you said that with Hong Wei, that you know, that was your introduction to sex essentially,

and that it was catastrophic for you. And so, well, and then you, after Hong Wei could no longer afford to feed everyone, that's when you entered the chat rooms. And you were working in the chat rooms for how long? In maybe six, over half a year, maybe less than a year, I think so, like eight, maybe eight months or nine months time. And the people that organized the chat rooms took the vast proportion of the money. I think you got one dollar out of seven was something like that. Something like, but

even that dollar we had to buy food and clothes and other things. So, but the thing is two was better beer than going in the prostitution. And in that chair, we met another North Korean fellow defector and then she told me there was a way out of all this, which means going to South Korea. And then they say, I thought that what do you mean South Korea? South Korea was colonized by America. It's like the horrible, horrible capitalistic world country. And she was like, no, South Korea is free. And that is, I remember the time I learned the word free that day. I was asking her, what do you mean I'm going to be free in South Korea? And she, of course did not know, freedom meant freedom of speech. I'm not sure that she literally told me, oh, in South South Korea you can wear jeans and you can watch in TV and

no one will be arresting you for that. And that's how we consider freedom as North Koreans, like freedom meant wearing jeans. So I asked like then how do I do that and she was saying, oh they need to become Christians. There were Christians like Operation in China. become Christians. There were Christians like Operation in China. If we become Christians, they were going to help us. And it was ironic for me, oh, why? Because I couldn't believe, like, why do we have to keep believing something to survive in North Korea? The believe in Kim's. But now, suddenly, outside North Korea, we had to believe in God to survive. But the thing is, we are so desperate. Like, the truth, somebody took me a bromel, like a rock, they asked me to believe in rock,

I would have believed. That is like a house show where she meant to survive. And the Christians, the Christians that you became associated with in China, were those Chinese Christians or were they missionaries from Western countries? Both. Both.

Some of them from South Korea and some of them from China. And they would have these houses that make us to study Bible. And if we prove our faith to them, they then help us to go to South Korea. And that was a deal that we become Christians and they were going to help us. So at 15, I became a Christian.

Like, I, they made us to go fasting. I mean, like, we like manage all our life, but they say God can do more than that. So they go as like fasting with a three years old child in our group, a toddler, we go passing and make us memorize vibroverses, then they come check us like if we memorize it or not. How do you view that interaction with the Christians in China and retrospect? Was there any of that that was useful or was it just another belief that you had to adopt to survive? So truly honestly, Dr. Pearson, I'm sure I read you both a perverse for life.

I was I was eight years. I was so so against religion because so right now now I'm on video Christians at 15 studying Bible. And then they found out about what I did to survive in China. The chat rooms. Yes. And I remember the pastor was saying, you're so dirty. Like, you can never be washed. And he literally, like some Korean, some verse telling me that how some sins can never be washed. And how I was so dirty for doing what I did to survive. And that was actually a lot harder

and something some ways to going through all that journey because when I was at a point through it, I didn't think that was a bad thing. I thought like something you have to do to survive. Because my father always told me life was gifts. You have to fight for it no matter how hard it is. You should never give up on life. And then I'm certainly now with this mission, it telling me what I did was wrong. I should have a take right instead of doing something that dirty to survive. So it was very tough to do,

like keep thinking for the rest of my life, was it worth it? It's a tough job. Well, but also you were at that point too, you said that the reason that you didn't kill yourself was because you wanted to help your mother. You had other people that were dependent on you, it wasn't just you.

And you were still looking for your sister too, you had no idea what had happened to her at that point. Yeah, I did not. So yeah, and but the thing is now what I'm thinking of them, no matter what he was, he was better than those people talking about. Inclusion, all of that because she risk his life to saving lives. Those pastors, those missions to send the prison for lifetime centers in China. No matter what people say, like you got to see their actions, and these people actually cared about humanity, that anybody that I met having or just flowery loving language they are using. So that's a thing, like, it's so heart-to-mouthed and humanity that even though it hurt me so long,

I'm like forever grateful for what he gave us. And, namely, I mean, I made a name for myself. If I'm dying, keep it up now, but he never did. And he didn't even tell me his name. If you ask him, like, tell us your name. We so we can always thank you afterwards again all. It's not always for making a name. I'm doing this because of love, love for Jesus 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 showed me with the actions that humans can love or not are that like unconditionally. So it's just very complex. So it was his group that took you to you and your mother to Mongolia? They called us how to go to Mongolia because in desert there's no way you can make it out. It's like it's a random love. It's a pure love. That's what I think maybe there were more religious. They were waiting for God to sign to send us because it's not like God taking us.

If you're getting into the God be desert, most of chances, like most of you are never going to be found by any human being on Earth. So you decided that you would just go into the desert and take your chances. Yeah. So that was you and your mom. And then we have five other people in our group, and one baby with us. So it was an AP group.

And then they told us, go follow North West direction in one compass. And then if you cross eight wire fences, hopefully that's not gonna be Mongolia for you. The random chance of taking the luck. And so why was Mongolia a reasonable target or were you just out of options? Because it didn't cost money. If we wanted to go to other countries like Thailand, we had to pay the brokers.

But we didn't have money. So Mongolia was the by walking, we crossing the walks. When you walk, you don't pay anybody. So now really nobody escaped from Mongolia. It's too dangerous. Now most of the factors is keeping the talent, but we were the last people who ever crossed the desert to make it to successfully. So what happened in Mongolia? You did run across authorities? Yes, we did.

After how long were you in the desert? We were actually only there is one day, but it was 2009 in February minus 40 degrees. Minus 40. Yes, in desert. It's a pillow Siberia, so usually guards would think like nobody is crazy enough to cross desert right now in this temperature, because you can die like it within a few minutes if you don't move in desert for even 10 seconds, you're frozen there. You're a constantly moving every seconds. And you said you had very you had almost no clothing at that point because they told you to pack light. Like my mom, how come you didn't freeze? I mean minus 40 is unbelievable.

Exactly. Yeah, it's that's a miracle. Life is a miracle. It's like some things you cannot explain in a human way. People say it's a lot. Maybe you can say it's a lot. I don't know. I remember everything was frozen. We didn't even have gloves or scarves. That's a thing.

And now I'm complaining how coldish cargo is like, no. We were wearing this bare nose snow jacket, none of that. And we, I all I remember was, we remind each other, we gotta keep moving because when you are frozen, it gets very sleepy. And like, you're losing a lot of senses, and it may go on a rest, and then we will remind you, no, we've got to keep going, like, driving each other, moving every second counts, we've got to move. And did all eight of you make it, and the baby as well?

We made it, because initially we have to drug the baby if the baby cries, the girls can hear us. So we would give him the sleeping pill to make him sleep. While sleeping in death wasn't like, whether it's so dangerous thing. So we have to constantly waking him up, like passing around between people to keep him awake. And he made it too. So you were picked up by the authorities

and you were put in a holding camp essentially. It didn't seem compared to many of the other things that you had been through. It didn't seem as awful. Is that reasonable? So tell us about that. So the thing was a long goal. It wasn't something physical hardships. We read through so much.

It doesn't matter. But the thing is they were this is later we learned like so Mongolia they wanted to stand on the North Korean side I mean to the Chinese side and then stand on the North Korean side so we literally brought the lasers and like poison civilians to kill ourselves in front of them. And we thought like they were sending us to China side. But later we learned that these soldiers had never intention, but they love looking at our reactions. How do you react?

Really? Yeah, that's the thing. She's so unbelievable. I know. Like literally, I remember like, trying to convince her with a laser timer, my mom like, we did everything we could to make it. And we luckily they stopped us right before we cut out our serves. But the team who came after us, they went too far so she did a swap out of poison. And then they took her to hospital and she became mentally like lost a lot of her senses

afterwards. So it was a game for a lot of people like hitting us, you know, seeing someone like and I think that's like those very hard to at this point, to make sense of being a human. It's just so hard to know. This is the same life that I've been having. It was like some dream or something. So after that, you were reasonably treated in Mongolia, but you were also subject to a lot of interrogation. And why was that?

Because one is they tried to screen the spies out. Because North Korea sends a lot of spies disguising as defectors and send them. So they can also ask me, like me, someone who speaks out or get information who my relatives are and then send back North Korea. So they can punish the family members of the defectors. So a lot of defectors, just like a spice can do.

But not only that, South Korea also had a very heavy discrimination towards North Koreans. And the country is still very big blame the victims when it comes like the rape, you know, they're like because of you got raped, not a man. So I remember like during my interrogation, you asked me like, do you have tattoo in your body and have 15 years old? And I was like, no, I don't have tattoos. Like, are you sure? They were looking for marks of that would prove that you were engaged in prostitution. Exactly. So I was like, no, and I was, and I'm going to take off your clothes here, are you sure? It's like, yeah.

And that's when I realized, really, there was no angel at all. There was nothing better in the country. Of course, there's all the real bad and good. And South Korea actually is another hard place for North Koreans to adjust. And like, two years ago, there was a mother and son died in the middle of Seoul, South Korea, from starvation. Because of the ignorance from South Korean public towards them, they died from starvation in the middle of a capital of Seoul. I mean, South Korea.

from starvation in the middle of a capital of Seoul, I mean South Korea. So you went through this lengthy interrogation process in Mongolia and then it was decided and your mother was with you and it was decided at that point that you were genuine refugees and you made it from there to South Korea. Yeah. And was that to Seoul? We know from Mongolia several months' integration, they take us to another two months of the integration at the South Korea's intelligence facility. Then they take us to three months of reeducation and program. Right, and that's when they taught you how to be integrated to some degree

into South Korean culture. So talk about that too. That's very interesting. Yeah, so they give us this three month of training periods where they introduce us to new planets. And then that's once they've identified you as genuine refugees. Exactly. So then you got in that stream. Yeah, once they are proven proven sometimes they even go through those like light detectors with all the factors. They really make sure that you're not spy and saying everything is true.

Once that is proven, they process three months of training period where they tell us what bank is right in at In Northern Korea, we never know what bank or 18 machines. They tell us like how to write a bus, how to write a subway, you know, like that's how it's- What did you- What did you think of all that? I mean, you'd been in China for some time, so this wasn't the difference between North Korea and other countries. Wasn't quite as shocking, I presume, but how what was happening to you when you started to understand the massive difference between North Korea and the rest of the world and and also the fact that everything that you had been taught since you were born and everything your parents had been taught all of that was every single bit of it was a lie.

What was that doing to you? That was a thing, as you said. I remember they said, oh, Korean were studied by Kim Yersung, by Americans. And in North Korea, literally, they tell us Americans are pastors, they are the most everything, right? And at that point, my direction was, so if everything that I believe was a lie, how do I know that your saying is not a lie? How do I ever trust ever again?

And it was the hardest thing ever trust me, ever it took many years and when I read by George Oversville, the animal farm, that's when I realized, oh, what they're telling is actually true. But until that point, I didn't trust what's asking. Just what, why was George O'Rourer's book so relevant to you? Why did it have that effect?

Do you know? It's, so I was reading this animal farm, not even knowing what the he is. And it was, I was seeing my grandmother in all the pigs and these young pigs, when they like later when those young pigs born, you don't even know what life was beforehand. They didn't even know the alternative life looks like right, because the first pigs were afraid to speak out and all the terror they kept the silence. So until I was reading that book, I was only blaming the Kim dictatorship because of the dictatorship that

we suffered. But when I was reading that book, I could see all those people were voluntarily, involuntarily supporting in this dictatorship by terror. They were silenced, but it was there for two that we end up in this. Everybody did something, contribute something, make us know it's Korea into the perfect stock year that we are really in the boat. Contributing what? What do they contribute? By keeping silence. But by keeping silent. Yes.

When they have something to say. Exactly. Because when it came to me, Dr. Lake, I didn't even know the word oppression. So if you know you oppressed, you're not oppressed. But to me, in North Korean young generation, we don't even know where oppressed. What is that? But my grandmother knew

she experienced the Kee 4 Kim. She lived through Japanese colonialism. She lived through Kee 4 Kim's. But because of that, they feel of losing their life and the loved ones. I'm sure they had a reason like not to speak up, but because of the fear and not standing up for the right, just now North Korea in a point where people don't even know what life can be look like. Well, Sojititsyn was convinced that a totalitarian state could not exist unless everyone was participating in the lie and that the most potent anti-authoritarian action is to tell the truth. And that means to say something

when you have something to say, because not because you're brave, but I think, but because the alternative is worse. Yeah, that's... And it was or well. It's so interesting to me that it was or well that opened your eyes to that. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but, but it's still really something.

Yeah, I know it's like, uh, that, like that book, I think that's when I realized, oh, everybody was responsible. And that's when I started thinking about speaking out. That's when you started thinking about speaking out with That's when you started thinking about speaking out. I see. And so you made a conscious decision at that point. Yeah. Why?

Why? Because I knew the price of silence. Because that was a price-rear pain, not even knowing. That's the thing. When people say, why no revolution is like, because we don't know we are slaves in North Korea. How do you fight with me when you don't know you're a slave? And that's a different thing.

The fact that my people don't even know they are oppressed, that's the thing. What cares me to this point about my father is, not like he, of, I would be great for he left, I lived in freedom even one day. But the heartbreaking thing is he didn't even know life could be this free and life could be this beautiful. He didn't even know that like life could be so different for other human beings. I just wish he knew before he goes so he doesn't remember this life so hard, it's fairly with the sadness you know. And that's the thing with

North Koreans we're talking with different variable pressure. You don't even know life can be this way. And yeah, so that was my time of understanding what happened and started believing in this freedom. So you're in the reeducation process in South Korea learning to be a South Korean learning to some degree how to fit in the culture learning to some degree, how to fit in the culture, learning to some degree, how to be free. Did you start reading at that point? Or when were you, for example, when did you encounter Orwell? Was that when you went to university later? Before my university, I was 16, I think, 16 years old. And how did you come across the book? I think 16 years old. And how did you come across the book? It was, so I was in this factor school because I was 15 years old, almost 16 years old. They did a placement example for me.

And as you said, I don't even know the map of the word. My grade came out like seven years old, like intelligence. Right, so you got out of the re-education process and then you lived, where did you live with your mother got out of the re-education process and then you lived, where did you live with your mother after you left the re-education process? They prosum in a public housing in the countryside. There were a lot like mentally ill people were living. And then that's when you decided

that you were gonna go back to school? Yes, that's where I wanted to go to school. But then if I wanted to go to school, there's no way I can be going studying with seven years old. But even though a lot of the factors do that, there's 24, they start studying with the seven years or in the same classroom. And I want to take a GED.

So I go to catch up quickly. And I went to a special defector school where they would help us studying in the GED. And a bookshelf, there was just book tiny book called like the animal farm. And I picked it up because it looked very thin. Nothing, I gave my easy, quick read. And that's, I remember when you that was the point where my life was going to be changed. That's really something. So then you went to school. And you had to convince the authorities

to support your desire to be educated. Your plan was to go to university. How in the world did you formulate that plan? How did you even find out about university? I mean, I guess you knew that already in North Korea. You knew, sorry, you knew that plan. How did you even find out about university? I mean, I guess you knew that already in North Korea. You knew, sorry, you knew that already. But why did you, why did you decide that you needed to go to university? What was driving you? It was, so remember that they were asking me what do I do after like kids here, after the vacation, what do I do? And I told them like, I want to go study and it's like, why?

You know, like studying in this house, Korea is most compatible countries and it comes education. How are you going to compete? There's no chance for you to survive. I was even speaking ABCD out of English at that time as an adult. So, but I don't know. That's the thing.

Something was in me was thirst for knowledge that I always knew that I wanted to study, I wanted to learn how to word work. So I kept that and keep getting back to books. I was reading books is like because there is such a high discrimination. Nobody wanted to be friends with North Koreans anymore in South Korea. And everybody told me that I was failure. Before you might be, yeah, there's like, you are never gonna be competing. You are never gonna be in this competition. So only the books were the ones telling me that I could do it. The books were.

Yeah, only the books were telling me. Of course book has you can do, right? But everybody that human being I met was telling I couldn't do it. So I just keep reading books. Yes, well, you can make contact with great minds that encourage you through books. And thank God for that, right? That's what they're for. So, and you, so you got your high school equivalency. How long did that take you? I had to do the from elementary to high school. So it took like, like, over just a one year. One year. You did all that one year.

Yeah. So I went to college at 17. At 17. So you passed your G and you've only had two years of education in North Korea, but most of that time you were like working at manual labor. Yes, yes. Now you could, how was your reading ability in North Korea? Were you already literate? No, a little bit, but also the vocabulary was also different in South Korea. Like, we don't know what shopping money is because we don't know shopping, right?

It was a supermarket, what is dry cleaning. So I had to write down, it wasn't like English to South Korea was easier because I already knew the concept. But like learning about gay, when I met somebody gay and told me, he told me, you helped me and he told me, baby, don't worry, I'm gay. And then like what gay is? Understanding a concept takes a very long more than learning a language. So that's longer for me.

Because it's exactly the 1980s for the Georgia where I talked about double speak, who controls the language, he controls thoughts. So North Korea purposefully eliminated words like stress because how can you be stressed in the socialist paradise? So they get rid of stress, they get rid of depression, they get rid of trauma, they get rid of all these concepts that people know here, we don't have in North Korea. So I think that was very challenging than even learning new language. So is it fair to say that you taught yourself to read and you got your GED equivalent, you did that in one year and so you were ready to go to university at the age of seven. How in

the world did you do that? How much time were you spending every day studying? I didn't so, that was a funny story. I ended up in the ER and then they were saying, you're managed because I didn't have time to eat, I forgot to eat. So even when I was sleeping, I would have turned on the like a TED Talks or NPR so I can like listen, my brains, they kept working. And even when I was sleeping, I would put the books behind my pillow so the like knowledge is going to me, I was obsessed. I was crazy. You were obsessed with. Yeah, I was, I was a completely obsessed with learning. And how did you manage to survive economically during this time? How did your mom and you make money?

I know you got some money from the South Korean government, right? Was that enough to get you through that first year or what happened? No. They give for the six months they do, they help you to pay yourself on beers and the house, like the the amenities where you pay the utility beers. But after 60 months, you are on your own. So you're completely obsessed with studying to the point where you're not even eating. And we should also just stress here,

it is definitely the case that the education process is unbelievably competitive in South Korea, as you've already pointed out, far and above what people in young people in North America can imagine or in Europe for that matter. And so you were facing very, very heavy competition. So, but you got obsessed to the point where you weren't even eating. That's amazing because I would have thought that you would be more motivated to eat after what you did virtually. But you were hungrier for knowledge than for food,

despite and you had been starved of both. Exactly. I was working at this, I don't know, Sunday, go to Dai, so it's like a $1 store in South Korea, the Japanese brunch. So I was working there as a part-time job, and I was minor. So my mom had to give a part-time job, and I was minor. So my mom had to give the like,

authorization that she would let me work. And then I was working as a wedding horse, like serving food as a waitress. So I was working, and then my mom was also doing the dishes and helping me. And I was living in these rooms and so, because I was studying where, under one, I didn't even have a window. And I still remember those times I was so happy because I had a goal.

Like, I was, you know, like this tiny room where you can stretch your feet, like, barely, I'm like five terms tiny in that room. I was like living there, all I had was books with me and dream. Yeah, well, a room full of books isn't small. I was like living there or there was books with me and dream. Yeah, well, a room full of books isn't small. Exactly. It was, it was large, yeah. Right, absolutely, absolutely. So you got your GED and then you applied to university

for in a competitive program and they, there was still trouble with you getting in, but you managed it. How did you manage it? And how did you decide what you were going to do? I was going to study camera justice. It was so, so much injustice. And even in South Korea, so so much of it,

I really wanted to understand how that worked. You know, how, how much this thing is called justice. So I, I'm grateful they gave me opportunity to study that program. And but now it's, it's such a, like, I don't know how I was going through all of that, but somehow back then I had a drive that I didn't even knew I had. And so you, you were at the University for how long? Four years? Was it a four-year degree? It was four years degree, but I only do three years and a half.

Before the last semester, I went to Columbia University in New York and switched to my major there. Okay, okay. Now in Korea, was that at the same time you were also working for at a Korean television station? Okay. So there's a bit of a detour there. You were, you were cast in some sense as the North Korean Paris Hilton. So that's extraordinarily bizarre. So tell me about that. What happened? Now I'm just in criminal justice in a tab

university very competitive program doing this physical training to become an intelligence officer later. And then I get a call from TV producers saying they are trying to make a show. Because on tiered that point, North Korea was portrayed as very just heartbreaking documentary you know people with like looks like robots when they're deolidodized,

really looks very inhuman but they wanted to make a show entertainment show not a document entertainment show bring younger they thought was pretty, bringing a beautiful designer clothes and studio, put them in a makeup, and then talk about their life in a lively. It's so they were sure more of what the chat really be different ladies. And they had that before, beautiful from the Russia, Poland, America, now they are going to do that with North Korean young, young girls. I even want to go and I was like, no, of course I'm not. But then they told me, you know, South Koreans shows are super popular in China and all other estatias. Because you lost your sister, your sister might be able to see it

and then find you in South Korea. But because before that, I was looking for my sister on a one-edge kitchen program and they saw me there and then found me how that's how and they they knew that talking about my sister always like me. So that was a thing. That was a deal for me to go on the show and talk about my sister and hopefully she stays in company because I was still looking for her. But the thing is because I told them about my father's black market business before his arrest, they thought,

of course, how do I know who's parasitian is? I don't know, but they needed a character for each character in the show business. That's what they say. You cannot be complicated. You gotta be one simple thing. Everybody gotta have characters, and then they name you. So I was going into, I don't know where to show business.

It is unbelievable. It is unbelievable. Well, it's also unbelievable the role that you were cast in. It's so, it has such a contrast with what actually, well, with what the reality of your life in North Korea really was. But the thing is, in that show, I learned actually what I went through was nothing.

Talk to like, I was in a way of some sense of Palestinian because they went through, like literally cannibalism is a weird thing in North Korea. And I would not want to, people say, don't dehumanize, so why are you talking about those things? But like, what I went through wasn't even close to what other people went through. And what my sister went through in China, who decided to never ever talk about ever again in her life. In that seven years, what I went through was nothing. That's that really, that three years of being on the show and hearing other how all the people managed to survive, managed to survive. Maybe me was like, oh my gosh, I have this so easy, I'm so grateful.

I have this so grateful, I stood to this, I don't know how I got that lucky. So you're taking criminology and you're three years in and you're doing this TV show on the side and you discover your sister. Yeah, she gave become a South Korean and she's so the show. Eventually she did. And you reunited with her in South Korea? Yes, she did. I found her when I was 20 years old. Do you see each other now? Now my sister's a teacher in South Korea.

And we see each other often, but because we live in a different country, I'm in America, she's a science-house career. Right, but you have a familial relationship, it's just distant. Definitely yes, yes. Okay, so now you're, now you said that you ranked 30th,

I think, out of 94 students in the program. Yeah. So you were able to hold your own against the intense competition. Yes, I do do my best. Yes, apparently. And then, so, how in the world did you end up at Columbia? Now, you don't write about that. Do you write about that? Did I miss that?

No, I didn't write it because it was after. OK, OK, so now we're getting to the point. This is past. So I just remind everybody that we've gone over some of the details that characterize this autobiography in order to live. So now we're moving a bit past it, because it was published in 2015.

So there's been six years, six intermediating years. So how in the world did you end up at Columbia? What happened? So one day I have a friend in America told me, do you want to go this conference called the Youth Leaders Gathering in Ireland? And in South Korea in 2014, I never even been to Europe. And I don't even know what Ireland is. I thought it was somewhere like in UK or something. And then they say, if you participate, they would pay your flight and knowledge in for fee.

Every South Korean student's dream is going to back back in Europe. So I was like, oh my god, I got this. I want the lifetime to go to Europe for fee in my college. And then so this is a conference called One Young World. They bring the youth leaders from every country. So they called North Korean embassy in the UK saying, can you send the delegation to us?

And two, we just need two delegates from each country, North Korea, we're going to them now, because they have the spy on us, so we came on the same three. So they said, okay, how about we sponsor two, and then you guys sponsor one, so we can bring three, and the North Koreans will know thank you. And that's also, okay, they give you a lot of roof or defectors, because they didn't want to sponsor four or three people.

That's how they found me through my friends. So in that conference, I applied to become a delegate speaker along with other 34 delegate speakers. I was a really average person. And then I did a lot of three times like the interview with them. I selected as a speaker at the end. And a lot of many, many speakers together. And there I shared about what was happening to my

people in China, how the Chinese were on, you know, being silent and still they are allowing this human trafficking happening, right? Like, if you see the girls captured by Taliban, like, Michel Obama, have no problems standing up for girls captured by her vocal horn. So many people talk about this girl's, but many come to North Korean, there's nobody talks about it because they don't want to upset Chinese regime. So my speech in that conference really became wider. And that's what you focused on in that speech.

Yes, I was only focusing on my, like the the women's what we are going through in China. And I didn't even plan to be that speech goal provider. Nobody can plan it. It was an actual accident. I was in the middle of university attending. I had to go back to Korea too. But that speech became very fighter. And then I got a book offered from Penguin Landon House. And then they my agent was in New York. That's how I went to New York. But while I was writing the book, I always loved learning. So I wanted to study. I wanted to continue my study and they told me that I was university in New York called Columbia. So that's how I applied there and then went there to study. And did you, did you finish your undergraduate there?

Did you do an advanced degree? You finished your undergraduate then? I did under bad four years there. So I did almost like eight years of bachelor. Okay, so you had, you'd gone to university and came out of North Korea. Then you went to university in South Korea. So you got, you got to see that culture as an outsider. And then you came to the United States

and you got to see Columbia University. So what did you conclude about your time in Columbia University? What were your impressions? What do you have to say to people about what you saw? I know you, oh my God. So that four years from 2016 to 2020, it was a complete madness. I became very pessimistic about the Western world after university because, literally in this humanity classes, even the economics, I was studying economics for two years and later he might.

The professor would send me the like emails, oh, this, this class, we're going to cover this, this, if he triggers you, you don't have to come to the class or don't even do the reading. I'm a slave. I want to do so many things and they say, oh, this can trigger the rape, this can trigger this. And then like, they say, every before the class, they say, let's go through what you need to be called your pronouns. And my English is not that good. I sometimes mistechnical him or she, like, and then they start asking me to say, day, and then I don't know how to incorporate my English that brought on properly. And it made me so nervous to talk in the classroom. And one day I got into fire with my professor, she was saying, the fact that you're letting men

hold in door for you is you are giving in to their overpowering you. And I was like, you know, it's need kindness, it's a distance. Yeah, I would offer people to it's not like I'm trying to stick it on the other part for the new. And she was like, you're so brand-mars from North Korea. Like, and I was scenario, of course, my GPA is going to be effective.

And it's like, okay, I got a really shadow. I got to try to do my best to get a good GPA. So, that four years, I learned to censor myself all over again. And it became ridiculous. I literally, exactly, I literally risked my life to say what I think is right. And now I'm in a country where I've four years of time try how to be creative, safe space, and be sensitive enough. So, and where am I like? And it gave me a lot of chaos. Like, did I become free?

Like, was it where am I? Is there any truly free place in this world right now? Well, okay, so you were in this university in Korea, and Korean universities are intense. And so how would you contrast the quality of the education that you received, and their very Western influence the South Korean university? So they're a product of the Western university system.

So how would you contrast your experience at the South Korean University with Columbia, which is in principle one of the great Western American institutions, educational institutions? So I do think it sounds Korea is way more technical. They are way more in to try and teach you the scare set, like if you know, more giving you actually knowledge. But I think Americans are very obsessed. That was my impression at Columbia. We're really trying

to help you how to think, but almost like you would shape how you think. They are very into shaping your minds how you think about something. In South Korean study program was more like, oh, this is the fact, this is what happened in history. This is what we're gonna do. This is a modern, we're gonna apply to some of this grammar case, like, you know, this is how things work. But lately though, when you come to sociology, it's been very influenced by the Western,

like the mainstream education. So a lot of anti-Western sentiments was definitely there. And it's just, I- In Korea as well. Oh, yes, definitely. All those like sociology and those subjects is definitely influenced. And South Korea is now becoming a communist again, definitely. It is a start trend to see that, like right now, South Korea, new demands of socialism and

freedom is so fragile, like it's never going to be there if you don't fight for it. And South Korea's democracy is falling and there's freedom of speech. Right now, in South Korea, I doctorate for you, send us a liftlets, they reuse the sentinarsia to free paper's minds. So we use sendinarsia liftlets about like you Kim's dictators, you are being right. And that was a freedom,

a separate expression that was covered by South Korean constitution. But now that just got became criminalized in South Korea like last few months ago. What exactly was criminalized? Advocating freedom in North Korea. Because South Korea, but their defense is that because we say we support freedom in North Korea,

then North Korea is saying we are going to start a world review about that. So for the protecting South Koreans, people's freedom, you cannot advocate freedom for North Korean people in the South Korea. And what do you think about? This is another thing, there's going to be a price for being silent about something like this happening, right? It's if they can't for this, how do we know they are not going to go after other rights? That's how it all this cycle begins. So it is definitely dangerous what they're taking to keep saying in the name of protection, in the name of this, we are going to silence you, we're going to silence this, this, this, this.

And that's what North Korea did, right? In the name of equality, pure, pure equality, you're going to get rid of freedom of speech, freedom of gathering, all of this. And now they left with nothing. Only people allowed to do is just breathing. So why did you stay at Columbia? Oh, it was, it was my father's dream for me to be college educated. I found it was not worth it.

It was so certain to this day that it was so, sorry, it was so, It was waste of time, energy, and money. Really? That's a terrible thing. That's terrible. It was. Honestly, I tell my son, if you want to study humanity in one of these universities, I'm never going to pay for it. I'm so clear on that to my son. I'm so embarrassed about that.

I'm so embarrassed about that. It's so awful to hear that. Those universities, they were great, you know. They were great. Yes, definitely. And it's not that long ago that they were great, that they did what they said they were going to do. And if you went and got a humanities education, you got educated. You learned to write, you learned to think, you learned history, you learned to be cultured. That happened. It wasn't that long ago. It was when I went to university it was still like that. When I taught at Harvard it was still like that. There were politically correct murmurings and rumblings, but by and large the university was still uncorrupted.

And the humanities are at the core of the university. If they're corrupted, if they go, if they've gone in the way that you're already describing, there's no way the universities can survive. They're not technical schools. The core of the university was the humanities. I mean, look at what animal farm did for you. That's what reading great books does for people. It illuminates their soul.

It's not optional. And I'm so appalled that that was your experience at Columbia. It's so awful that you went through all that and managed to get to this great university. And you know, in that, and that you had to shut yourself down and that your basic conclusion was that it was a waste of time. Now, did you have courses where that wasn't the case? Did you have courses that were worth it? I mean, so one class I remember in my senior year,

it was called the Western Civilization, the Music Art, one of the core that Columbia had is a Western Art. And the music. Has still not for long. But then I was excited to learn about, I think this is through the West, America is in the West, right? It would be funny if you studied Eastern music at the end of the Indochore. And professors like who has a problem with calling the Western civilization like art?

And everything, all of the lives in their hands, because they were saying there were so many artists were greater than Beethoven and Mozart, we silenced them, erased them all, and that's why we have now end up studying these bigotes, you know, who are racist. And I'm like, and then they were like looking at me, why are you not pre-earth and stuff? Somebody who doesn't have the problem with talking about best sense of realization. So that's like I was like, what do I even have to do this to graduate? And that was of course next three to do that course to graduate. So every every class had an element of being a politically correct and shaping you how you think. And I learned how to censor myself so well at the Columbia and then I was freaked out one day, like what am I doing? This is not what I escaped, you know, it just

and I'm so ashamed of that. That's so awful. I can't believe it. You know, it's no picnic to watch these great institutions hang themselves. Yeah. I literally felt like it's a suicide of civilization. Like we are killing our selves here. And killing ourselves here. And that's why I was like, what? I mean, that's what scares me is that when I was so grateful to go into South Korea and was outside of North Korea,

it was at least a place that was left to be free. And all these people obsessed fighting for, you know, climate change, animals rights, gender equality, transgender, whatever all these things people fighting for. Wonderful. But then, imagine when nobody's feeding this word, who's gonna fight for us. And that's like what terror for me is like,

imagine all of us became enslaved like North Koreans, all of us did in that system. There's no one can stand up for any of us. And I guess because I always knew that it was guaranteed, like when I got camping with my friends, my friends somehow always a confidence that they're gonna find food, even though when they're going to the remote area. Now me, I always hacking is like energy bars, blah blah always really me because I know that you can end up not having ever other food. So maybe this is a mentality that in the rest, freedom was always there. Some people think it's gonna be meocrystallia gonna be always there. And for me it's like no it can't be not there. That's you know that's why we's going to be meocrystallically going to be always there. And for a music, no, it can be not there. That's, you know, that's why we were supposed to be educating young people.

We were supposed to be teaching them that, no, it's not always there. It's fragile and you better take care of it because the default condition is authoritarian starvation. And if that isn't happening, it's a bloody miracle. Yeah, that is, and that's where I am at right now in North Korea, while of course I'm fighting for my people's freedom, but there's so much interest in it. I didn't hallowed. They do not want to stand up anything behind the thing is challenging Chinese Communist Party. No mainstream, no Hollywood stars, no body in America want to be behind the movements that challenging Chinese Communist Party. Well, I've seen this over and over in the universities too.

You know, it was often the case that it was my psychology classes where the students learned about what happened in Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China. They hadn't been taught at all. They hadn't been taught that tens of millions of people died in China. They hadn't been taught about what happened in North Korea. They hadn't been taught about what happened in Russia. It was like that never existed, even though the Cold War was all about that. And it's app's, and I think you see exactly the same thing, while you're pointing out exactly the same thing.

How blind can we possibly be? I know, the people say like, oh, he's a little bit so many people, but do you know actually Mao killed the most human beings on earth? He killed like 50 to 60 million people. The Chinese communism killed more people than anybody ever did in our human history. Yes, and the Chinese Communist Party still

controls China. And the only reason people aren't starving to death there now is because they adopted, but because they had no choice, essentially, because people did start to rebel to some degree, they introduced free market transformations. It's the only reason that China has emerged as powerful economically as it is. Yeah. So what's next for you?

You've graduated from Columbia. When did you graduate? January of 2011. I gotta ask you to ask you again. I got to ask you again. There wasn't there at least one course that you took there taught by someone that taught you what you wanted to learn One course One course. You should know, like if there was, you'd know. I knew, I liked about the evolution class about how the humans we became who we are.

You know, going to the human irractous and like haveless or that humanity journey. But then of course, you always had a political crime as elements, always in the textbook everywhere. So, I like the economy classes a lot because you really help me understand how the world worked in some other ways. But then, of course, it's all about the payment gender gender equality, payments, blah, blah, all that like macroeconomics has that thing. So I mean, I think it felt a lot. It was, it was, it was, but I think it was worth of that amount of money, especially, and the effort to go.

You can take them online. Just. Look, I had professors. I had lots of professors who were great. I went to this little college when I was 18, at 17, I guess, because that's when I went to college. And it was just an adventure for me. I got the people who taught me I had an English professor.

His name escapes me at the moment, unfortunately. Dennis Wheeler was my political science professor. I remember that from 30 years ago. I can't remember my English professors name, unfortunately. I had a philosophy professor named Long and Back. Like six or seven professors. And it was a small college. It wasn't an elite institution.

And they loved to teach. And I had a group of friends that loved to learn. And it was great. Like, it was great. I learned a tremendous amount. I learned that I didn't know how to write. And they taught me Robin Burke. That was the English professor's name.

He gave me a D on my first paper. It shot me to death because I'd got good marks in high school. And I didn't know what I was doing. And he pointed it out and helped me learn to write. And these people were very serious. They were, we walked through Plato and Aristotle and Hobbes and Rousseau and the full breadth of Western philosophy. And it was exciting. And there was no politically correct nonsense. And that doesn't mean that it didn't cover the political spectrum. A lot of my professors were democratic socialists, not all of them, but plenty of them were.

So they covered the political spectrum. And I would say too, when I was at Harvard and at the University of Toronto for that matter, that there were no shortage of professors who were providing genuine education that wasn't contaminated with propagandistic nonsense. And so I'm stunned to hear that you can't bring to mind a single example from your four years that where you got, see, you should have been exposed to people that had the same effect on you as George Irwell's animal farm, at least people who walked you through literature of that caliber and who had respect for it. At minimum, you should have got that.

Yeah, but they said to me not to read Jane or Jane here because they had a colonial mindset. It's not brainwash you, you know, without you knowing it. So the problems of reading the lesson class, they were all like bigots and racists and believes in slavery. So it was, I'm going to say. It's an amazing, it's an amazingly, it's a lie that's so profound that it's absolutely staggering, it's staggering to me to hear again, even though I've been watching this for the last 20 years watching it develop.

It's staggering to me that this can actually be the case, that that's what's taught about this tradition that actually produced the first emergence from slavery that's ever existed anywhere. I know, it's just like we, in North Korea, history was forgotten. Like we, our history begins when Kim was someone's born. And everything before we don't even know what Big Bang was, we don't even know who Shakespeare is. Like we don't know Romeo and Juliet is.

And everything was forgotten other than Kim's revolution and his story. And when I came out, what I loved about was that the continuation of life, that life before Kim's. That was amazing. There was things beforehand, way, way before and it was very humbling to those people who thought the other things. And if you were talking about a Plato, I read the Plato's on love and how he brings his people talk about

discussing what love is, each mean for them. And he gave me so much like just insights, you know, to understanding humanity. But now... No, well, that was kind of the point. I know. But going to Colombia, the first thing is like, who loves Jane here. It's like, I said, yes, but you know the problem is, you know, do you know that she believed you know those ideas back then, of a colonialism, the people, countries, and how that embodied

in her literature work. And that's what was like, whoa, I mean, we expect everyone in the history to think the same way they do right now at this point, exact same time. And if they don't, which is to basically memorize, you know, 20 platitudes that anyone intelligent can memorize in 15 minutes and then to

dismiss the entire world of knowledge. These books, when you were reading Orwell, and when you were in that little room in North Korea, or in South Korea, and you had all those books, what were you reading? So Orwell affected you. Who else? You're you're you've read now. who's affected you? It's in a lot of ways. I remember the the sitar ta, the novel is a fictional novel. Yes, yes, that book really gave me a lot of comfort and to think my how to think of my own journey and how what kind of things I need to focus on. Like I could be focusing on, oh my God, I went there, that was very horrible, what could I focus on?

So I read a lot of classic books actually, and I think now I'm thinking where it was actually a good thing. I didn't pick up this political crime as books, but rather going time-round before then, like 18th century or a lot of literatures. So I think a lot of people shaped me in so many, many different ways. And now, till this day, I was saying,

like, reading your book was, of course, you heard the many, million times, but it was, in a people's day, like you really know that you are not alone. And that's the thing when I was reading your book, you just remind me of the struggle, the shared struggle that we have on earth. Regardless, your boy knows Korea in America, there's still people who care themselves in America. Life is unbearable for anyone. It gave me a lot of compassion because after coming from North Korea to go to New York, like, right, all my 70% of my friends going to therapy. They tell me, you got to go to therapy and I was like, what is therapy?

And of course, coming from North Korea, what do you know what trauma is even? And back then I was like, the world, the fact that you know trauma is like you are so privileged, you don't need the therapy. That's how hard share was. And I wasn't able to empathize with my friends in New York. Like they would go in line for two hours getting to this delicious restaurant. And food to me was always quantity, it was not about quality. So why without visiting your video for two hours

and getting the line, right? And just understanding one of those layers of emotions. And that's why I'm very grateful for your book and how you shaped me. What's next for you? What do you want to have happen now? What do you aim in that? So I'm on the target list of Kim Jong-un.

I'm on the killing list. It's been a while, but I mean, we know Kim Jong-un clearly his half-brother Malaysia. He doesn't absolutely care about killing distance. Like even Saudi's killed their general class should in their council in Turkey and chopped them off. Still, there's no consequences. The word has way no accountability

for this bad guy guys killing people now. And I think that's why this justice on the keep always in my mind. Well, if I'm looking not to get cared, I definitely, I wanna do everything I can to raise awareness about Chinese role on enabling this dictatorship. People often think Kim Jong-un is the one who to blame to running this the biggest concentration camp on Earth. But it is

not. There is a neighbor behind that is China. If we don't China, North East Asian cannot even alive be with one day. And what we're saying. Right. And so we can say with no hesitation whatsoever that there's absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the Chinese Communist Party's support of the North Korean regime. Yes, it's a crime against humanity. It is a crime against humanity. And we have every international community

with their senses, they have to come together to tell China that. But now everybody's bought by China.. They own Africa, they own so many countries. If America loses their ground with China and they keep saying, and do not stand up for what we believe in in this country, we might lose a chance to be ever free and win with China. This is a very serious pattern that we are in. It's not a joke that like, and I think there's a thing,

America has a large chance the Western democracy countries has a large chance to battle with China. But because until in the past, we thought the democracy was gonna prevail. But the thing, look at China. Free market didn't have the free political politics. They are developing these AI machines to facial recognition, to control people in

a degree where they never even imagined before. It is truly 1984 by Georgia where they can even look at cameras to see who's there. North Korea started in their management state, they are buying these AI machines, print on the town, so see who's stranger is in this town or not. Print this like a facial recognition on the border and make sure everybody who's in the place right there. So in here, we become forever enslaved to this heteritarianism, or we break off the cycle. And I don't know, like I can never be that person

recklessly say we're gonna be in this battle. And to me, this is a very dangerous state. We are all in collectively. Every individual that we are not safe from this deval now communism. That's a good place to stop. Yes. Sorry, that was very tense interview.

It's been... Thank you. Yeah, thank you for... You're quite in the creature. No. I really wish you would have had better professors. You deserve them. Thank you for everything you do, seriously doctors. It's been you have no idea how it touches so many us and you, especially, and reminding me of like how good still humans humans are and really helping me not to lose my

hope. So thank you for everything you do. Yeah you too kiddo, your book's deadly and so are you? Keep it up. Keep it up. Music