The Jordan Harbinger Show - 578: Yeonmi Park | A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom Part One

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Yeonmi Park (@YeonmiParkNK) is a North Korean defector and activist whose harrowing experiences are chronicled in her book In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom. [This is part one of a two-part episode. Please stay tuned for the conclusion later this week!] What We Discuss with Yeonmi Park: Why there's a black market for poop in North Korea. How the people of North Korea are kept isolated from the outside world to the extent that they use a different calendar, have never heard of Shakespeare, and don't even have words for "oppression" or "love." How North Korea's guilt-by-association policy can carry punishment for people who are within several generations of someone perceived as offensive to the regime. Why Yeonmi finds being on the North Korean regime's official kill list to be "liberating." How long it might take to watch Titanic in a country that only turns on the electricity for State holidays (and the ultimate penalty for getting caught doing so). And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/578 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. It's a Georgia-Rex double-speak, right? Who controls the language? Controls the thoughts. So the regime got rid of the words like human rights. They don't have world for love in North Korea.

Because they don't want us to love other people other than the dear leader. So the only love the North Koreans know is written forward for the dear leader, Kim's. And we don't have word for like individual liberty. I mean, all those concepts that we take for grandparents. they don't know. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people.

We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional North Korean defector, billionaire, investor, or tech mogul. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to this show, or you want to tell your friends, about this show and you're not quite sure how to get them to dip their toes in, we've got episode starter packs, which are collections of your favorite episodes organized by popular topics that'll

help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started with us. And of course, I always appreciate that. Today on the show, my friend Yonni Park, now I know she's a little controversial. A lot of you have written to me about her. I realize that there's some differing opinions out there about her, but her story is, no matter which way you look at it, absolutely incredible. Now, I wanted to do a different kind of show here with Yonmi Park because her story is wild, escaping North Korea. We've done shows like this before. It's in her book. Her YouTube channel and other interviews have really covered a lot of ground already. I wanted to break some new ground with her. So we go deep

on all things North Korea. That's why it's a two-parter. You know I'm obsessed with that place. Been there a bunch of times, a lot of stories. I wanted to get her stories and her thoughts on a lot of the cultural stuff and the propaganda and the regime and escape. It's a harrowing tale. I know you're going to enjoy it. And if you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it's because of my network. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. By the way, most of the guests you hear on the show, subscribe to the course, contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now here's Yonmi Park. Let's start with a bit about how kind of crazy North Korea is,

Because most people have heard of it. People who've seen and heard you on other shows know a little bit about it. But I think it's really hard to imagine a country that doesn't have food. Americans think poor countries are like Mexico or a southern state that the roads are really bad. They don't understand sort of the deprivation in DPR or in North Korea. Yeah, I think it's the only place that modernity hasn't touched. Right? their lifestyle is still, like in the 15th or 16th century, in the dark age, you can't imagine.

You don't have benefit of technology. You don't have electricity. I mean, you don't have transportation. 90-70% North Korean roads are not paved. The only paved roads are in Pyongyang in the capital. I never even see the crosswalks because we didn't have cars. Yeah. You know, so fancy transportation people have is like ox cart.

Or bicycle if you are really rich in the city. Wow. So I've seen cars in North Korea because I went there a few times for journalism purposes and sort of tour purposes, which is a whole other question of like the ethics of giving money to a horrible regime. And we can get down that road later. But the amount of cars you see in all of North Korea is like the amount of cars in a normal suburban neighborhood in the United States. So I'm sure you were only going through the highways that only tourists can go to. Yeah. To Onsand or the DMG from Pyongyang, right? Yeah. We did go to the country a little bit. Oh, where did you go? It's hard to say because we didn't really know.

We would do things like once when we were there, it was during this like 100 years celebration. That was probably 2013 or something. A lot of the roads were closed because for whatever reason, probably they were flooded, I think. And we went into the country and what we would do is if we saw something interesting, a bunch of us would say, oh, I have to go to the bathroom where I feel sick and the bus would stop and we would all get out and use the bathroom on the side of the road. would really just be looking around. Yeah. Oh, what a good tactic that is. It was pretty good.

Yeah. They definitely caught on after a while and they're like, if you guys want to see something, just ask but no photos. Then we're like, oh, they know. Oh, wow. That's smart. They know, yeah. So we saw some country houses where the doors are like probably up to my nose and you

have to duck to get in because the house is 100 years old or whatever. Or like, I mean, in North Korea, the countryside, it's hard to see the windows. We don't have windows. The best we can do is put some, like, plastic bags on it if it's freezing cold winter. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, there's not a whole lot of glass. So did you grow up then in the country? No, I was growing up in a city called Hesan.

It is one of the bigger cities in the border town. The North Carolina does everything they could to put up the show on the border. So other side of the countries don't judge them. But even that is, like, unheard of life standard of living. And I was grew up in the mirror later when my father got arrested. The idea of putting on a show for the world, what you're saying is it makes a lot of sense. From Dendong in China, you look over the, I think, the Tumen River, you see like a ferris wheel and colorful houses. But it's very clear when you use Zoom lenses on cameras that they're rusted and they haven't been used ever.

Yeah, they have this other village in DMG too. It's a show of village, like Ghost Village. where nobody's inside, there's lights never come off. Yeah, Panmunjom. And there's a village too. So North Korea does really good at showing, I mean, pretending and manipulate the narrative. Pyongyang is also like that. The stores, they put all the products in the front window.

But then if you notice after a while, it's always the same product and it's always one in each row. Wow. After you see like 50 stores with one bottle of soju, it's always the same. you kind of figure out that nobody's actually buying anything? No, no, we can afford to buy in the stores in general. But even in Pyongyang, so this is funny, when there's a bus of, like, foreign tourists passing by, then they let that town know two hours before. So turn on the, like, electricity.

And then they give them a call. When they pass, like, okay, turn down the electricity. That's wild. I know. And then actually before you guys come, I was in Pyongyang sometime with my father. They call, like, self-reliant. So they ask us to buy the place. paints and go paint roads and maintain the whole thing for free for the regime.

That's the thing where you see, yeah. Wow. Yeah. So all the paints, everything you see, like people do with their own money. That is so, that's the Juche philosophy, right? Self-reliance. Yeah, like we don't need anyone's help. We can do it all on our own, except we can't.

But like that's slavery. This time, North Korea just had a military parade. In order to be participating in the parade, the 80 mangers is older, that you have to practice more than nine to six months of a year without getting paid. They don't feed you. And you even pay for your own uniform and shoes and everything gear. It's like beyond exploitation. Right, especially because it's not like you're getting, you're busy trying to literally find food.

And as you mentioned in your book, you're finding bark and cooking insects to survive. And they're like, by the way, focus on being really good in this marching band or whatever. And you're like, are you kidding me right now? Yeah. But it is not in our thoughts we can say no to it. Right. And that's how they became like almighty God. It's funny you should mention the regime leaders being God.

When I, on one of the trips, one of the women that I was with, she brought her baby. They were from like Denmark or something. It was a toddler, probably three years old. And he pointed to a big picture. Of course, there's these huge photos or paintings of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on buildings. And he said, is that, Mommy, is that God? Oh. Because the propaganda works at some.

such a deep level that even this toddler was like, oh, that person must be really important because he's everywhere. It must be God. Yeah. The mother was like, no, but also don't say anything because this could get it. This is like tread lightly. Yeah. I mean, like in North Korea, we don't have an advertisement.

All we got is the monuments and statutes of kings. So we don't have the billboard saying like, look at this show, look at this, none of that. I never even knew the word advertisement. When I got out, that's when I heard like what ad advertisement was. In North School, they don't do that. What do you think of the commercialism in the West in the United States where we have ads on, like this podcast has ads. There's ads on the bus that you ride.

There's ads on the outside of the bus. There's ads that pop up when you're using an app. It's a bit much, right? Well, I would rather live in the country's ads. Ads and freedom and food versus no ads and no freedom. Okay, fine. That is obvious. I just wonder if it's jarring coming from a place.

where you'd never seen an advertisement to being bombarded with it constantly? No, I mean, like, everything has a cost. There's a trade-off and nothing is free. And people, the problem now in the West, too, now people think their things are free, but nothing is free. And like when you go on Spotify or podcast or YouTube, you watch free videos. Why do you watch? Someone paid work for it.

So seeing ads, it's like, of course you have to watch it. But I think once you understand that you're just going to stop complaining. Yeah. And I think once I understood it's like, okay, it makes sense, right? And I think in North Korea, the biggest problem is that everything seems like everything is free, free healthcare, free education, and turns out nothing is free. Yeah, yeah, that's certainly the case. I saw a hospital when I was there just a tour, and it was grin, it was gross. And that was the hospital they were willing to show us.

Imagine what the hospital that everyone goes to looks like. There was no patients there. So you knew that was like for show only. Yeah. Equipment from the 80s, stains on things, no bustling. You know, in a hospital here, it's busy. There it was like they just opened it so we could look in there and there was probably nobody even working in there.

I mean, the country where even has seen in one of the major cities, in the hospital, they ask us to bring us our own needles. If you cannot afford the needle, right, we are very poor. They use one needle to inject everybody. Oh, gosh. And we don't have actually drops. They use a beer butter from the tracks. and they use that as a drop.

As like an IV? Ivy. So you're getting an IV from an empty beer bottle. Yeah. And also people don't have beds. We don't have the sanitary pads on any of that. So you just rip up your clothes or anything you can find and make sure that you don't bleed.

And that's how we are like free healthcare looks like. Right. And in the operations in North Korea, they don't give you anesthesia. I removed my appendix without anesthesia. And in North Korea, it's very common to have a surgery without painkiller. Oh, my gosh. So this is like what free health care does to you. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, so you've had a child here in the United States. Was the appendix surgery more painful than giving birth? Of course. Yeah. Has to be, right? Right. There was a no.

I think they gave me some painkiller because my mom bribed them. But it was a very weak one. It was not a real anesthesia for surgery. Yeah, you got like a headache medicine. Some like something like that. I don't mean to laugh. Horrible. I mean, now I'm thinking about it.

It is kind of fun in 21st, you go something like that, right? Yeah. It must be really tough, though. I mean, like, if the pain is too much, you lose your conscience. And then you come back, lose it and come back. And, you know, it's just, but like in North Korea, that's why they use crystal meth and opium as a cold medicine. As a cold medicine. Yeah.

Does it work? It does have temper. Have you tried it? I haven't. Oh, okay. But all my friends became. drug addict. Oh, really? That's how the regime makes money, right? They sell the missiles, nukes to Syria, Iran, other countries, and they sell their people, and one of them is selling

those drugs, crystal meth and opium. Have you seen the mole? Yeah. Yeah, so he was on the show as well. Oh, yeah, it's amazing. He is really like a crazy brave guy. So brave. For people who haven't seen that, it's a, I'll list the episode in the show notes, but this guy went undercover talking with North Korean arms dealers in China and in other countries about selling drugs, missiles, and things like that to countries like Syria, Iran. Or the Middle Eastern countries, they buy missiles from North Korea. Yeah, yeah. It's how they generate hard currency for the regime.

So a lot of people probably don't really understand why there's no food, right? It's like you have some farmland. How can there be no food? What about food aid? Why was there a famine? It's complicated, but can you take us through why that might be the case? Because it wasn't always the case there that there was no food. food, right? So 60s, 70, there are some people dying from starvation, but not in like millions.

The millions of death began in the 90s from starvation. That's when I was born after Soviet Union collapsed. So North Korea, the nature is a collective. Collectivism, right? You do not own anything. There's no private property. It's socialist country, socialist paradise. So anybody cannot own anything. Therefore, entire land is owned by the regime. So when you're a farm in a collective farm, after the harvest, the regime takes the entire crop away from you. And they supposedly give you the public ration. Right. But they don't give you.

So you worked in the farm entire year, right? I mean, that's like that we call job replacement. And then takes the harvest away, then regime don't gives you food. And then total you, be self-reliant. Fine, you're always to survive. But if you trade, it's illegal, so they send you prison and kill you. Right. And then why would they not feed you is because, I mean, Kim Jong-ir sat during the famine, that it's easy to do socialism when there are less people.

So he was thinking, let's just kill a bunch of people and then socialism will work better? And also, and then people when they are starving, right, you are not going to thinking about the meaning of life. Right. Or like freedom. If you are starving right now, like in North Korea, how daily life goes that if you eat breakfast, you worry about lunch. If you make it to dinner, you think, okay, I made one more day here. how I'm going to survive tomorrow. So every constant second you're thinking about you'll survive and finding food.

So people are so occupied. And that's why it's better for the regime to having a population that's constantly starving. Like hunger games. Yes. Exactly hunger games. It's keeping people on the back foot, kind of. One of the times that I was there, there were no students anywhere. And then when we went on a bus trip to Wonson or wherever we were going,

you could see the fields were full of people, whereas the last time I was there, there were no people. And our guide sort of told us in confidence that all of the people in the fields were the college students because they have to leave school and go harvest. Yeah, it's like the mobilization. Yeah, mobilization. Even seven years old have to start work. Seven year olds. Yeah. We don't have the world for minors. We have a word for revolutioners. Everybody's revolutionary. So even when you are kids, like five years old, you need to work in the farm and the railways. So even elementary school, pre-K, middle school, high school, college, adult,

every single one of us have to do the forced labor every single day. That's where entire country is a labor camp. Yeah. Entire countries are camp. So we have to go several months in the harvest season and also where's planted seeds in the summer. And then in the winter, we have to go hunting the poop because they don't have the harvest. Fertilizers. People want to know what the poop.

hunting and I've heard you talk about this, but people are like, she didn't just say hunting poop, right? Yeah. Tell us about hunting poop. I know, like, in North Korea, literally nothing to throw away, including your poop and pee. So governments give us this quota. They don't, they are so poor, they cannot even afford the fertilizer. The country makes long missile, like, test. Right.

They cannot make the fertilizer. So they ask people, give them quota. Like, in your family, if you have four people in the family, bring one ton of food. poop in January. How is that possible? I mean, does a family of four make one ton of poop each year? No, and you're not, you don't even poop once a month if you are star of there. Point. You don't poop at all there, right? So weird. What are they expecting? So that's why we have to go steal poop. Yeah. And hunting for poop. And thieves, they are poop thieves. And in the black market, they sell poop. So rich people, the government officials, they have money, they go black market and buy the

poop and then give me their quota, otherwise they're going to get punished. That is so, like, letting that sink in is so frigging bizarre, right? Like, the idea that you have to collect something that most of us would never want to touch and you're stealing it from other people. Yeah. That is a perfect sort of analogy for the economic state of North Korea. It's like completely hell. Like, if there's a here, that's what it would look like.

Yeah. Imagine 21st century human beings looking for, like, finding poop, hunting it. entire day, right? And if you don't meet your quota, you get punished. Imagine that. I mean, that is the contemporary world that we are living in. That's why the UN says it's a Holocaust. It's a modern day Holocaust. The UN doesn't seem like they're doing a whole hell of a lot to help North Korea. I remember you saying that you gave a talk or were giving a talk and they sat you next to the North Korean delegation, which is horrific to even think about. But they thought geographically were close. Unbelievable. So did the delegation say anything? Do you?

Of course, there's five something guys. Yeah. Their delegation or maybe three guys. In North Korea, everybody has to spy on each other. So it's got a minimum three people. Because if I'm spying on you, so you are spying on that person, that person has to be spying on me. So it's got to be that way.

I'm spied and I'm spying on somebody. So they always send three people, not two people. Because if it's two, it's to like calm, spy and then one or something, so three people always. And that's why I think the delegation is three to five people next to me. And they were swearing him in North Korean. And nobody understood North Koreans. Sure.

Yeah. That's unbelievably callous and unthinking of them to, I assume you're not super big on the United Nations bailing out the people of North Korea. I mean, of course. I mean, like this morning, the Queen and Elizabeth in the Britain, they congratulate for the North Korean regime to finding their party, like on September 9th this week when they're the military parade. the queens as congratulations. Imagine if there's a dictator alive, the Hitler is alive, why not these people in the leader of this free world sending the congratulation not?

That's crazy. How have we not isolated this whole thing? The sunshine policy is just not proven effective, right? Treating them with the kid gloves has never worked. So when you're a kid and you're still in North Korea, you're collecting bugs and roasting them with lighters and things like that to feed yourself, right, to eat dragonflies and grasshoppers out of desperation. That's sort of like the picture of this.

I assume you have to turn your heart off when you're there to the plate of people around you. I mean, when you are born, seeing suffering is in front of your eyes. So you don't even think that's unusual. So that's like exactly the Georgia Earth's animal farm. In the first generation, they know they lived before the revolution. They knew the time that was different. When it comes to third ones, the new animals, they have no idea what the alternative life would be looked like. That's why, like, if you don't know, you're a slave,

how do you fight to be free? Like in North Korean people now who's living there have no crew. I mean, I've never even seen the map of the world. When you were there, you never saw a map of the world. I never even knew that I was Asian. They told me that I was Kimmer-sung race. You know now, though, I assume. Now I do. Okay. They told me that I was Kimmer-Sung race. Yeah. And the North Korean calendar begins when Kimmer-Sung was born. I don't even know what Jesus Christ is. Right. So you are completely, completely isolated. And that's why I just never even knew. that seeing dead bodies on the streets and people are starving was something unusual. I thought that was a normal thing. The amount of privation and desperation that you grow up seeing, does it make

you question whether it's possible to bring a country like that out of, I mean, how can, let's say magically tomorrow everything is reunited, south and north are reunited, it's going to take generations for people to start thinking differently? Or do you think that they'll adapt just quickly like you did? To hear their heart is not take you many, many generations. I think even their children are going to carry that trauma. But adjusting to modernity is very quick. I mean, look at how even people I came here, I came here when there's smartphone, but people say when they grew up, they did not have a smartphone.

And now look at how everybody's so well-adjusting. That's why I think humans are very adaptable. But I think the trauma isn't take a time to hear. But not though, like, you know, adjusting to electricity. Of course, North Korean people have loved to have some shableness. I love to have some TV, don't you think so? Well, yeah, I've seen TV in North Korea and it's not that interesting. It's like two channels.

In the countryside, it's one. Outside of the capital is one channel, begins at like 5 p.m. And ends at something like after 11, but we don't even have electricity anyway. Right. So what's the point? Yeah. So if people don't know what the map of the world looks like or where other countries are or anything like that, then it seems difficult to believe. that they would also know of their own situation, right?

You said they don't know that they're enslaved. They don't know they're isolated. They don't know they're oppressed. We don't even have the word for oppression. That's the thing. Like, we don't have a word for stress because how can you be stressed in the socialist paradise? It's a Georgia worst double speak, right?

Who controls the language, controls the thoughts. So the regime got rid of the words like human rights. Really? Yeah, gay. They don't have the word for gay. When did you find out what, like, gay people were like, I mean, I assume not in North Korea. Oh, when I came to America.

Okay. I remember somebody came and said, like, it hugged me. And I like, don't worry, baby, I'm gay, right? That's what he said? Yeah, what the heck is gay. I went home to a terrible mind and looked it up. I was like, what? Like, he's really happy?

I don't understand. Yeah, but it's funny. They don't have a world for love in North Korea. Because they don't want us to love other people other than the dear leader. So the only love the North Koreans know is rich and formal world for the dear leader, Kim's. And we don't have a world for the dear leader. for like individual liberty.

I mean, all those concepts that we take for granted, they don't know. Wow. So it's so funny in America when people are talking about how they're oppressed. And I'm like, you know if you're actually oppressed. You don't know you're oppressed. Right. It's invisible. Yeah, North Koreans has no clue.

They're oppressed. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Yonmi Park. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to and supporting this show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps the lights on around here. We take all those discount codes and special URLs, and we put them all in one place so you don't have to memorize them. You can check out all the sponsors for yourself at Jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

Please consider supporting those who support us. Jordanharbinger.com slash deals is where that is. And don't forget, we've got worksheets for many episodes. If you want some of the drills and exercises talked about during the show in one easy place, that link is in the show notes. Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast is where you can find it. Now, back to Yon Me Park. So if you don't have love, what about, or the concept of love, what about parents and children?

I mean, that has to be, or is it different? They care for you, but they never told me that my parents never told me they loved me. There's no proposed. There's no word for romance. Romantic relationships are not celebrated. It's a very shameful thing. The only reason you marry is because you want to glorify the revolution of the party and the dear leader, right? So, like, we don't know what Shakespeare is.

There's no Romeo and Julia. Every single movie is about propaganda. And therefore, we know the word, like, you know, written from love. But we don't think that was something we can use to another human. Hmm. That's interesting. I've seen weddings there. Yeah.

And the people are really happy. And also, they drag us in their photos, which is really weird. It was set up. Those are all set up. It was like the monuments on those holiday things. Yeah. Yeah. We're like in North Korean wedding photos holding the bride and the groom.

It's so weird. Every choice get that photo. So don't work. Okay, I thought it was very strange. And I thought, like, I hope this is like a real thing. But it's obviously, it doesn't make any sense that it would happen every single time that we go. Every, oh, no, we go there and then get the wedding photos with the people at the monuments. Yeah.

Right, at the monument. We're in like a park. Yeah, in a park, public places. Yeah. There's five weddings at the same time and it just happens to be enough for all the groups that are here. Yeah. That's funny that that's all staged. But it is true, though.

When you get married, first thing you have to go. is monuments to the Kim's and then pay the respect. Because you marry, not because you love each other, you marry because you're not served the party. Right. Serve the revolution. You do. You have to go to monuments for sure.

So when did you first experience what you now know as love? I mean, really later when I came to America, a while later. Yeah, but I did not know what love was until, I don't know even if I know what it is. But the romantic love is like definitely in America. I did not know what that was until coming to the West. You have a child now, obviously. Yeah. Special.

I also have a half Asian baby. Very cute. The best mix, in my opinion. Yeah, I agree too. Very biased. Yeah, it's slight bias. Yeah. I wondered about that because I thought, you know, maybe it's hard to adapt to romance, concepts of romance, if it's literally foreign to you.

were like 15 or 16 years old. Yeah, I mean, people do like, we don't say like I love you, but they say, I like you. But that's also South Korean word. So only teenagers who watch the K-pop dramas, we say, I like you. So in North Korea, they don't even say, I like you. So usually because it's been arranged marriage, the party arranges your marriage, parents arrange your marriage, your town arrange your marriage. It was never like voluntarily you can fall in love.

Because in North Korea, they have 51 different classes. 51. Do you have to memorize those in school? The big three classes are like the lawyer, middle is like, you know, wavering, the lost is hostile. Three big categories. Loyal wavering and hostile. Yeah. And then they divide the subdividing them.

And that is only government information. Okay. So when you try to go to university, when you try to join a party, the government has that information. They have, they track you what happened to great-great-grandfather. They track every line of your family, your cousins of cousin, your in-laws of in-law. Who did you matter? Your cousinhood.

So if somebody get in trouble, if he's elite, even three to eight generation get punished. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second because that's mind-blowing. It's like this medieval aristocracy rules where it's like people you don't even know you're related to could do something and then you get punished for it along with everybody else in your family. You mentioned that there was an official that defected and they punished something, like thousands of people. Over 30,000, like 35,000 people got punished because of one guy. And most of them, they did not know even they were related to this guy. It's called guilt by association. Exactly.

You're white in America. Now you're in America you're supposed to be guilty because you're white. Because somehow, some white people own the slaves in the back end. So it's a guilt by association. It's interesting. Yeah, my family came here after that. So whenever. But you're white.

So you are guilty. Yeah, I suppose. That's interesting. It's exactly the same concept. Eight generations is wild, right? Because maybe you know your grandfather or even your great-grandfather, and that's three. But then it's going to be your kids and then their kids. And then maybe even more.

But then that's not only it. Even among the three generations, your in-laws, if you are married, the in-laws of their children, their fathers, their children, goes. So even the in-laws, not the bloodline got affected. If you are married, then you get affected. So the whole point is just to keep people in fear, right? It's like multi-level marketing, but it's like, yeah, well, maybe not quite, but it's like the multi-level marketing of punishment. Yeah, and also get rid of the seed of Rebellion.

That's the thing. Right, rip it out of the root, yeah. Yeah, they get out of the root. So if somebody challenging the party ideology, they don't just go after killing you or your son and grandma. They really go after age and a generation, like get rid of entire. hire that clan, and that's how they prevent the revolution. It's called zero tolerance. Zero tolerance, yeah.

So what this means is then if you're sent to a work camp because of a relative, your kids could even be born in there, your grandkids. People are born in these, like, concentration camps and they die there. I think they're called total control zones or something, right? This is like Shindong-huk wrote back. Or Gangchoran, they've been there. Yeah, that's one of the crime when you're there, the first crime you get killed is asking,

why am I here. Really? Yeah. So you just don't even know why you're there. You'll never know. Never know. They don't even tell you why you're there. That's how you get killed.

I don't even understand the logic behind this, but of course the whole thing just comes down to fear and control. So it doesn't. No, it's like it's all about because they can. They can say because I can. Like that's the authoritarian. Because they can, they do whatever they want. It's not about being right doing the right thing or the right regulation.

Because they can simply tell them, you're in the concentration camp. Then don't ask us why. The book about the concentration camp, I think it's called Escape from Camp 14. So we'll link that in the show notes. Growing up, your mom told you your tongue is the most dangerous weapon. Even the birds and mice can hear. Did I get that right?

Yeah. So this is kind of what you're talking about. You can't say anything to anyone. Everyone is spying on each other. And the punishment is so catastrophic that it's not worth letting anything slip ever. Yeah. That's the thing like the birds and mice can hear your whisper. The most dangerous thing that I had in my body was my tongue.

That's how they control your speech. But who controls speech, they control like your thinking, right? So the regime prevents even as a thought crime. Even thinking. Thought crime. Even thinking is a treason. So I was afraid to think. I didn't even know what thinking was until I escaped South Korea.

You didn't know what thinking was because you thought the leaders could read your mind. So we don't even know what critical thinking was. When I was South Korea, I was so brave. I was still thinking like Kim's were starving and hungry and working so hard for us. And that was what the regime told us, right? They were working so hard. They don't eat. They don't sleep.

And I was like telling the South Korean people. And they were like, what are you talking about? Like he's a fattest guy in the picture. And I was like, what do you mean? He's fat and looked at a picture because he was. Yeah. And that's a thing. Like someone had to teach him that he was fat.

Even though you've seen him with your own eyes. All my life, every single day on TV, on the newspaper, he was a big, big guy. How can he be possibly starving? But it never registered me that he was not starving. What's going on with him now? He lost a bunch of weight Kim Jong-un. He's like, it's unusual because that's not really, I mean, he was very fat when I saw him on TV in, I think, 2015. No, even last until earlier this year, it was over 330 pounds for like 5, 7 feet.

Guy was very big. Wow. Yeah. So maybe he's sick. That's what they're saying. No, I think he's really working out. Working out? Yeah.

So that he doesn't die too early? Yeah, that's possible. I think that's what's going on because he looks very energetic. It's not like he's riddled by sickness. It's interesting to see the changes in somebody like that. His first speech in public in North Korea was on television and I happened to be there at that time. And he was shaking like this over. He was tired.

Yeah. And he was like 29 years old or something when he gave this speech or less. Less 27 or something. And the guides we were with were like, oh, he's so charismatic. And I thought, no, this is like a C-minus if you're in a class in high school giving a speech. This is legit terrible. Shaking and staring at the paper, never looking up. I'm like, you would, you have to redo that speech if you'd be that shit in high school.

And here he is in front of 25 million people on TV. Yeah. Who's supposed to be a god. Yeah. Some god you are, man. You need to memorize the bullet points here? Like, no TED talk for you, Kim Jong-un. Right.

When you live there, the calendar's different. the numbers are different. The years start, you sort of touched on this earlier, the years start with the birth of the first leader, Kimmel-Sla. Juche, yeah. Jiu, yeah. The idea that you didn't know you were Asian, though, that's new, right? I guess, did you just think everyone in the world was the same except for Americans who...

Did you tell me what the world was? I mean, like, I didn't even know even know there were different planets. I didn't even know the world called space. Space, even though there's rocket launch. Well, I guess after you left, they'd launch rockets, right, into space. Yeah, but after I left, but I was so in the country, so I don't see the news on TV. Right, sure. Because even only the news, the newspaper, one newspaper that people can read is only the officials can read.

Right. So commoners, we don't get to even have the newspaper. It's not like everybody can go by, like New York Times if in the morning, if you have money. Right. It's only approved of people, gets the government newspaper and buy it. And in the people in Pyongyang, because only the top people, there's a survey station, there's a newspaper right? Yeah, I've seen that. But people in Pyongyang, they're elites.

They can. But not us. We are not elitism. We are like in the countryside. So we don't even get to see, though. Even if it's a rocket thing, we don't get to read the newspaper. So how do I know what the space is? Right, right.

Yeah, I remember asking a friend of mine in North Korea, one of the guides who I've seen a few times. And I said, where would you go if you could go anywhere in the whole world? And I think she said like Mount Pectu or something like that. That's the only right answer to that question. Oh, like Pyongyang, our capital, our heart. That's where she lived. or worked already. I was like, no, what about like Africa or something?

And she's just saying, Africa? And then her mind drifted off and she was like staring into space for minutes at a time. And she was really happy because I think she had never actually even thought about that. It like never occurred to her ever. And then quietly at dinner, she told me Canada so she could work on her English, which I thought was interesting. But like America, because it's a sworn enemy. No, why would you come to the workplace in the world, right, America? Yeah, it's funny.

There's signs in China. I assume you saw when you went to China, there are signs that say, don't let North Koreans into your home. Don't give them any food. Yeah. If you see the report on them, we're going to give you money. Yeah, so there's like refugee hunters in China. Yeah, the slave hunters. Like it's give you 5,000 more Chinese one. But for these farmers, that's what they make entire year. Oh, man. So it's a lot of money. So that's how they incentivize the people to report on North Koreans. That's how these people make money too. For a lot of people, it's just a mystery why China would send North Koreans back from China back to North Korea. Because they could easily send them to South Korea because South Korea wants to accept them. Or America, Canada, Japan, Australia, or the Western European countries won't accept North Korean refugees. But China doesn't want North Korean regime to crumble. They don't want someone like me escape and speak out against them. Yeah, you must be making a lot of friends in the Communist Party of China. I assume North Korea has, I mean, are you worried about ending up on the kill list?

I have been on the killing list. You know this already to be a fact? Oh, South Korean intelligence, like casually holding me up. Casually? How casual? Like, yeah, you're on the killing list. How about we have a conversation about this? Wow.

Yeah, it's been many years. And it was before Kim Jong-Nang got assassinated in Malaysia. Yeah, so for people who don't know, Kim Jong-Nam was the half-brother of Kim Jong-un. Yeah. And these two women were tricked in. to spraying him in the face with what turned out to be VX nerve agent. He died at the airport in Malaysia. So when you saw that, that must have been like, okay, they're actually doing this.

He was a big middle finger to the world. Yeah. Because, I mean, for dictators, when they murder people, there's zero accountability. Right. The world is not just, right? So he was like, who see, whatever I do, there's no. I mean, look at Jama Khashoggi. He got chopped off in Saudi Khashoggi.

Nothing happening to them, right? Nobody in America is standing up against Saudis. Yep. So it's a shame. It's shameful. That's a word. Like, it's really, we think that good wins in this world, they don't. So Kim Jong-won's, like, want to show us all of us.

This is what happened. Yeah. Does that make you worry at all or change your behavior? But that's a thing. So when your enemy's Kim Jong-won, it's quite a liberating experience. So if you are, like, fighting against some gang, maybe there's a room to run away because someone else. But there's a nation with an nuclear capability.

reaching America. Even America cannot handle them. Then if Kim Jong-un decides to kill me, then my life is up to him, not up to me. There's no way I can escape from him on this earth. And that's liberating. Oh, yeah, unless I go to Mars with Elon Musk, right? Right, yeah, that's true.

Nothing going to happen. Like, it's Kim Jong-un going to come after me no matter what, as long as I'm on this earth. Yeah, I guess you could go to Mars. You thought the Internet was bad in North Korea. Try Mars. Yeah. That's actually, he'd probably make sure that you had

internet before you go there. I just think that is a good way to look at it. It's the only way to look at it. Otherwise, what are you going to do grow up and be fearful of this? And I think, because your enemy is so much bigger than you. Right. So it's in a way like, well, I guess if we decide I get cared, or I would just make sure that I speak what I want to believe in. And that's all I can do. Ironically, though, you know, I've seen your Instagram. You go to Italy, you go to Australia or you go to Canada, you go all over the United States. That guy can't go anywhere. He can't leave North Korea. That's true. He's in prison. And you've been to North. You

You lived there. There's not a whole lot going on over there. That guy, the best thing he has to look forward to is our parties and maybe playing some Xbox. Like, he can't even go to McDonald's if he wants to. That's true, but he can't have a sushi chef from Japan and make sushi for him. Right. That's awful. He'll get... He just kidnaps people if he wants. Dude can't even get Chipotle.

So who's really got it rough, right? I mean, this is... He may try to intimidate you or come after you, but you're right. I mean, then what? You can't worry about that your whole life. No. That's true. It's a perspective.

It is perspective. Yeah. Yeah. So I heard that you don't have any concept of like pornography in North Korea. None of that exists. Or even sex. I didn't even know the word of sex. Because of conservative society.

And there's no word for rape either. Because on news, everything is happy news. Did you look at the news when you're in North Korea? Yeah, but I don't understand any. Everything is like, we are reading a victory. You know, everything's amazing. Yeah, it's like wartime. propaganda. Yeah, the only thing the bad is, like, our enemies, Americans, but we are destroying

them. Yeah. We are going to win this war, right? So never about someone died from car accident. There's a fire. Somebody got raped. Somebody got murdered. And like none of those news. So you are so sad from the world that I did not know what human trafficking was. I did not know what sexual assault was or rape was. So when I was seeing my mom being raped in China, I did not know even that was sex or rape. I just thought, oh my God, that looks so horrible. That's all I knew. So we'll get to your trafficking story in brief because you've told it in a lot of places.

It's in the book, which I recommend. I wanted to have a little bit of a different kind of conversation on this show just because I feel like you've told your story so well in so many places that it'd be a shame if we just redid that. But of course, I do want to talk about your journey. First, though, the propaganda runs so deep in North Korea that I think a lot of people, you really do have to go there to understand it, not that I recommend going there,

and you shouldn't, especially now. But when I was in the countryside once, there was a loudspeaker blasting something, and I said to our guide, that sounds like an emergency. And he said, no, it's just the news. And then the next day, it was the same thing. And the next day is the same.

There's always this feeling of like, we're being surrounded by the enemy. We have to work really hard. When you translate the quote-unquote news, it's just fear porn constantly. It's like everything is, battle. Let's finish our 30, like, 100, I mean, three years, like battle or 100 days of the harvest battle. Like, you know, or some like a spring battle, everything is a battle. Everything is,

you know, about, like, fighting and winning. I've heard that even when you're learning something like math, there's propaganda. Right. Is it really like, the example I think I saw once is, if there are four American bastards and you kill two American bastards, how many American bastards are left. Is that real? Yeah. That's real. Even the physics, even the chemistry, everything they teach is a propaganda. So they use every medium they can. Every song is a propaganda in North Korea, right? Like no songs that were dedicated about country music. There's no zangru in north Korea. I never knew the genre of the music. You never knew what? Zangru, because of different types of music. Oh, genre.

Zangra, yeah. So when I'm in South Korea, there's like, what types of music do you like? I was like, What do you mean, there are different types of music, right? It's like, oh, classical, jazz, hip-hop, pop. I mean, like, indie, or like, what are those? Right. Because in North's just one type. Right, there's like the wartime sort of revolutionary stuff. Aren't there old songs, though, like Are we wrong, or is that also?

The Arirang is the only song that are from the old times that we know of. But that is also about, like, how we are suffering in the, you know, previous Kim, your song when we were suffering because we did not have Kim. So that's why they were letting us know that song. Because it's about someone going and, you know, missing and so a lot of suffering. So they are trying to brainwash that life was a dark age before Kimmer's song got here. And he liberated the whole universe, that he's a captain of our earth, that, you know, we are so grateful to be in this country. Therefore, we have nothing to envy in this world, right?

That's a nothing to envy. So they're a song title. Yeah, nothing to envy is also the title of a book by Barbara Demerick about North America. I assume you've read pretty much every book written by these folks. Yeah. It has to be very weird finding out things about your own country that you lived in that you realize was just like a, when you realize the whole thing was just a web of lies. Like Kim Jong-un is just an overweight young, privileged, horrible guy. He has no magical powers.

His father, who was also just a horrible guy, also had no magical powers. And the guy before him was just a liar who spent most of the Korean War hiding in Russia. Yeah. Like it's really got to just rock your whole world. world, right? It is the thing. But then the evil always disguised with this thing about, like, providing you the equality of outcomes, providing with, you know, safety and prosperity and justice. So they disguised themselves as they were the revolutionaries, killing the oppressors, killing the capitalists, right? And now I see how they were disguised. But back in North Korea,

of course, I was so grateful that Kim Jong-yeng was defending us from our enemies, which was like American ambassadors. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Yonmi Park. We'll be right back. And now for the rest of part one with Yonemi Park. I heard that suicide is illegal in North Korea. Is that also true? And the penalty is death, which wrap your mind around that, I guess.

It's so paradoxical, isn't it? It is. Because they want absolute obedience from you. They do not want you to have any control of your life whatsoever, even death. So only regime allowed to kill you, but not yourself. Right, so you're basically property of the state. You are owned by the state. So that's like before you are born, you're abducted by the state.

So the only thing, one thing that North Koreans are allowed to do by themselves, guess what it is? I mean, if you have to collect your own poop and you can't kill yourself, I don't know. Is there anything left? Breathing. Breathing. Breathing. That is the only thing you can do your own real. Nothing and not what you think, what you see, what you listen to.

How even you move your body? How you dance, get you in trouble, go to. prison. If you move your body in a more like maybe sensual way, no, you're in trouble. Wow. Even like how you move your body, how you look, what you think, what your hair cut, right? Yeah, the haircut thing is kind of weird. The guides are just, you'd basically have like two or three choices of men's haircuts, right? That's it. No more than two inch long. Wow. Yeah, and the women too. So everybody was laughing like, why Kim's only requires his haircut to be everybody men to have his haircut? It was a joke because they won't control. They don't. They don't.

want you to taste that your own like free wear. Yeah. You know, they don't want you to think for yourself. So government tells you what to do, what to listen to what to watch, what kind of hair could to get, what to wear even, right? I mean, the regime tells you what to wear. So you never learn how to think for yourself. And that's why when I was in South school, someone told me, so what's your favorite color? I was like, what the heck is that? You mean, because you, you don't get to have a favorite anything? No, no, I never thought. They told, regime told me my favorite color was a revolutionary color red, right? And everyone in the whole country has the same answer.

Yeah. What's your favorite food as a Korean? Like, kimchi is our national food. But it's ours Korea. They were like, somehow you have to think for yourself. And that's why regime control freak. They make sure they control every aspect of your life. What was it like eating until you were full after being hungry for your whole life?

I mean, the first time you ate until you were full, probably in China, had to just be like an out-of-body experience, right? It was really sad. Really? It wasn't very happy experience. Like, I mean, a lot of North Koreans, like, what we wanted is, like, eating boiled egg. Boiled egg? Because that's a fanciest food that we can have.

So, like, I never ate until I have full. So I thought, like, I would at least eat a bucket of bold egg, right? Like a whole bucket? Like, like, 50 boiled eggs. Oh, like, there's 100, I thought I could eat. But when you actually eat them, after five, it's very hard. After five? Yeah. Yeah. I was like 13 years old. I was like, I'm like 80 pounds. I was like 60, 57 pounds. I was a lot smaller. Just escaped. So my stomach was so shrunk too. And my stomach was not used to processing the fat food and like a lot of oil in it or protein in it. So I got so nauseous and throwing up a lot.

Sure. My stomach was not just the food that Chinese was eating. Mine was like always like no, you know, in ingredients, just pure plants. So a little anticlimactic to eat until you're full and then be like, actually, I wish I hadn't done that. Yeah, in the movies, you would be like, that's amazing, awesome. But actually, if you're starved all your life, you cannot really digest the food a while. It took many years for me to eat the food, like here.

Yeah. That has so much different calories and fat and everything in it. Do you love eating now? Of course. Yeah, right? I live for eating. I mean, anytime, like, my wife is also like a very small Asian woman. and you all have like a hollow leg or something.

The amount that like an 80, 90 pound Asian woman can eat is like mind-blowing. It goes like evaporate. It all evaporates. It's like it's coming out her ears or something. I just don't know. It was so funny just to see like we'll go out with a bunch of her friends. I'm just like, where are you putting this food, y'all? Yeah.

That's funny. Of course you love eating now. Who doesn't, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's very funny. The first foreign movie that you saw I heard was Titanic. And you can get in trouble for watching foreign movies, right? Sometimes death sentence.

Death sentence? Sometimes, yeah. So it's kind of hard for me to wrap my mind around risking your life for Titanic. Don't do it. It's not worth it. Yeah. It's in a way that in a country, you have really nothing to lose there, even if you get killed in a way that you want to get killed sometimes.

I mean, even if you don't get executed, you're going to might die from starvation or something. So it's easier for North Koreans to risk their life than Americans do. Because in America, people are allowed to lose. But North Koreans are not. And also it shows when North Koreans watch those movies, it is the only time they can escape from their misery, their suffering. That actually makes a lot of sense.

Were you surprised at all watching Titanic that in 1912, that people had more and better things than you did in 1994 in North Korea? I can remember what are all those like force and knives like the order right the coppers does not I'm I don't know either and then I sing all the plates they never seen those plates in my life but also like a whole movie there's no propaganda and guy just dies for a woman for his love it's very confusing in the beginning I wasn't even touched it's confusing even with you it depends on who you are but it's confusing for us too sometimes yeah I know you're gonna freeze to death you just met I know it's the funny thing is

That was a long movie. So we were watching this like big, big cassette thing. So you need at least five of them. Wait, like a real or a VHS tape? VHs tape. So it's a huge tape. And they only like usually have maximum 30 minutes, 40 minutes each tape. It's like actual film going like round, run.

Oh, okay. So if you want to watch Titanic, it's like one box of tape. So this is like a Chinese movie format? Yeah. Okay, because I've never seen anything. You could fit Titanic on one VHS tape. I think. No, like back in North Korea, it wasn't.

You need hundreds of the things. And also, you don't have electricity. It comes only the holidays of, like, Kim Jong-year's birthday, Kimmer-sung's birthday, or maybe the new year, right? Only holidays, the electricity comes. So finishing one movie can take months. Oh, yeah. It's not like you're just thinking, like, you sit there looking at the entire thing.

No, it takes a, it's a battle, what they call. Oh, man. So that makes you appreciate it, even if it's a lot of it. It's a corny movie. Whatever you watch, like, I remember, people used to, like, don't you not like the ads? So I remember, I like watching ads a lot. So sometimes I go just, like, turn on TV. I don't have, like, the cable, but when I go, like, hotel rooms, I just look at, like, ads.

So I store Chinese signal in North Korea when I was living in Haysans, the Okar Supporter, looked at this, like, a milk, strawberry milk. Strawberry milk? And I never seen the strawberry like that. I never even see the milk. I need not know that cow made milk. So I was looking at it, what the heck is that? He's drinking strawberry.

It looks so delicious. And even looking at it for North Koreans is like the most mind-opening thing experience because we don't know what strawberries, we don't know what milk is. Yeah, because you can't really get fruit, fresh fruit or anything like that in North Korea. We don't have a refrigerator. Where do you keep it? Right. And I mean, we don't know what watermelon is.

And we don't know most of food. Like, I never knew what steak was. You know, like, none of the food. Pasta pizza, I mean, I've never heard about it. Even in the black market, though, in your border town, they must have had some candy and clothes and things snucking from China. Black market, but those, like, perishable goods. Oh, yeah.

Like, I mean, like, cherry, you know, and also the differences, that we do have wild strawberries. Wide strawberry. Wild, wild, wild. The one grows up actually in the mountain. Oh, wild strawberries. It's a little tiny thing. Sure.

Not the one like this big. So I did not know that was like a strawberry. strawberry. Yeah, it's like a freak fruit. Yeah. Food looks very different here. When I go to grocery stores in the beginning, I had no clue what they were. Like the cherry tomatoes?

Because North Korea's farm is so behind. They don't do genetic modification at all. So like what the heck's tiny thing is called like tomato, right? Yeah. Yeah. That must have been such a trip as well to see all these things. I mean, even now I don't know what a lot of the fruits are. So I can imagine if you've never seen anything like that, like the whole grocery

store is just overwhelming. Yeah. Jeez. What's the deal with the radios in the home, right? So when I was there, there's these, the radio in the wall, and you can't turn it off. And it's like straight out of Orwell's 1984. And it plays the news, but it's just propaganda being piped into your house. But what are they saying?

Like, is it just the same thing that's on the TV? So it's not radios that they give out for free, thank God, right? But because it's like in the window used to be you have more electricity. is when I was younger even, then every home have to put it on. And you can turn down the volume, but you cannot turn it off. It's like connected to the wall. And also to make sure that people's unit, we call it, everybody has been in this people's unit, they come and check on it and make sure that we are maintaining war.

So this is when they tell you like, do you know at noon? It's like beep, which means lunch time. So you don't, do not individualism, you eat lunch all together. In the morning, they wake you up. That's so weird, they wake. I was in a countryside hotel and they're playing this weird music at like five. It's like morning, morning music to get off. Am I tripping right now?

What is that? There's this ghostly music playing in the morning. And then there's like something that sounds very spirited and everything. That's a work time. Yeah, work time. So that's at 5 a.m. Everybody has to go to this collective mobilization. So the families, the moms cannot go or sick and children go out.

So that's the time when the music blasts we work. And then 7 a.m. we come home at breakfast and then go to school. Everybody go to work. And then we go to class and then like lunchtime, it beeps again. And then when it goes home, like it tells your entire schedule. Everybody moves in the same schedule. If you don't have electricity, then those things don't work. Is that what those vans are with the loudspeakers on them? Oh, yeah, exactly. So they're doing the same thing. They just do it for the whole village. Yeah, that exactly. They use actual humans. So in North Korea, they pick the people who has a good voice. So that would be like my job in North Korea is just to yell at everybody in a village to go to work and eat lunch? You have to feel them inspired.

You have to feel them like really brainwashed. Gosh. Yeah. That's so depressing. Yeah. Oh my goodness. All the accordions, right, in North Korea, we don't have the instruments. Right.

That needs electricity. So accordions and guitars are the most common instrument. So every music is used to be brainwashing. Yeah. Have you ever seen those kid performances? Those like those are so creepy because the kids are really good at dancing or guitar or singing, but then also it's like their whole life, it's like the Olympics of being good at propaganda and having no artistic flair for the thing that you're practicing your whole life. And they're like

six. I know like there was a documentary I would recommend just to watch. He's called Under the Sun. And he's a Russian director, goes to North Korea and say like, oh, I'm going to make a documentary about how you put up this show parade or something. And then like they do it. But he filmed before the thing and after the thing. which was everything was show. Oh, so it was like B-roll. The B-roll turns out to be the actual, the BTS behind the scenes is the actual documentary

in the rest of it. Exactly. That's interesting. But what checked in, this is like nine years old girl. It's like, it's in me, right? This time she was holding Kim Jong-kir's actually arm at the parade the other day because everybody thought she'd get killed.

So she was like used as a character who was very blessed in a socialist paradise, having a wonderful life. And then she was like, okay, she's like, why don't you just like maybe read a poetry? And then she doesn't know what poetry is. So she reads her commitment all to the leader.

And then at the end they asked like because she was not happy because she was not like doing good job. Like Jimmy, are you happy? And then like what's that? She doesn't know what that is. What happy is? Even emotions are off limits in North Korea. That is wild. Yeah.

So these kids are so brainwashed. They become robots because all fear. Robots. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that there's a lot of sort of robotic tired people. Well, actually, I should say I assumed it was because they're tired. There would be people who when they're standing and they're like at a bar serving food.

Bar? Yeah, like a hotel. Yeah, like at a hotel or like a, yeah, like a restaurant. Wow. And they're standing there, but when they're not interacting with anyone, they just do this. My friends and I were like, is she sleeping while standing up? And we learned shortly that she was actually. like sort of sleeping because you could see her moving like losing our balance gradually

and we realized that she was so tired and so malnourished that she was literally falling asleep while standing up and working and I think like to live your whole life like that and to not be able to have access to your own emotions you're right they're like robots people don't live after 60 like that's a thing in North Korea you never hear that people died from stroke or people died from like cancer we don't wait that long to get killed by these Like other things kill us first. North Korea's life expectancy is extremely low. Yeah.

My grandmother died. I think around American age, like 58 or 59. Wow. Starvation. And everybody was like, oh, she lived a long life. Which is crazy because at 59, you're like in your, in America, you're probably in some of your prime. Your kids maybe are grown, so you're kicking ass at work and you're doing your thing.

You're maybe going to retire pretty soon. You're not winding down. No. No. Unbelievable. I know that people have asked me this before. They say, oh, is it true that if you fold the newspaper wrong, you can get in trouble? And I think we should highlight some of the things that you have to do in North Korea to the performative nonsense, right?

So if you fold a newspaper incorrectly, if there's a photo of the leader, that's it, right? You might get a concentration camp, but if you reap it, so every front newspaper in North Korea is a Kim's photo. But back page, you don't see it. So sometimes you do not see the front page and you rip it. That's how you get executed. Ah, okay, so of course it can be accidental. In a hotel ones, there's these magazines they give you on the flight. Every single one obviously has like Kim Jong-un's face on it.

Before it was Kim Jong-il. So I had a magazine with Kim Jong-il's face on it. And I put it on the table in the hotel because I wanted to keep it. And then there's an ashtray. And I put the ashtray on and I put my coins in it. And I put it all on top of the magazine because, of course, in the United States, you never think about this. Who cares?

It's a magazine. When I came back, all my stuff was arranged neatly and the magazine was gone. Oh my gosh. And on the way home on the flight, they seated me in the back next to, I think, like, some sort of North Korea, usually they separate the foreigners and the North Koreans. I had to seat next to this tough-looking guy in the back, which is a little scary. Yeah. And I wanted to borrow a pen, and he gave me a pen.

And I had the in-flight magazine, and I wanted to write something down, except for Kim Jong-il's picture was on the cover, and I was writing on the back. And he grabbed my arm, and he was like, no. because if you write on it, it makes little indentations on the other side that damages the photo. And I just did nothing for the rest of the flight because I thought, what happens to me if this guy gets really pissed off? Why? Orrown beer. You can torture death to that.

Right, auto warm beer. And this was before that, well before that, I haven't gone since. But that kind of thing is, if I feel that level of fear and I'm like, look, man, I live in the United States, what are you going to do? We're on a flight. We're leaving the country. I can only imagine what you feel. when you've seen people's parents disappear. Yeah.

That must be happening at school, right? Someone's parents or even the kids you're with, they're just... Oh, yeah. I mean, the old family goes, like, the three-generation goes. If the North Korea, your house gets fired, like, caught on fire, the first thing what you do, not risking your children or your mom or parents, you rescue the portraits of Kim's. The portraits that you keep in your house. Yeah, everybody has to have portraits of Kim's.

So if you let that get caught on fire, that family clan is dead. and send prison camps, yeah. So you're supposed to save these stupid printed photographs of the leaders instead of your own kids? And there are so many, not just the portraits, maybe portraits look at this picture. There was a tree. A tree? A tree that Kim Jong-un looked at. Or Kim Jong-year back then, Kim Jong-un looked at.

And then those trees are like in a tragedy relationship because our leader looked at it at one point. Not touching it, just looked at it. So that thing was caught on fire. So somebody held it and protected it. I think it's maybe me they created and that's like what a national hero looks like. For sure, yeah. Yeah. So even a tree, that's how you have to give you a life for.

It's funny you should remind me of this. This is such nonsense, right? Because you'll go to like an ostrich farm or some dumb, stupid tourist thing that you don't even want to go to, but they make you go. It's all on the itinerary. Ostrich farm is literally an example of it. Or like some sort of glass plant or a chemical factory that has never. That thing hasn't run since 1968.

Like, it's been off. You can tell. It's not a working fact. It's really obvious. And you're going there and you can see like, oh, this is the chair that the great comrade general Kim Jong-un sat in when he was inspecting the factory. And then there's like a huge mural that took months to create. And it's like, they call it on the spot guidance.

Have you heard of this? It's where he like walks into this. Oh, no letters on the wall, what he sat at the time and he visited. Yeah, it's like here's this guy who's never seen a chemical fact. factory and he's like, hey, why don't you put that tank closer to that thing? And they're like, wow, what a genius. He's revolutionized the way we make chemicals. And I'm thinking, to show up and tell other people how to do their job must be the most annoying thing in the world. And they're just like, well, paint the entire wall, write down everything he said, gold plate the chair that

he said in for five minutes, and then make like a golden tile on the floor and they never step there again. It's just so ridiculous. The whole thing is myth. But like, when you really North Carolina newspaper. The description of Kim's is like this is one paragraph. Really are like the greatest little of our people, the army of something, the party of the something,

and the something, the youth leader of something. So the introduction takes a paragraph. So it's like grand marshal leader of the... Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah goes, goes, so going down. And then actually content begins there. It's like reading a post on Forbes.com.

It's like all fluff. Yeah. One sentence of content. rest of its nonsense. Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed journalism. Here's a trailer for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Charles Roo here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. When I was 14, I got my first opportunity to escape North Korea and go to China. Police camped her house. We were getting deported to North Korea. I got transported to a detention center. They are brainwashing us for nine months. I started working in a coal mine when I was paid only in rice. So one morning,

instead of entering the mine, I walked up the path and began running. And in the distance, I saw a train come to stop. This is my chance. I need to get on that train. I finally made it to the border town. I'm already determined.

The next day, right? I walked into the river that divides North Korea in China, which is Yellow River. And then I slowly walked into the water. I slipped on a rock and I lit out a scream. A floodlight was on my back. And I heard a soldier screaming at me. Oh, man.

Yeah, this sacki, Don't go. Stop, stop, stop. But I will shoot. The guard was kept screaming in me, but he never felt the trigger. And then I went into the cornfield. I'm in China now. So I embarked another long journey to South East Asia.

I got to Thailand. That was the best day of my life. Going to Thai prison. And then I was trying to apply for South Korea, but they didn't recognize me as refugee. And they're like, we would have to send you back to China. Chinese government sent me back to North Korea. But you guys don't. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

He escaped the police. He had to run him with secret police in China. I mean, this guy just has an absolutely amazing sense of survival and story. And that's episode 84 with Charles Rue, Confessions of a North Korean escape artist, Part 1 and Part 2, Episode 84 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. Make sure you check it out. All right, that's it for Part 1, Part 2 coming up in a few days. Links to Everything Yon Me will be in the website, in the show notes, her YouTube channels,

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So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's into the North Korea stuff, if you know someone who's fascinated

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