The Megyn Kelly Show - Escaping North Korea, Woke College Students and Professors, and American Opportunity, with Yeonmi Park | Ep. 496

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined for an extended, wide-ranging interview by Yeonmi Park, author of "While Time Remains," to talk about her childhood in North Korea, the harrowing conditions she grew up in, making her escape as a teenager, friendship and love while in an oppressive regime, her escape to China and tortuous conditions she and her family faced, coming to the United States, America's promise and opportunity, woke college students and professors, the hypocrisy of America's elites, China's influence in America, hope for the future, and more.Yeonmi's book: https://www.amazon.com/While-Time-Remains-Defectors-Freedom/dp/1668003317Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today we have an incredible, incredible interview for you. This is one of those exchanges I finished recently and said, this is a before and after moment for me. Meeting this woman, hearing her story. I've thought about it every single day since we did it, and we did it a couple of weeks ago. And I think you're going to feel the same when you hear the story of Yeonmi Park. She's here for the full show.

You may have heard her name, possibly her story before, but not like this. Yeonmi Park became a household name for many in America thanks to her 2015 memoir, an extraordinary piece called In Order to Live, A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom. It was published when she was just 21 years old, but her story, of course, starts much earlier. She was born and raised in North Korea and escaped, and that is the right word, escaped to China when she was 13. Her incredibly perilous, dangerous journey did not end there, though. She was not fully free until 2011, just before she turned 18, when she finally made it to South Korea and eventually to America. She's still so young. I sat there listening to her story. And as you hear it yourselves, you're going to think what

I thought, this is unbelievable. This is absolutely incredible. And it got me wondering when the interview was over, like, is this incredible? Like, could this stuff have actually happened? We should, we're journalists, go ahead and do a fact check on it like we do for any of these in-depth pieces we do. And we went back and started fact checking some of the things that Yeonmi told us. And they checked out as incredible as they were. Her descriptions of North Korea checked out. Other people who have escaped have told very similar stories around the same time. A couple of details here or there that whatever, but yes, it checked out. And I will tell you that there were a couple of things. She went on a reality show in South Korea where she talked about how she was, I guess, a little wealthier than you will hear her portray in this interview, whatever. And there was one sort of report on,

oh, she said her mother and father came across out of North Korea with her when in fact it was just her mom. She says that was just a translation thing. She didn't, she didn't claim that. But what's interesting to me is that people have been coming for her as they would, right? You, you leave North Korea and you start speaking these kinds of facts about what it's like to live there and you make yourself a target. But you see, Yonmi Park doesn't care about being a target. She's been one her entire life. Her entire life has been one of people taking advantage of her, people hurting her, people not caring whether she lives or dies, people who have wanted to hurt her from the time she was a very young girl and did. And now here in America, a true survivor, someone who did know victimhood firsthand.

Her observations on our culture have been absolutely stunning and have opened up an entirely new area for her to discuss. She has a new book out this week called While Time Remains, A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America. And she joined me for an incredible, incredible conversation. Enjoy. Yeonmi, great to have you. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, the pleasure's all mine. So correct me if I'm wrong. You're 29 years old now, just about? Yeah, I just turned 29. Wow. Okay. So it's been an extraordinary three decades on this earth. And I've listened to so

many interviews that you've done, and I continue to find your story absolutely riveting. Let me just start with where you are now, before we go back to where you were. Living in Chicago at the moment? I actually moved back to New York last summer. So I've been back to New York since my college. Okay. And you have one son? Yeah, I do. How old is he?

He's about to turn five years old next month. Wow. So how are you enjoying New York, by the way? I was going to university here from 2016 and moved to Chicago right before the pandemic. And I came back to New York last August. And to be honest, I just couldn't recognize the city anymore. Every restaurant that there's meat town in Manhattan where there's a K-town is that I like to go for lunch. Every corner that I turn around, there are people selling drugs.

And what's so shocking is that I walk with my son to go to Korean restaurant, and they sell drugs in those wrapping purple pink paper. And my son thinks that's like a lollipop he keeps asking me to buy him the lollipop from these people and and of course I take subway like every New Yorker and every single time I take the subway I see really unbelievable things that you can even discuss here and I feel like I'm risking my life every single time when I take the subway. So in some sense, I don't feel safe in America anymore. And that's what I was literally crossing the desert for, for freedom and safety.

And I don't get that anymore living in New York City. I completely understand. We just moved from there not even two years ago after having lived in the city for almost 20 years. And we have young children. And it is a scary place these days. It wasn't always. I mean, relatively recently, it was a very safe place to raise a family. And then two election cycles of a terrible mayor, de Blasio, coupled with COVID mania and defunding the police only to refund the police and so on, have changed the dynamic

there dramatically for the worse. Yeah, that's the thing. I only came to America really 2016. And since then, I do not recognize the city anymore. So that's very shocking to me how fast things can really deteriorate. And I mean, I went to university in New York City, and I know what they were learning there. So I'm not even surprised at this point. Well, this is the point of your message, how fast things can deteriorate and how quickly North Korea became what it is today. And so, you know, it's your whole message, as I understand it, since you've gotten here, has been to try to wake up Americans to the dangers of not paying attention to a government that's growing too authoritarian, a far left that's trying to word police and thought police at every level of society, taking control of

various cultural institutions. It's not just a, eh, it's fine, it'll work out. No, it's a five alarm fire that could result in the complete transformation of our country. Yeah, I mean, this is a thing where people do not recognize is that they somehow, because Americans, when they were born, they were born in freedom. Like people who were born with two arms, we will never understand like what it feels like not having the arms. And like that for them to not like not being able to imagine life

without freedom is almost an impossible task, it seems like. And if my country from North Korea, you just look at these two Koreas, North Korea and South Korea, exact same people, homogeneous people, had thousands, almost 5,000 years of same history, ate the same food, same genetics, same culture. Under two different systems, one became South Korea, the same food, same genetics, same culture. Under two different systems,

one became South Korea, the land of K-pop and Samsung and innovation and freedom. And one country literally became the darkest place on earth. The entire country became a concentration camp. The people in North Korea in this 21st century, they don't even know the existence of the internet. And it's not because something North Koreans in their genetics, they want to be oppressed. It's just because they somehow chose a different system. And it can happen to America if we choose a different system that is other than empowering individual liberty and freedom and free market. We can totally can become like North Korea. And I think they somehow think America is an exception to this law, that we are immune to oppression somehow.

And obviously playing with the ideology that brought my country to the Hermit Kingdom, and they are playing the same ideology in America right now. You know, you're, it's funny to think about, because I, as I was reading up on your story, I was thinking about my nephew, my sister's oldest child, who moved to he's in his young 30s. Now he moved to South Korea, about 10 years ago to help teach English, fell in love with a South Korean gal. She's a lawyer that he married her. They're living there. I think she works for Nike and any of it. They have this lovely life. They

have a beautiful child. They're living obviously a perfectly free, absolutely wonderful existence there. And it's not that far away from the existence you've detailed. And it's hard to believe. It's hard to believe what a juxtaposition between the cultures that could be so closely related geographically. Yeah, it's literally a few miles down that was the same Korea back then. There was no North Korea or South Korea.

It was just one Korea. And now the people like North Korea can't even afford afford electricity not to mention internet that the two different reality they became even two different planet I think whenever I have to talk about my nursing experience it's almost like describing life on Mars or something but that is how it felt bad and related reading your story that's how it felt. The people can't be bothered and relate anymore. Reading your story, that's how it felt.

It was like, I don't understand. So let's get into it so that people can hear the details. That's what's extraordinary about you is you're young. As you say, you're 29 years old and born in 1993. This isn't ancient history. This isn't something that happened, oh, 70 years ago and people can't really relate. It's happening right now. Your story remains entirely relevant in present day. So it's

a window into something we haven't been paying enough attention to and also a warning as to where we could be going. So you're born in 1993. And let me just ask you about your earliest childhood memories. Like how was your, you know, you talk to an American person, odds are they spent their childhood, you know, riding a bike, going to school, running around, playing sports, you know, things like that. How do you remember your childhood? I mean, growing up in North Korea, I just remember not seeing any colors because there's no color. We were just so poor. Nothing was painted in color other than there's one place that we had electricity. Those were where the king dictator's monuments were. And that place is where children, I remember, had to get up at 5 a.m.

and go to the monuments and picking up little plants and dust out of the monuments. And that's how we showed our loyalty to the regime. And the first thing I really remember from my mom was actually, she was telling me, don't even whisper, because the birds and mice could hear me. And when I came to America, even with my son, I happened to express his feelings and his thoughts. But the first thing my mom had to teach me was that

the most dangerous thing that I had in my body was my tongue. If I said one wrong thing, that was not just going to kill me, but that was going to kill the three generations of my family. That's how North Korea punished people and get rid of any kind of rebellion by punishing up to eight generations families for one person's crime. Eight generations. And that's true. It was not an empty threat. You actually could wind up getting family members killed three to eight generations around you for misstepping in a way that was offensive enough. And it could be a mild offense. Yeah, it's a offense.

It's like watching a Hollywood movie that was a bootleg Hollywood movie that came from China by smugglers. Or the most ridiculous offenses are like every newspaper in North Korea, the front page had to have Kim's pictures and showing how they worked so tirelessly for the people of North Korea. And a man one day didn't see the front page and looked back and ripped the paper

by mistake. That was his reason to get punished to the concentration camp and along with all his family. And I remember in my room, in every household, every room, every classroom in North Korea have to have portraits of Kim dictators. And if the fire get caught, what do you do? You don't run with your children or your mother. You have to protect the portraits with your own body. Otherwise, your entire three-generation family is going to get killed. Wow.

Do you remember any, is there any joy? Is there any fun for the young ones? I mean, we don't even have, so this is the thing why I keep saying that North Korea is a different planet, is that they don't teach us the concept a lot of times. Like, we don't have the vocabulary, actually. They don't teach us the concept a lot of times. We don't have the vocabulary actually. They don't teach us the word stress. For instance, how can you be stressed living in a socialist paradise? You cannot be. There's no word for PTSD or stress or depression. At the same time, they don't teach us what happiness is. If you ask a North Korean child, what is happiness?

They will not know what that is. So it's not in our mind to think about what joy is. And when you are born in the country, the first thing you know is even as a little baby, you need to survive. That's the, every day is a survival game. Nobody knows. There's no guarantee that you're going to make that day.

So I remember every single day when we lived in North Korea, if we made one day not going to study and dying, we say, well, we made one more day. And not sure what tomorrow holds for you. I mean, so is it, you know, I don't think I'd be asking somebody who'd been a child in a World War II concentration camp if they ever, if they have fond memories or were laughing a lot or had a lot of joy. But I, my instincts would be to do

that because my instincts tell me children are children and they're naturally joyful. Is that not true? I mean, what was your experience? What was, were you able to tap into laughter and something that now you can see as joy, notwithstanding all of your surroundings? This is something that, I mean, to be honest, it hit by having when I actually had my own son in 2018. And I think that's also maybe the first reason why I chose to have a child when I was 22 years old. After North Korea, surviving that country, what they do is when you're born in the oppression, they kind of numb you. They numb all your senses

and they numb the ability to think critically. You are just an empty shell as a robot. Whatever the government controls you, you have this good think in this totalitarian state and but i still if i really try to remember what i was laughing about is you know we get electricity once or twice a year for a few hours when on the holidays of dictators birthdays they have to make us to watch the propaganda films, brainwash us. Then that was the biggest thing that could ever happen to me,

seeing that light bulb light up. But more like 99% time, even as a child, like you never get to have that, you know, humanity with you. That is completely being denied in the country. Even to the point where you're denied, well, you tell me, you're either denied love, but at a minimum, it could be, alternatively, you're just denied the word and the concept of

love. Yeah, that's the thing. North Korea is the only country does not have the concept of love. We don't know what romance is or the mother's love. Kim Jong-un literally banned mother's days because he was afraid that if children love their mothers, they are not going to love the dictator as much. So that's why he even denied that love that a child has for their own mother, or the mother has for their own children, or husband and wife have for each other. I've never heard in my life. My father passed away before he ever reached to freedom. He never told me he ever loved me. I'm sure he did. But in North Korea, you do not even have that right to say or feel love for other people other

than the dictator. Is there nurturing without that word, without the concept? I mean, I can't imagine a mother holding a baby is loving, isn't holding you, isn't holding your hand, isn't showing love. But am I wrong? It's a, so when I was escaping North Korea, the lady who helped me to go to China was a trafficker, but she sold her own daughters to Chinese to be raped. And you would think like, what a horrible person she is. How can she possibly selling her own daughter to be raped as a child in China as a sex slave. But because that was the only way to make her child not die from starvation. And so, of course, we can judge North Koreans all day long.

How can that be a law? And in the 90s, when I was growing up, it was the worst famine in our country. That's when Soviet Union collapsed and they would stop helping the Russian regime and socialism can never survive without subsidy from other countries. They eventually run out of all the money that people have. And people were dying,

millions of millions on top of each other. And during that time, I mean, families had to decide who to kill that day to feed on other children. Because if they don't kill on their child, other children will die. And they forced North Korean people to make these kinds of impossible choices. And of course, no North Korean should ever die from starvation because Kim Jong-un tested more than 40 missile tests. One missile test, he can feed the entire North Korean population

entire year. If he did less four missile tests, nobody ever had to die in North Korea from starvation. But he chose not to feed North Korean people then because we are so weak that then we cannot think about freedom. We cannot think about the meaning of life. We don't have energy to fight back and start a revolution.

That's why the regime chose not to feed us and force us into that kind of unimaginable situation. And instead focused on their missile tests, right? Yeah. I've heard you describe this before. I mean, of course, you describe your own history as having been starving and that you've seen dead bodies in the streets

due to starvation. How did the food distribution system work? So this is a funny thing, right? North Korea began as a communist country. Like Kim Il-sung was a admirer of uh marx and lenin and stalin and he wanted to begin north korea as this perfectly equal society a you know acrobat society where nobody's poor nobody's richer we are all the same and once he read that promise,

and he said, in order to achieve that, you need to give us all your properties. You're going to abolish private property. There's no private ownership on anything. In North Korea, you cannot own a house, you cannot own a bike, you don't even own yourself. Everything, including your body, is a state. And from there, the state is going to decide

how to contribute that. But then as soon as he took all the rights from people, from the lands and rights from people, he decided to divide North Koreans into, and by the way, North Koreans are a homogeneous country in the same language. There's no race difference difference into 51 different classes so after the promise of the equality and no no inequality we became 51 different classes and the regime decided to depending on that classes they're gonna decide who gets fed and who gets to starve from dying from starvation. So mostly only the few people in Pyongyang, like top 10% of the North Korean population living in Pyongyang, in capital, that's where dictators live.

And it's almost like the Hunger Games, right? They have 13 different districts and there's capital. And people in Pyongyang, they have so much food and they have so much luxury. But the 90% of the population don't get any of that by design. How do you get your food? I mean, is it different?

It must be. Than here, where you go to the grocery store, you have money in your pocket from a job. How do you get the food? So in North Korea, nobody can choose their own destiny. When you're born, the division tells you what to do, what to wear, what to think, what to watch, what to eat. And including your jobs, they call something job replacement or allocation.

And doctor's salary, the medical doctor's salary in north korea is less than a dollar a year so you cannot buy a kilogram of rice so the only way that common can survive is by being corrupt and go on the nature to become almost like hunter and gatherers. And even that, you get punished. So the only way I could find food as a child in North Square was, you know, in the fall, I go catch the grasshoppers. And that's what I ate. And in the summertime, I would eat dragonflies and plants, tree barks.

And some children even eat the mud. And if you eat the mud, you cannot go to the bathroom and you're going to die eventually. And children are still so hungry. They despite that still eat the mud. And that's how North Koreans are the same people as the South Koreans. But on average, we are five inch shorter than South Koreans because of malnutrition. Wow. I read that when you finally got out at age 13, you were around there, you were between 50 and 60 pounds?

Yeah. And because of my child malnutrition, I'm still only like 76 pounds. And it's the same thing with all North Koreans, that our system didn't develop fully. Our organs and brains never fully developed. Because that only childhood, you need the nutrition to develop your physics and your system. we fail to do that so even after they escape nobody can ever fully recover and all of us have that problem afterwards in gaining anyway because our systems are just not used to it i read that the average north korean man is what under five feet tall yeah it's a if you're above 138 centimeters it's got to be like four one four two feet you have to go draft to military north korea for 13 years so every man in north korea are obligated to serve in the military for 13 years if we are just above four feet. And for women, it's five years. And when you go to military, they don't feed you. So women stop having periods because you can't afford to have periods.

Our body is not going to ovulate because of malnutrition. And you, as a woman, you constantly get raped and not fed. So North Korean regime? Do people marry for love? Does the regime choose your spouse? How has our relationships developed? So about friendship, we don't have the word friends. We only have the word comrades. So comradeship and friendship is a very different thing. When you are being a comrade with each other, you are serving the revolution.

You're a revolutionary. You're not an individual. So even when I was a child, going to North Korean state school temporarily, and every Saturday, they do this thing called a self-criticism session. And it reminds me of Americans now, the corporations, they are like re-education. They are doing people to show them their bigotry and biases.

Yeah, a struggle session. Right, North Korea is a lot severe version, but they begin with very tiny little kids. That brainwashing begins early. And the trick is that every Saturday, we have this red note and write down the verses that dictators talked about. It's like in North Korea, dictators are gods.

They literally copy the Bible, give us 10 amendments, and have the book that people need to live by from their own words, all made up story. And we have to say, like, dear leader, I got so merciful that he forgave my sin, even though I was not being a good revolutionary this way. And I'm eternally grateful for his love and protection.

And afterwards, of that confession, what you have to do is, you have to pick your classmate to criticize. This is not something you can skip. So imagine if there are 60 kids in a classroom, 60 kids during the entire week, you need to look for the faults in your classmate to criticize. Otherwise, you're going to get punished. So even in children have to constantly looking over each other's shoulders

and see who is committing the crime and who is not doing the good job. So in North Korea, it's like that. If you have three people, everybody is spying on each other. And that's why there's no trust between people or between children's friendship even. So how does it work that you would find a mate? How do you find a spouse in that environment? So a lot of times it's a government assignment.

The dictator says, okay, this time, this many militaries, each year they graduate, right? They come out of the military after 13 years of service. Then he says, okay, this 29 maybe district is going to marry maybe 17 districts of women who are getting out of the military. Like that, just random. He just matched, the government matched them up. Or sometimes family members do,

but the problem with not being able to marry who you want in North Korea is that, as I said about the class system, right? 51 different classes. And the tricky thing about North Korea region is that they made this way to prevent people to mix around between classes is if you marry somebody who's lower status than you, that lower person don't marry up. You go down with the woman.

So if a guy was a high position, he married somebody lower, his family, entire three-generation family, are going to go to lower class. So what's going to happen? The family are going to oppose the marriage with their life, literally. So the mixing between different classes

doesn't really happen. So you were talking about the punishment if you break any of these rules. And again, it could be something like you said, maybe it was a neighbor who watched an American movie or watched a Western movie. How do they, I mean, they disappear people, they go off to camps, what would lead to a death sentence? And are you forced to participate in that at all? Yeah, so there's no concept of minor in North Korea, even though you're five years old. Literally, I can't imagine my son had to go to see that.

Even four years old, two years old, you have to go watch public execution. And this is a very often event in North Korea that happens. They have these executions like a stadium or the market or the school stadium, like where a lot of people go watch and you get drafted to go watch it. And teachers announce that which day, what time, there is a public execution. And as a class, we all have to march together to go see the public execution.

And for the adult, the same. For anybody, it's the same. How do they commit the executions? I've never seen the hanging. I heard that people literally literally in the concentration camps, they hang the person and they demand, if it was a mother, then they demand the son and husband have to call first person to have to

throw the rocks to kill them. They use the family members to commit the murder. That's how they do that. To really carry the love and trust between anybody and people have no place to go for right and the execution that i saw was by shooting uh they before they kill somebody they literally break every bone in the person's body so they can't even walk. And then before they take them out to the public, they put a big rock in their mouth and break all their teeth. The reason they put the rock in their mouth is they don't even give this chance for the last time to rebel, to resist the regime's ideology.

Nobody can ever have a say towards the regime, even in their death moment. That's why these people come out, the rocks in their mouth and just blood and their bones are just all smushed and they drag them into their bodies. And when the time when Kim Jong-un executed his own uncle, he used the gun, I mean, that was opium shooting down the airplane. That kind of powerful weapon he used and made his body into little pieces and then made the dogs eat the flesh afterwards and let the officials to see this execution.

And this is what's going to happen if the people do not obey the dictator and do they do many other ways they care people do they make the children and the spouse participate in the execution every time or is that a reserve for the most egregious i mean i know you're saying there's nothing minor and there are no minors but is that reserved for the most egregious sin? No, every time. One of my ex-conjurers, my sister's friend, her mother was accused somehow being a spy. And then they made her to sit in the front, seeing her own mom got killed. And three months later, and then she got all exiled to the countryside.

And the officers say, oh, we made a mistake. And she was not a spy. But there's no apology. There's no condemnation after killing an innocent life. Every single execution, the family members have to be the witness. And then they put the little children by height. So if you're two years old, you're going to be the first row, five years of second row, seven years, like, and the older standing in the last.

So since you grew up in North Korea, the first thing you see is people getting executed as a child. And as you get older and get taller, you're going to go standing in the back row to watch it. Is there mass depression? You know, now being able to identify what depression looks like, I'm sure you can. Is there mass depression you know now being able to identify what depression looks like i'm sure you can is there mass depression there i would say i think it's whatever you fear living in north korea is gonna be beyond depression it's gonna be a complete i don't know numb. It's a complete fear.

I still work with North Koreans and try to rescue them. There are Chinese brokers that we use to rescue these people and send the information and get money out of North Korea and send the money to North Korea. And somebody tried to lie to us by being a North Korean. And when I hear their voice, I can tell who is calling me from North Korea and who's not. Because even their voice is oppressed to the point that anybody, if you hear their voice, that you're not even their soul is crushed by this darkness.

My God, just horrific. Just to think about how that's, again, not ancient history. This is recent and still ongoing. It's happening right now. Yeah, nothing's changed. It's the same family. It's the same leadership. So let's go forward in time to where you see an opportunity to potentially leave. How did that happen? Oh, I was 13 years old. And we were like, we were not able to find food. And luckily, I was living on the border town of North Korea. And as you can see from the satellite pictures, North Korea did not have electricity.

And from border town, I was looking across the river, and that was China, and they had lights on the streets at nighttime. And that's when my sister and I thought, maybe if we go where the lights were, we could find a bowl of rice. And that's initially thought, like, why we were escaping, really not thinking about freedom, not even knowing what freedom is or human rights is. We were just looking for a bowl of rice

so we would not die from starvation. And first, my sister escaped to China and I wanted to go with her, but I couldn't go with her because one day I got very, had a bad stomach ache. So my mom took me to the North Korean hospital. And, you know, this is a free healthcare, right? The government provides everything me to the north screen hospital and you know this is a free health care right the government provides everything free to the people but in the hospital they use one meter

to inject every patient oh my doctors operate on people without anesthesia or if there is the anesthesia that doesn't work. And there's no medicine. And people in North Korea don't die from cancer because before cancer kills them, other things are going to kill them first. And most people die even before they're 60 years old. So they opened me up. They cut my stomach off.

And my anesthesia didn't work. I didn't have any. So I was screaming and fainting. And turns out like they thought I had appendix, like two removed, but I just had malnutrition. So I couldn't go with my sister, but she left me a little note to say, go find this lady. She's going to help you to go to China and find me there. So I said I got out of the hospital. You must have been afraid.

If you think that they can read your thoughts and that everyone's spying on you, it must have been terrifying just to have those thoughts, never mind have a note directing you where to go to get out. Yeah, so that is also a thing. In our school, you're so so isolated we don't even know the word escaping and also when you're so desperate like you know if your apartment caught a fire you're not really gonna think what happens to me if i don't jump out of the window

right now because i'm gonna die from this. So almost I think when I was escaping, I wasn't thinking. And there's no way you could think. Like if you do not go that hour, you are literally dying from starvation. And that's why the only thing I just remember was crossing that frozen river into China with my limping stomach just out of the surgery. I cannot get shot. How are you able to do that? Because the guards, they are with the machine guns.

It's a shoot to kill order. They don't just catch you. They are going to shoot you to death if they see you crossing the river. That's all I remember. I was like, I cannot get shot. I have to run as fast as I can. How did you get past them?

So the lady who was helping me was, turns out, a human trafficker. She was in North Korea herself, and she was also a lady who sold her own daughters to Chinese to be sold. And she was selling my mother and myself too. And she bribed the guards. and she was telling my mother and myself too. And she drive the guard. But the thing is, in North Korea border, this Yellow River, there's every 10 meters there are guards.

So you cannot possibly drive to all these guards, right? It doesn't cost so much money. And a lot of them are not, maybe as club, they're not going to let us go. So they drive this one guard in one post. But if other guys see us, they can shoot us from 10 meters away. And each direction, up and down, they are under the ground. They're above the bushes. So that's why it was never like chance of making out of that river.

Now it's impossible. Nobody can escape from North Korea under Kim Jong-un right now because they put the facial recognition cameras, they put the wire, electrified the wire fences, they buried the landmines. Literally, entire North Korea became a concentration camp. So nobody can escape. By my time, thankfully, there was no electrified wire fences. There were

no landmines. I just, if I were lucky to avoid that shots from the guards, I could come out. So you managed to make it. So you crossed this frozen river in the dark of night. And what happened next? Yeah, it's almost like yesterday. It was 2007, March 31st. I was crossing that river with my mother and one broker, a young man who was helping us to cross. And then as soon as we got there,

the first thing I was seeing was my mother being raped, just right in front of me. And initially, this broker wanted to rape me. But my mother offered herself. She was saying, she just done surgery. She can't, she's going to die if you do. So she offered herself. Did you even understand what was happening with that? Did you get what rape was

and what your mother was doing for you? I didn't have the vocabulary to know what rape was because North Korea news is everything is fantastic. In North Korean news, there's not such a little thing as accent or bad. It's all about how

our revolution is winning, how our state is winning, how we are creating the socialist paradise. So we don't know what rape is or what crime is. And I've never had a sex education in school. I never even knew what kissing was. So all I remember was I was seeing possibly the worst thing that a person can see without even knowing the context of the rape. It looked just horrible. And that was my introduction to sex. So you could tell it was bad, that you at least could see this is bad. She doesn't want this. This is a hurtful thing. Of course. And I remember what my mom was saying, like, turn around, turn around, cover your ears, close your eyes.

And she just kept screaming, like, turn around, turn around, close your eyes and hide your ears. And I was frozen. I couldn't understand what she was saying. Like, what could this possibly be? And eventually I turned around and I covered my ears. And he was saying, oh, next time I'm still going to go for her. That broker still wants me.

And I think to me, it's still like something happened yesterday. still wants me and just I think to me it's like something happened yesterday and I had to go to this apartment and there in the light they checked our teeth

and checked our head and our elbows to see how many we are like if we are like viable or not and then negotiating our price just in front of our eyes like

we just became an animal and less than an animal for them and they were negotiating to selling us to another human human trafficker that's unbelievable for them. And they were negotiating to selling us to another human human trafficker. That's unbelievable. I'm so sorry for what you've gone through. And you had to watch your mom go through whose only goal in that moment seems to have been to have protected you. And she did, but there were there were limits to what she could spare you from. I believe I've heard you say the number that you were sold for, that your mom was sold for.

What was the number? And then how did they take you away? They split you up after that? So in this place, they sold us to another human trafficker. And because this trafficker didn't rate me, he could sell me a higher price because there are many sick perverts in China buying child virginity. So they sold my mom for around $65.

21st century, they sold a human being for $65. And my price was over $270 because I was virgin and I was a lot valuable than her. And I think he was very glad that he didn't marry me because he couldn't make more money out of me and and that i still remember i think now actually they were making sure that i was virgin and that trafficker bought us and took us to a bit inner china and there i got separated from my mom they sold my mom first to another trafficker and i was kept there and of course he kept me to rape me and I felt like I somehow I felt like hell and I was sort of another trafficker afterwards and that's when I couldn't resist anymore I got raped

there by the third broker. That's how you lost your virginity, in a rape to somebody who had purchased you. Yeah, but in this rape, there was a deal. I was going to kill myself. I couldn't take that shame. There's no more meaning. I could not live life anymore. So I put a knife to my neck.

I said, I'm going to jump off this building I'm gonna kill myself like and he said if I be raped by him and become his mistress to 13 years old child he said he could buy my mom back because he was the one who sold my mom to a Chinese farmer, supposedly husband of Gorsi. He was the owner of my mother. He said he could help me to find my family and bring my sick father from North Korea to China. That's when I thought, if I can't sacrifice more myself, I can't save my family. That's why I got raped and even killed myself there How long were you with this man? Less than two years Oh wow, so it was a couple of years

Let's just spend a minute on the sort of sick perverted, twisted men this collection not all, but this collection of men in china there's a reason for that um there's a reason there's such a market for child brides and the sale of women what is it so there are also it's i never knew i was gonna say this because back then i was fantasizing killing this guy every single day with an axe.

I hated him so much. But the thing is now, as an adult, looking back, he was also a victim of this system. The Chinese Communist Party somehow decided that less people is better for the regime. So why don't we come up with a one-child policy? We're going to make sure that all the women who had second child and each family keep the one child. So what Chinese families did is they were aborting girls and they were keeping boys a lot of times.

And they were literally, if they gave birth to a girl, by secretly they would kill the child. They flipped them up and they murdered this little girl. And they kept the boys because that one child was the only thing they could keep. If they had a second, they would get punished. And you cannot keep a second child. So now there's more than 30 million Chinese men who cannot find wives.

But there are not just enough women to go around for them. And here, they demand North Korean sex slaves for their needs. They just ended that policy in 2016. It's amazing to think that during our lifetime, that policy was in place, the late 70s, 80s, 90s. It was in place. I mean, we didn't do anything about it. I don't know how much we could have done. And there are real-life consequences as a result,

and you're living proof of it. Yeah, so that's the thing. How, when the state decides what is right for the individuals, they always mess it up. And the worst part of being in China as an oil security factor, when the state decides what is right for the individuals, they always mess it up. And the worst part of being in China as a North Korean defector, actually, by the way, right now, when I'm talking to you, there are 300,000 North Korean girls in China right now are slaves. And of course, we deny slavery all day long in the West.

And when there's actual slavery happening, actual Holocaust happening, this is what now what I'm saying, the U.S. says, what's happening to North Korean people, the only resemblance that we can find in the human history is not Germany, it's a Holocaust. So Holocaust is repeating, the slavery is repeating, and people do nothing about it and trying to silence us. And when North Korean women go to China, actually being raped is not even the worst thing. Actually, it's a fortunate thing. The other places they get sold for is organ harvesting.

They buy these girls, buy these women, and put them in the basement and take their organs out and discard their bodies. Buy these girls, buy these women, and put them in the basement. And take their organs out and discard their bodies. And they sell them in brothels and drug these girls and rape them until they die. They sell one girl to an entire village. So entire village rape her until she dies. Or the families who cannot afford one person, their brothers and uncles and cousins collect the money and they buy one girl and rotate them to rape her. So if you get sold to one guy

and you get raped by one guy, it is actually the best scenario that can ever happen to North Korean women. I mean, as you're talking about this, all I can think is how is this person sitting across from me? Brilliant with perspective on life, the mother of a young child giving love, presumably receiving it. I mean, that's the, that's your story. It's the story of resilience and perseverance and strength that you never knew you had. How would you? How? Right. You just kept going.

I mean, that's sort of how where we are in the story now. You just kept going. Yeah. I mean, there's a one time I was going to kill myself. I couldn't take it anymore. There's no hope. And the problem why there was no hope is that the saddest part of going through all of this is that you don't know there's the alternative life can exist. You don't even know there's a free world that exists. I've never seen the map of the world. So all I knew was this darkness and oppression and despair.

And I thought like, what is the point of keep living like this? This is all we got in the world. And in the moment when my father eventually was, I brought him to China through the type of the trafficker. And he said, no matter what happens in life, life is a gift. And you have to fight for life. And that's what he told me. And he was fighting for life until his death with his cancer that he got from the prison camp.

And that's when I realized, no matter what you go through, life is a gift. I'm going to fight for this thing. So that helped me to come all the way here where I had to always fight for my life. Wow. It's amazing your dad had that insight, notwithstanding the life he had led. So you strike the deal with the trafficker and the next day he, you did get out of China. You, as I understand it, was it from China to South Korea through the Christian missionary group? So yeah, right before the other step is

some other trafficker who bought me, he was a criminal himself and he lost all his money by gambling and he could not feed me anymore so i could not even buy uh food to my mother because he bought my mom back from the traffic and now i had my own mother and by then my father passed away already and then he could not provide food. And at this point, if he were a really horrible guy, I think he could have sold me to another guy and got the money. But he didn't. He told me, why don't you sell your

mother? And I was thinking, how on earth can I possibly sell my own mother? But the thing is, if I don't sell my mother, she doesn't die from starvation. So I sold her when I was 14 years old to a farmer. thing is if I don't serve my mother, she doesn't die from starvation. So I sold her when I was 14 years old to a farmer.

And that money, of course, the trafficker took every penny. And he spent one night gambling with my mom's life. And several months later, I found her back and I ran away with her to another village from that guy who bought her.

And from there, luckily, I met a North Korean woman, another defective woman who was like us fugitive. And she said, there's a way that we can find food in China. It was, thankfully, it was not a brothel. It was not actually a man who rapes me every day but it was a chat room I don't know if you know this there are many perverted people pay money to women

touch themselves and show their body in front of the camera and they said in Chenyang big city there is a chem chat room. If you go there, if you show your body, you're not going to get raped, but they're going to give you food and they're going to give you shelter so the police cannot find you and send you back to North Korea.

So I thought, I mean, that was the best thing I could get as a North Korean in China. We cannot get a job as a washing dishes. Nobody can give us any job without ID. And in the chat room, I met another lady and she said, I know this missionary from South Korea and they told me that there's a way to go out of China and be free. And she was too scared to go that journey by herself. So she was asking us to join her. And then we got connected to missionaries finally.

And they told us about the Bible and Jesus Christ. And they said, we can literally cross the desert to Mongolia. And if God allows, and if God guides us, then we can become free. So that was my path out of China through this help the missionaries. What does crossing the desert look like? It's the most surreal thing I think I've ever seen in my life is literally we have to cross China.

It's like the missionaries, they don't have a lot of money. So they have like budget of few cents, like five grand Chinese money to per person. So they have to put us in a group. And in our group, we were like eight of us. And we had one man. And he had his own son who was like american age two or three like young little toddler but as i said in if you are born in north korea two years old gonna know how to behave he knew that if he cries and give away we're gonna send back north korea so this baby will not even cry uh they took us to the border town of China and in the border of China there's Mongolia and in between this border

there's a Gobi desert and there are guards of course same with machine guns standing there we chose this is by now this is 2009 by the end of February in the site like Mongolia,

it gets to minus 40 degrees at nighttime. So we chose the coldest time because the guards would not think somebody who's so crazy is going to cross the desert in this coldest time of the year. And in the summer, like most likely going to get captured by the guards.

And we started walking from China to Mongolia. We eventually crossed 16 wire fences and a lot of them were electrified so we had to dig the hole under it. And luckily, didn't die. We didn't even have gloves or scarves

somehow, did not die from the freezing cold. We made it to Mongolia. That seems impossible with minus 40 degree temperatures. scarves somehow did not die from the freezing cold. How? That seems impossible with minus 40 degree temperatures. How long was the journey? It was just one day because we were in a border town and we went as

far as we could. And a lot of them take days because the problem when you stand in the literally middle of the Gobi Desert, it's like in the middle of the ocean. You have no idea if you are going straight or going around the circle. If there's one tree, you can at least know we are now keep turning back around and circle and circle.

And a lot of them do that. They lose the way. They keep going circle around and eventually go back to China side and get caught by the guards. Or keep circling around and circling around and the wild animals in the desert, they're going to eat them. Or just die from that pure malnutrition. But we somehow crossing, crossing and then in the middle of the desert, we could not use a flashlight to see the compass. But the missionaries told us that go find north and west direction. Just go follow it.

If you cross the eight wire fences, that's going to be Mongolia. But we crossed 16 of them and still can't find Mongolia. We don't even know if this is the China side or Mongolian side and luckily by the after like 2 or something I don't remember the time there's a really bright northern star was there

and we couldn't use a compass anymore so I told everybody let's just follow that star and see what happens so we in the desert the most important thing is you should not stop moving. When you're freezing to death, you stop feeling things, and you become very dizzy and sleepy, and that's a sign you know you're dying.

So we had to constantly wake up each other, and every second had to move not to die from the cold. By the time around 7.30 the next morning, the Mongolian guards were running with guns and asking us to put our hands up because they were going to catch us. And they were going to send us back to China's side because they did not want to deal with us. Oh, no. What happened? Chinese side because they will not they did not deal with us. Oh, no. And in this time, we at that point, like none of us have

anything to lose anymore. We never noticed can defectors escape. It's like Jews during the Holocaust, they were escaping. If you get caught and sent back, it's like the worst thing why you better off you kill yourself right there. So we are ready to commit the suicide. And the last minute they stopped. The tragic thing is they did that to the next team that were following us from the missionary team. They've gone too far. So one of my mom's friends, she swallowed the poison. And we later asked Mongolian guards, why did you do this to us? And they said, because it was so fun to see the reactions. And these are

little kids, they are like 18-year-old little boys. They thought it was so fun for us begging and begging for life. And so everybody's praising North Korean people because they know that we don't have protection from any governments. We are just stateless, poor, I don't know, fugitives. Right. And instead of having any sort of a human compassion instinct, their instinct was to abuse you more.

But they let you live. I mean, you made it. Yeah, so two months of interrogation in Mongolia, they are moving us to different detention centers each time. They make sure they verify that we are North Koreans. And two months later, we flew with a fake passport to South Korea. The South Korean government

came up with a fake passport and they almost smuggled us out from Mongolia, Lombok to Seoul, Incheon airport. And that's how I became free. Was there a moment, Yeonmi, where you were like this is it you know i made was it when you went into seoul was it when you got into america or was there never that moment was it more of a slow reveal it's definitely a slow reveal it's the the vast the difference between the free world and north korea is so different that the first i

mean literally i remember at this re-education center in south korea they are like telling us that you know by the way americans are not bastards because that's what the regime telling us and they literally show us the posters of americans they are cold-blooded elitists. They are monsters. If they see North Koreans, they're going to rape and kill us and eat us alive. The South Korean government is telling us, Americans are not. They are democracy. They are great people. They are not monsters. Then, then obviously they are telling us that you know dictators they are dictator kings are dictators they are uh oppressing people and you're like thinking what's a dictator you know what's a democracy yeah what's oppression like it's not

about learning a new language south korea and oscar had the same language just we didn't have the vocabulary and somebody for the first time asking me to introduce myself and I did not know what introduction like introducing yourself meant like what do you mean it's like okay just say my name is this I like this I like to be this

and I was like I was keep saying we because in North Korea we don't have the word I. We don't know what I is. Like whenever I say, oh, we like water, we like red color because it's a revolutionary color. We like this country. There's never a time we can say I in North Korea.

And then this teacher was saying, then why just don't you tell me your favorite color? And I was thinking thinking I don't know because in North Korea they told him my favorite color was red it was a revolutionary color and in South Korea they were asking me to think for myself for the first time in my life and that was exhausting to thinking for yourself and literally I was thinking for five minutes and I had to take a break because I was not used to thinking. And suddenly I had to think like what I'm going to eat,

what I'm going to wear, where I'm going to live, what I'm going to study. And everything was just up to me now. Nobody's going to decide that for me. And that was very, very hard to adjust in the beginning. What is your favorite color? Now it's spring green ah great yeah this is was what was the most amazing thing like when you got to south korea

what you know that you saw that you thought was incredible because it's all new as you point out north korea isn't really even using electricity so do you you remember like, what's that? What's this? There's so many, so many things to look at and discover. Yeah, I mean, looking at the toilet bowl at the airport for the first time. And I never seen that kind of toilet like we had outdoor digging wood toilet. And in North Korea, even poop is collected by the regime. We cannot afford the fertilizer. So the regime demands that every person have to bring our own poop to the regime, to the collective farm. So even there are poop thieves in North Korea. We cannot even waste our own feces. And then I suddenly seen this bowl with the clean water on it.

I was thinking like, what do I wash my hands? Like, what do I do with this? And I was squatting on that thing because I did not know you had to supposedly sit on it. And seeing the toilet paper in my life for the first time this soft thing smells so good i i thought it was the only fancy thing i stole the toilet paper from the airport in my life you know sure and i mean seeing food like you know i've never seen a cookbook because in north korea like we don't have you know 50 maybe half pound of pork and garlic and different ingredients. There's no such thing called cooked recipe.

We just eat whatever grain, whatever plants we can find, whatever jewel that we can make that day. And suddenly in South Korea, it's like, what's your favorite food? I'm like, I don't know what's out there. I did not know there are different types of food even. What was it like seeing television for the first time or the movies or the internet? It's, I mean, just even seeing the shower first time,

like we don't have running water at home. We don't get to go to the river and stream to bring the water. And in the morning, like the hierarchy of family, if our father washes his face, then my mom and my sister, and I'm the last one

to use that water to wash face. Then that same water goes back to my father. He washes his feet, then my mother washes her feet, my sister and me. And the same water we're going to wash our rags

and clean the home. And the last water we're going to throw in ourags and clean the home and the last water we're going to throw in our little garden in front of us. There's no such a thing called a trash can because there's nothing to throw away in North Korea.

There's no such a thing called waste. In South Korea, if you hit the button, the electricity comes. If you put the tap, the water, cold or hot water comes. My mom's favorite thing, when she's always so happy, makes her so happy, is when she hears the sound of the refrigerator.

The refrigerator. Yeah. And when she heard it, she was laughing and i was like why mom why are you suddenly laughing to hear the sound of refrigerator like what a miracle that is and just everything we're seeing was just a pure miracle do you remember what what what was the first like when you started eating and you you, food had always been an issue for you. Was there one thing you remember saying, Oh my God, like I, this has to be a major part of my new life. It was their favorite. Yeah. So, so it's, this is the thing. If you are coming out of a concentration camp, like your stomach systems are not like normal so if you suddenly eat the

very soyly like full nutrition food your stomach cannot digest even throw it out so and i remember i was like now i can eat whatever thing i want i was eating and i was nauseous i was throwing up and then i I learned that you need to gradually introduce your system into the solid food and a bit of oil, a little bit of butter, and inclusive a little bit of protein. Otherwise, our stomach is not used to eating full steak. And eventually, when my system fully adjusted and become a normal person mode,

I tasted steak in America. And literally in North Korea, cows have more rights than people. One of the executions my mom saw was this young man in his early 20s who was getting executed because he ate the collective farm's cow and he was dying from nutrition. So the regime was killing him. And cows are very precious. It's owned by the regime. They have to work in the farm.

And I was thinking, now, finally, I have more rice than animal in America. Even if I eat the cow, I'm not going to be executed. So to this day, I feel so grateful whenever I eat a steak. How long were you in South Korea before you came to the United States? I was in South Korea for five years. While my junior year of college, I came to America to continue my studies and write my first book. Okay. And that was that when you, you came to New York to go to continue my studies and write my first book. Okay. And that was that when you came to New York to go to Columbia University? Yeah. So I came here before that I was coming here to write the book first and my agent was in

New York. So while I was writing my book in New York City I was like I still want to continue my education and they told me there's such a great school called Columbia University exists so I was like oh that's amazing I heard about this school and I was applied and by some miracle I got accepted

I don't know I should be thankful now after this point but I started this school which was whole of dreams. So a couple of questions on that. I don't know. You've lived in New York before. You live in New York now. Have you, I assume, have you had the experience yet of going by the Statue of Liberty and taking that in? Yeah. Actually, I've never gone inside. But I've been right there with a boat, seeing it from the front. That's the way to see it from the water. I feel even as a natural born

American citizen, there's nothing like it. If you don't get chills as you go by Lady Liberty by boat, there's something wrong because I find it such a moving experience that I I don't know whether it was meaningful to you at all, or whether it's something wrong. Because I find it's such a moving experience that I don't know whether it was meaningful to you at all or whether it's just interesting. Yeah, I think what it stands for, I think that's, I mean, the reason why I wrote this book is in some sense for my own son. In some sense, I was very lucky.

When I was escaping from North Korea, even though I did not know that a country like America, three nations existed, I had at least some place to escape to. And I'm eternally grateful for America, the defending South Korea, and kept the country free for me to go to and to be saved. But, I mean, every day I think about South Korea and kept the country free for me to go to and to be saved. But

I mean, every day I think about what happens if America goes away? Where will my children escape to? There's really no places left in this earth right now. And I think yeah, this is such a special place.

I cannot run away from this place. This is all I've got and this is all we've got as a humanity. It's a unique idea. It's worth fighting for, and the fight changes as the country evolves, and you're very much involved in the present-day fight. Before we get to that, one other small question. I just wonder, what was your reaction the first time you saw Times Square? That's funny.

So there's a very, always the Norwegian vision keeps saying, we are going to make American bastards, they'll land into sea of lights, right? By the bombing them with a nuclear weapon. And the first place that I landed to, after going to mission schools in Texas, I came back to write the book. They took me a bus from D.C., some Chinese bus,

and landed me to Times Square. And I was literally thinking, I don't think America needs any of North Korea's help to make their sea of lights. This is literally the sea of lights. It was brighter than the daytime. I landed in the night and I've never seen anything like that. It was like literally standing on a different planet.

I could not think of a place that can be the polar opposite of North Korea than New York City and especially the Times Square. It's fun to think about because it's such a special place. I mean, it's overwhelming, of course, in many ways. But I do think what I love about Times Square for everybody is if you can go there, ideally in a time when it's not peak, peak busy and stand there and look around. To me, that's the place you feel anything is possible. Anything is possible here. Like this country came and from absolutely nothing, all of this went up these enormous skyscrapers, the beautiful lights, the twinkling signs, the enormous, uh, shows of financial

success, the billboards, the excitement, the creativity of Broadway. It's all right there. The music, it's, and, and fun, you know, street artists on the street trying to lure you into giving them a couple of bucks for fun acts and magic and whatever your heart desires. It's there. I love standing there and just taking it in as possibility, possibility. That's where I am right now. I think it's funny enough. I took my mom to Las Vegas and it became her favorite place in the whole world. Not because they do gamble or anything. She just could not comprehend how can you build this city in the middle of desert it is a miracle yeah it's like mom is freedom when you're free you can do anything you can literally reach the moon right and like you can build these trees and waterfall and everything in the middle of gigantic desert

i think that's like same thing for me just seeing the New York City too. It was a completely wasted land before. Looking at the city today, I mean, all the besides the crime that is happening, just what this city went through and survived and what it accomplished is like the power of individual liberty and what we can achieve when we can fulfill our potential and when we can be in the free land. And I think, of course, North Korea could have become a Manhattan if they were free, but they chose a different system.

Is there anything you're still doing now, like old habits die hard, like only one square of toilet paper or something that you don't you know is there anything that you are have you carried over with you it's uh it's funny i guess even till this day i don't to have a lot of stuff with me somehow. I don't know. It's like somehow like with the food, right? Like it feels like if I'm somehow committing a crime, if I waste food.

Speaking of Vegas, you must have died when you saw those huge buffet, you know, all you can eat. Everything's to excess. That's that's my favorite buffet is like my favorite and i mean this is a thing um so my son is like five years old his dad is not tall at all he's like five to six very short i mean average like right but my son is like 99.9% child in height and weight and everything. And it got to be from my side, right? Because my grandfather was taller than my own father.

And my grandmother was taller than my own mother. Like each generation, nose canes keep getting shorter. So I never knew what my potential was. Right, right. And yet you're going to see it. I was so obsessed that like my son not get enough nutrition i think the obsession with nutrition is still stays with me and my son still says like you're feeding me too much because when he says like i'm full i'm not like okay chill about it

you have to finish your plate everything you have there so i don't think their own habits ever gonna go away the may i ask you about um your marriage because i understand you you got married but then you got divorced you had you got married you had your child got divorced so before we get to the end of the marriage how did you fall in love, right, without any practice? That was very hard. It's like after North Korea and I go to South Korea, at the intelligence center, when they're extracting all the spies out, once I'm confirmed that I'm not a spy, they told me, everything you're told when you're in North Korea was a lie.

Literally everything. And because in North Korea, they said that I was not even Asian. They said that I was Kim Il-sung race, our dictator race. North Korean calendar begins when Kim Il-sung was born. Now when Jesus Christ was born. And literally including my own race was a lie. And I was thinking, like, so if everything that they told me was a lie, that how do I know what you're telling me is not a lie?

Yeah, right. It's like, how do I ever trust again? And of course, how do I ever trust men again? It took time. It took me trusting what that meant was reading georgia was animal farm that helped me to understand what happened to my country what happened to my myself you know why the country became that way and why these people saying what everything i taught was like and how to trust men again was also a keeping that perspective that my father was a

man too that i come from man part of me is man too and thankfully now i also have a son so with that perspective i think i was able to put my guards down and fall in love in New York City and with American bastards. It's like in North Korea, international marriage is banned. When women in China, like North Korean women get raped, and if they get pregnant and send back to North Korea, the first thing they do is kill the child. They put the salt water with a syringe and the guards come kick the woman's belly until baby dies.

Or if baby's still alive, they come out, they struggle the baby and kill the baby. They do not believe in mixing blood. Even with the Chinese, the regime that helped them, they did not accept it.

So imagine if I were in North Korea and had a child with a Caucasian man. I mean, my child would not exist unless he was born in a free country. So I feel like my child is such a unique thing. I cannot believe we introduced my mom to blocks. I cannot believe we had a child to do America bastards. Okay, so let's talk about the what you've observed about our country, because you came here, I presume, yes, you want to write your book, and you went to school here. But you clearly fell in love with America and the idea behind it, because you're now an American citizen. But it was not all rainbows and unicorns once you got fully more acquainted with America. And I know you've spoken openly about, in particular, your academic experience and what

you started to observe when it came to the messaging about America, about who we are, about our history, about what's important. So talk a little bit about that. What was your first sort of exposure to, wait, what are they saying? And why is this eerily reminiscent of where I came from? Yeah, so it's, I mean, where do I begin the shock that I felt. And so I came to America and thinking, I mean, my story of America is a miracle.

It's, it's a, it is literally the best country in human history. It's not just the contemporary world as the beginning of the humanity. And this is the best country. And I don't even know why I have to state this obvious fact to anybody. And then the first thing, at Columbia, at the orientation, they

said, who has the problem studying Western civilization? And my instructor asking us, okay, who likes to read Jane Austen? And as you know, my best friend became after North Koreans books. It taught me so much about myself, life, and the world.

And I love Jane Austen because somebody somehow talked about even romantic love in the 18th century and human emotions, like the things that North Koreans were denied in the 21st century, somebody was expressing that that many hundreds of years ago. And she was saying, okay, that's how you get brainwashed. And it's like, excuse me, what do you mean? And she said, because she was living through the white colonial era and she was a racist, by reading the work of racists

that I'm going to become a racist. And this is why I need to stay woke to notice the bigotry, the systemic oppression that we have for the minority people. And I was like thinking, is this some joke, right? This has got to be a joke. Is this a professor? This has got to be a joke. Is he a professor? I know. Every class, they say, every problem that we have in the world exists because of white men.

I said, why? Because my son is white and half white, but then he also has the blood of a slave, I guess. They said, because some of the white people were slave owners. And in North Korea, you get punished for your ancestor crimes. Like my mother's grandfather supposedly had a tiny land in front of his house. So they classed him as a landowner. That's why I was not in a top class. I was punished for my great-great-grandfather's crime that I was not responsible for.

And in America, in the land of free and home of the brave, in this amazing country, they are punishing people for something they have not done. This collective guilt was happening here. And then they were saying the only way we can fix all this injustice is complete destruction, complete dismantling of the system and repealing the constitution. And I was thinking,

they say they stay outraged, stay angry. I'm like, if you cannot be grateful living in this country, where can you be possibly grateful for every miracle that we lived through? As soon as I expressed

these thoughts to my professors, they say, you and me, you're brainwashed. And then, of course, they say, if you make somebody feel unsafe, emotion, not physical, not beating them down, if I can cause somebody unsafe

in the classroom, I can get kicked out of the university. And that fear made me stay silent until the graduation. I was too scared too. It was the most bizarre. I could not distinct. This is so amazing.

The white supremacy and the colonialization and corrupt capitalism is the all the evil of all. It's the same message the North Korean teachers had to teach me. Wow. Because they had to survive.

That's what regime demands them to teach the young minds. Same message was being taught in the Ivy League school by these professors. So North Korean students and American students are getting the exact same education. Oh, that is shocking. That is deeply disturbing. Yeah, we are getting the exact same curriculum. And what are these students saying?

Are the students going along with it? Did you find other quiet dissenters like you? So not when I was on campus. And when I actually spoke about this maybe last year on one of my interviews with Dr. Peterson, and people saw the interview, and they emailed me from LinkedIn and emails, and they were Columbia graduates and Columbia attendees right now, and said they feel exactly the same way, but they cannot express their thoughts because they are also fearful because

they want to get a corporate job. Columbiaia has a very expensive tuition if you go to colombia afterwards if you cannot go to corporation job you cannot pay for this instead right it's almost like slavery like they make sure it's very expensive and afterwards you have to get a job that can pay for your debt and if you have a history of denouncing this mainstream, almost a sermon, like Kim Il-sung's sermon, that they cannot get a job. So your livelihood, your family's livelihood is depending on it. Of course, the three-generation gift is going to get punished, but your actual livelihood and dignity and reputation on the line if you do not agree with the political correctness. So a lot of Americans were afraid. Were the students, you know, we hear a lot of the students,

especially at places like Columbia, talking about their own oppression because they fall into whatever racial group or whatever, you know, you could go down the list. Did you hear any of that from the student body when you were there? Yeah, there was one class that i was taking and before every class as you can see my english is not perfect i learned american english by watching friends american tv show when i was 21 years old learning a foreign yeah learning a foreign language as an adult is a hard task.

And when the time of France, there were no gender fluid people. There was only he and she. I barely learned this pronouns. And then I come to America to practice in real life. And then going to my first class, they say, okay, so before you even say who you are, what you like, where you're from from what your ambitions are they say tell us your pronouns and they were the words like they are more than at the time was a 58 pronouns now

they're in thousands oh my goodness and then in every class people say your pronoun and then like they justin they uh they was a gender fluid. I don't want to mess this up. And they was biological male. And I don't know. I've never met this they. So I called they him. Hey, like Justin told me this.

I'm sorry, but they is not a thing. They is taken. It's too confusing. Right. So at the end of class in tears this child like maybe he's a freshman or sophomore and says his feelings are hurt and by this point i'm from north korea i'm like okay i'm like i'm so sorry that my english is not good i sometimes call she he like because like

it's confusing you know in korean so this person was crying because instead of referring to him as a they you use that you used he and this was obviously a biological male yeah my goodness My goodness. And he feels not safe with me. And I was speechless. There are children, when the organs are extracted, when their people are sold for $65, there is actual injustice that is happening that needs our attention, that needs our collective help. There is such a thing that is happening that needs our attention, that needs our collective help. There is such a thing that is called morality. There is such

a thing called duty as a free person. But these kids are brainwashed. I mean, they're not even outdoors, but they're like child outdoors. None of them have any capacity to handle any reality. And professors send you this email before the class

say this reading scanner can trigger uh like rape memory of oppression all kinds of difficulties so if this class is not triggered this if it bothers you don't come to the class and you don't even need to tell me the reason why it bothers you don't come to the class and you don't even need to tell me the reason why it bothers you because it can only trigger you to think about your own oppression and i'm like we have we are the one of the most expensive schools in the world and if you cannot handle the material that is copying the classroom why would you even go to college at this point it defeats the purpose of a higher education so instead of trying to teach you're the opposite trying to protect somehow our made-up oppression

and feelings you're the opposite of everything they think you are right like they you if you had responded to this they person by saying please I literally was sold into sex slavery for several years of my life. I was forced to attend executions for the formative years of my childhood. I really don't need a lecture from you in oppression or hurt feelings. It would have been amazing. But these folks who have no oppression want you to apologize for not understanding how hard their lives ostensibly are. Yeah, it's a, I mean, that's the thing. They say capitalism is so evil. That's what's wrong with our world.

The free market is horrible. And these kids are in their like $ 200 yoga pants and they're like juice detox do you know this like bottle of juice that costs 10 is a green color thing they all like this rich kids like and with their fancy laptops and i was thinking do you know without free market like you not have any of the what you are having right now? How would you have internet without free market? How would you have food without free market? This is the only thing that we have that makes us who we are.

Without food, they say this is the end of civility. You cannot have civilization without food. And that lack of understanding of human history, because they are brainwashed in American school education system. I mean, after Columbia,

I was not even blaming these children because, I mean, the teachers who taught them this, right? Like, how would you blame North Korea to believe that Americans are monsters and called like bloody reptiles because somebody brainwashed them even before while they were in their mother's stomach. Why did Yeonmi Park not need the trigger warning?

Why you actually were somebody who had been raped over and over? And I'm sure they did bring that up in class and it was in the reading. So why did you not need the trigger warning and actually object to the trigger warnings as an idea? And yet there, I'm sure, were people in that class who have never been the victim of a sexual assault or a rape who said, I'm out. I'm not going to read it. I can't participate in it. So what is the difference between the people in our country right now who are leaning into that victimhood mentality, even if they're not one, and you who actually have experienced things that have made you a victim who refuse to stay in that mindset?

That's the thing. Nothing about me is special. Any North Korean is going to not be the trigger warning. It's not because I'm exceptionally resilient or special about me. It's just that life is tough and I have seen real life. And if you understand real life,

hearing about it, talking about it is not even the closest thing that can ever happen to you. And also, keeping that perspective, you know, it's a, that what made me, I wrote my first book saying that there are two things that I'm grateful for.

One was that I was born in North Korea. And the second was that I escaped from North Korea. It's like, you know, if you can, if you never seen the darkness, you can never see the light. If you're just the darkness you can never see the light if you're just all your life was in the light you're never gonna know what darkness looks like ever and in some sense like that like i came to america and writing first book and my agent was saying young me you're traumatized you need to go to therapy and talk about mental health i was like what's therapy it's like about talking how hard it was to survive

and your feelings to somebody. And I asked like, is it free? Like, does it cost money? It's like, oh, she's gonna give you a special rate, like $200 per hour. And I was thinking like, no, thank you. I'm good. I have nothing to against people going to therapy.

If you can get help, that's great for you. But the thing is, what is the point of you surviving all of that and now I'm going to spend the rest of my life resenting it and complaining about it? Extraordinary. It's like there's no point. And I think that is the perspective is lost in America. And that perspective is what the professors and teachers have to teach these kids,

using the history as a perspective and show them. And why understanding history that we are not going to repeat it. But they are not teaching that. They are literally brainwashing them to think that somehow the climate change is something going to happen tomorrow. We're going to all die. And then if you ask North Koreans, what's the climate change? I mean, they cannot afford to fight for climate change. They don't understand there are billions of people.

Four billions of people in the world are still oppressed. Being a free person is being the minority. They don't understand people have no luxury to talk about your feelings and oppression and the social justice they are talking about. It's a luxury they cannot afford and other people cannot afford and they don't have that perspective. That's so clueless. That's exactly right. I mean, here we're worried about banning the word field because it might upset somebody who descended from slaves. And we can't say field work anymore. I mean, it's just we've lost the thread. In our last bit together, I want to cover a couple of things.

There's a reason why we haven't seen the glossy CBS morning profile of you or the today show, giving you a double segment to highlight your story of perseverance or 60 minutes. I mean, I could go down the list. As you point out there, there's only a handful of people who have escaped North Korea and your story as a minority woman and all you've been through would normally be very appealing to those groups I just mentioned, those outlets. What do you believe the reason is that you have not been more highlighted on those news outlets? So this is a long story. I came to America and I met somebody in a conference and then he asked me one day,

oh, so what do you think about like Second Amendment? And I was thinking, that's an amazing thing. Like if you can self-defense, imagine if North Korean people had guns in their hands, right? The dictator can never take them. If your family mother gets killed, if your mother gets raped and your child gets executed, they're going

to die anyway. They're going to shoot these officers and fight back like hell. If Hong Kongers had the guns, the Chinese could never have, the Chinese could never have taken them like that. It's a very important thing for the humans to defend themselves for the government. And he was saying, I agree with you, but can you never talk about that and then with the penguin random house there's many as you know there's many imprints right there's great imprints within them and some very unbelievable imprints and they gave me a media training

and the training is not about me how i can talk about my story or how can i make sure that people know that what chinese communist party does that there are millions of people oppressed and how we can end the slavery slavery never ended it's continuing and it's happening right now it's worse than like ever before more people are enslaved than in human history before. Not about that. It was about what not to talk about. So I had this list of pages and pages that I can never express my thoughts on. And back then, I was still thinking, okay, maybe these people know better than me. Writing my second book, my agent was asking me, let's write a next book. Let's talk about how hard it is to be a woman in the modern world.

And I was like, what do you mean have a great life? And they said, okay, if you don't like the topic, let's talk about, let's write this book about how horrible America treats the black men in their prison system. And how a lot of black men are in prison and their conditions are like north korean concentration camps you can be the mirror to reflect american society that how horrible america is to the minority groups and i was like it's simply not true like i would take compare being in american prison and north korea free society and North Korean society, I can choose American prison anytime, any day, right? There's no comparison between these two systems. And then when I was pretending, not pretending really, I was closeted, classical labor,

I was invited to an event, it's in my book book by Jeff Bezos to something called a campfire. He brings Tom Cruise, all these celebrities and writers, and come share their stories. And in this story, I shared my story. Everybody was in tears, and they say, what can we do? And I told them, these billionaires, the movers and shakers of this world, can you talk to China? When you have business of this world, can you talk to China? When you have business relations with China, can you talk to them

so they do not enslave these women? And they said, I can't. And first of all, I really support what you do, but do not ever talk about that I know you or we know each other, that I heard you. So whenever I go, and was a time, the Hollywood, somebody was trying to make a movie about my story. And I got a movie script.

And it said, when I arrived in China, China was the promised land. They protected me. They gave me freedom and they gave me dignity. And I called this producer i was like like this is not even remotely close to truth like how can you do that and he said this is the only way i can make a movie in hollywood right now and this is america we are not colonized by china and i said i don't need a movie to be made about my story. And I canceled that movie deal.

And because I talk about China, they come after me and they do not want to talk about my story because I represent whatever they want to fight for. That is injustice, the oppression of women and minority and slavery. But even though I have all of that, but still, because I condemn China, and they want to make money from this corrupt regime, they do not want to do anything to do with my activism. Oh, my God, this is this is horrifying. But we've heard we've heard similar stories,

not those same as yours, before that they, you know, this is why LeBron James won't criticize China. This is why you've had Ennis Cantor basically kicked out of the NBA. This is why John Senna came out and apologized for the comments he made. Like we've seen time and time again how these people of note celebrities or athletes won't criticize China because they're afraid of losing the Chinese money. It's outrageous. Yeah. Even politicians, even, even, yeah, it's, that's the thing. Like they have no problem hanging up the signs like black lives matter. They have no problem condemning the slavery that happened by the white people, according to them. They do not want to condemn the slavery that's happening by CCP. The hypocrisy.

Right now. Yeah, that's exactly right. It must be infuriating to you. And it's obviously one of the things playing against you. You're not saying the right things. You're pro Second Amendment. You're not woke. You're calling out fake victimhood and you have the standing to do it because of the life struggles you've had. And you're openly critical of China. And this is the reason. That's the reason why we probably won't see a movie on the big screen of your life, although I have some ideas. So we'll talk later. But while you're not being properly platformed with the incredible story you have, may I ask you, is there any fear? Because given how vindictive the North Korean regime is and what they do to people down the generations and kill the entire family, I mean, are you worried? I know that they've said they're targeting you.

I mean, are you worried that they actually will? You have a son. You have some family back in North Korea still. So can you update us on that and on your thoughts about it? Yeah. So when Kim Jong-un even goes killing his half-brother in Malaysia, this guy does not care about international reputation or anything, right? He really does whatever he wants.

Biden calls North Korea and he does not pick up the phone call for like two months. Even like literally, that's how weak America is now and North Korea, how they're that strong with the help of China. I was informed by the South Korean intelligence years ago that I was on his killing list. I cannot go to many countries, like for instance, Malaysia and many countries where the North Korean operatives operate, especially China. In America, I have friends who are Iranian activists, and the gunman showed up in her door in Brooklyn a few months ago. And America just would not protect these activists that get threats from dictators. So I don't get any protection from the US government. And South Korean intelligence is

the only country that was keep informing me until a few years ago that I became American citizen. And now I'm not their responsibility anymore. So now I don't get any more updates from the intelligence. And I actually get canceled. I was invited to speak at FBI Dallas last year. And then literally a day or two days before, the head of diversity calls me from FBI and says, because my political opinions, that my values do not align with theirs, they cannot invite me to talk about how they can help the North Korean people. And we agreed, I'm not going to talk about Columbia experience. I'm not going to talk about Columbia experience. I'm not going to talk about anything about American life. I'm going to purely talk to them, help them so they can help these North Korean people.

And they don't want to do that. They were just canceling me. Of course, I can't cancel the Samsung. They have business in China and many corporations in America. It's like countless. But American intelligence, they actively try not to help me and silence me at this point. And not only that, like the reason I wrote my second book is one day I was walking down the street of Chicago during the BLM protest. In front of my son, I was attacked by black women.

They stole my wallet and they punched me. It was a violent attack. And I was trying to call the cops. And it was middle of the Michigan Avenue in Chicago, 2 p.m. People started calling me racist because I was trying to call on these criminals. And they were saying the color of the skin does not mean they are thieves, even though they were seeing these women taking my wallet and punching me down so i don't know like am i gonna be attacked by the woke people or the the crowd that gone so mad in america that they can never see that everybody can become a criminal and everybody can be somebody can be innocent.

It's very, you got to get out of New York. My audience knows I we pulled my husband, I pulled our children from these woke New York City schools, private schools, a year plus ago, that city's gone. It's too far left. And, you know, Chicago's on the same track. It's already gone. So you really got to get out of there. There are more reasonable places to live where I think you'd be more protected and more loved and supported. And you'd feel all the feelings that you thought you would when you got to America. That's that's my feeling on it right now. How are you going to support yourself? You're writing. Obviously, we are all buying your. How are you going to support yourself? You're writing, obviously we are all buying your book. We're going to support you that way. Um, but how, what's your future plan?

I mean, I, I, I want you to run for office. I want you to do something where your voice is elevated and even more powerful. Oh, no, I don't want to be, I, it's a thing. When you go through something like this, every North Korean has the same story. In their dreams, they are never in a free country. They are always back in North Korea in the prison cell. And as you said, how on earth, what luck would that explain among, I became one of 210 North Korean defectors in the United States of America for the last 80 years and learned English and got to have this chance

to talk to you. I don't think it's me who did it. I don't think somebody really wanted me to save North Koreans and I have that obligation with me and in some sense, I don't think somebody really wanted me to save North Koreans. And I have that obligation with me. And in some sense, I can awake the public. If slavery was wrong back then, it is wrong right now.

And it shouldn't be some partisan issue. What I'm fighting for is not a partisan issue. And they keep trying to say I'm a right wing. I'm like, oh, so what? I'm a right wing. That word lost meaning a long time ago. It doesn't mean anything. And anybody who doesn't agree with the mainstream, they say I'm a racist.

They call me a racist and they say I'm a white passing person. Therefore, I can never understand what oppression is. That's how they shut me down, by denying who I am. And also, I have obligation to protecting the sanity of liberty in this country for my own son, because unlike me, he has no place to escape from. Imagine the world without America. That place is unimaginable. I don't want to imagine it. So I don't have plans for office. I'm not even like, oh, I never chose to want to do this. I never wanted to have any ambition. I just want to stop the madness that is happening in China, North Korea, in America, I guess around the globe right

now. You are an extraordinary human being. What an honor to get to know you. I hope you'll come back. I want to talk about your thoughts on politics and daily news and not just your backstory, because you have such a smart and unique perspective. And what an example of strength you are for our young girls, for our young boys, for all of us. Yonmi, thank you for being here. All the best to you. And please let me know if I can do anything to help you. Thank you so much.

What a journey. Oh my goodness. Let me know what you thought of the interview. You can email me at megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com. You can also post on Apple Reviews. I do still read them every day. Happy Friday. We're off on Monday because of President's Day, but back on Tuesday with Glenn Beck and more. Have a great weekend. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.