What I Learned about Freedom after Escaping North Korea

“00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Yon Me Park was born in nineteen ninety three and in two thousand and seven fled from North Korea. What we’re about to hear is yan Me’s story, one she gave to a group of students at the Young America’s Foundation in Santa Barbara, California.

00:00:38
Speaker 2: Let’s take a listen.

00:00:40
Speaker 3: I’m still getting very nervous and I’m about to give speeches. And there’s one thought that comforts me, is right, even if I mess it up up there, at the end of the day, I’m not going to be executed. So what do I have to lose? Right? Thank you, Thank you. Today in my hotel room, there was an air conditioner, and there was a hero in the bathroom, there’s a carpet, and there’s a bed, and looking at the swimming pool, I was thinking, even pinching myself. Am I dreaming? Is this say? Is so much different planet? Because the world that I grew up in in North Korea nothing resembles what we see here today today. I was thinking about my friends, my family members that I left behind in North Korea. Right now, what would they be doing tonight? They would be eating grasshoppers, They’re eating cockroaches, They’re eating anything they could find. In North Korea, children eating in mud and parents tell the children, if you eat the mud, you cannot go and you’re gonna die. And people steer it done that even they know they’re gonna die. And the reason why we are suffering and why we are starving is because they we have the government, the biggest government they can imagine. I am very spiritual, and one day I asked God, like, God, you know everything that is happening, Like why do you let North Korea exist? Why do you let this happening? Sometimes I can understand, And one day I understood. Finally, he wanted us to see what it looks like when individuals give their rights, all over their rights and freedom to government, and what the governments does that with. I came to America and I went to Columbia University, and in my classrooms, the professors were telling me how I need to be stay outraged, how I should stay angry and stay work because of the injustice the white men that causing in this world. And I was thinking, like, are you a psychopath you’ve got to be a psychopath. Do you have any idea even why now in the twenty first century, four billion human beings are not free and most of the people still struggle to find the basic need to survive. We live in the best nation, the best country that’s ever existed in the entire human history and in the entire world. And if you cannot be happy with it, I don’t know. You need to go to North Korea, then thank you. So it’s very story of Right now I’m standing in this room full of American bastards. Who was my sworn enemy. I learned in my school from my teachers that Americans are bastards and it’s one word. And even in my math book they were saying, there are four American bastards, you killed two of them. How many American bastards left to care? This is a math question for a child. So now I’m here, I’m with the most amazing bastards you can imagine. Thank you, And like that our worldview was so simple. They brainwashed us that we are so lucky that we had our dear leader who was chosen by this universe, who was the God. And one thing that North Korea did was they eliminated all the religion, and especially they persecuted entire Christians. And then what Kimir Song did was he became God. He copied the Bible and told us that he loved us so much. He gave us his son, Kimir’s Song, and his body dies, but he can read our minds and his spirits with us forever. So with that brandwashing was I had no idea the world like this existed. By the time when I was thirteen years old, I couldn’t find any more food to survive. And we are the same people with South Koreans, but we are averaged three to five inch shildren than South Koreas because of malnutrition. And luckily I was living in the border town. At nighttime, I saw the lights coming from China and I was thirteen years old. In two thousand and seven, my sister escaped first when she was sixteen years old. I wanted to go with her, and I couldn’t go because I had a huge bass stomach ache. My parents took me to hospital, and you expect, I mean, this is a Sorcier’s paradise, right, There’s a free healthcare, free education, free housing. I mean everything is free. But nothing works. There’s no X rays, there’s not They used the beer butters as a drop. A nurse used one meter to inject every single patient, and people cut their bones without any anaesthesia. Doctor just opened my belly that aftern without any pain killer, and then he thought I was had some appendix, and obviously when he opened it wasn’t. I was just managers and I had an infection. But he still removed my appendix. So I’m gonna assume and I go back. So I learned that from America. By the way, swing coachure, I have a lot of people to say. I need to sue Kim Zongun. I need to sue Season Ping, a lot of people. I need to subter.

00:07:14
Speaker 1: This yon Me Park story continues here on our American Stories. Here are our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love our stories in America like we do, please go to our American Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s our American Stories dot com. And we returned to our American Stories. You’ve been listening to North Korean defector Yon Me Park, who’s been describing what her life was like in her communist country, where everything was free, including healthcare. She just described how a stomach infection caused by starvation and malnutrition put her in the hospital where a single needle is used on every patient, an empty beer bottle substitute is IV bag. In spite of this, the North Korean doctors chose to remove Yon Me’s perfectly healthy appendix without any painkiller. Let’s return to her story.

00:08:50
Speaker 3: After this surgery, there was on the way to the bathroom. We don’t, of course have indoor bathroom. If you have outdoor pathroom, you have to go. There are these pirs of human bodies or dead. And this is not something I see for the first time, but you see these children trying to catch these rats eating human eyes first. Do you know when we die, rats eat our eyes first, because that’s the softiest tissue that we have. And these women that I don’t know how she was wearing the flower patents pants, her eyes open and her eyes are open because our eyes are out. There’s the one thing that we do is when North Koans die, they don’t they cannot even close their eyes because they don’t have any strength to even use them. And then when these children eat these human beings, those children die from these some disease that rats carry, and then they they eat us back. This like psychle going back and forth, beating eaten by rats, and they eat us back. That’s when I realized, no matter what it takets, I’m going to escape from North Korea. I found a lady who wanted help me to go to North Korea. And at the point, I didn’t even it didn’t occur to me. While with this lady helping me to escape, I crossed the frozen River when I was thirteen years old with my mother to China, and the first thing I see was my mother being raped. And the saddest thing about paying on North Korean is you don’t even know the word rape. The regime doesn’t teach us these vocabularies, right, how can you be raped in the socialist paradise? How can you be depressed in the socialist paradise? So therefore they eliminated these words from our dictionary no word for liberty. There’s no word for freedom, human rights, depression, and of course there’s no word for gay. It’s a different planet. And then I was like fifty pounds or something. I was thirteen, and we realized the reason we went to China was this. Chinese men, there were more than thirty million men right now in China, cannot find the wives because of the one child policy. They more GOLs got aborted than boys, and men cannot find the women. So there’s a huge demand to buy North Korean girls as sex slaves. So they sold my mother, who was forty one years old, to sixty five dollars, and they sold me in Fortus over two hundred dollars because I was virgin and I was thirteen years old a child. The phone that I have in my hand costs more than my own price. And the most saddest parting that I’m standing here today is we’re eating steak. We’re eating this food. There are three hundred thousand North Korean women right now in China are being sold. No one place they buys North Korean women is buying them and taking their organs out and kill them. Second place, that day by North Korean women is in no brothers and women resists, so they give them drugs succors. They usually last about three to six months. This is what North Korean women go through. But even that is not safe. The Chinese government catch them and standing back back to North Korea. It’s like catching a jew and sending them to a concentration camp. So the only way I could have surviv was escaping from China. Again, So where do I go? Luckily, for some reason, I was saved by missionaries from South Korea. They were truly God’s people and they came risking their lives and told us there was a way out of North Korea, which means crossing frozen Golby desert by food and minus foty degrees. Luckily, as you can see, I’m not the biggest person, but for some miracle, I got saved and night I crossed the frozen Golby desert and eventually I was sent to South Korea. Only about two hundred or seven North Korean de factors in mede it to America of the last next eighty years. It shows how impossible to escape from that country. It’s so interesting. I came to America initially I started my activism to save my people, to tell the world what’s happening. And I thought, like, if we oppose slavery that happened two hundred years ago, obviously we’re gonna oppose it right now if it’s happening right, not right. And that’s what I thought too. As soon as I was going around talking to the New York Times, I’m talking to these people. Actually so funny. I came to Santa Barbara five years ago, invited by Jeff Bezos to attend at the Four Seasons to talk about my story. I talked, this is the most prominent people in the world, and pour them, this is what’s happening to my people. If you can stand know for the girls who were captured by ISIS or Pokuaram, can you be a voice for North Korean women too? And you know what they said, don’t tell anybody that you know me because they have business in China. Nobody in free world wants to fight for North Korean women. And not only that, not because I say big government sucks, that socialism is evil. Now I became the enemy of the walk. It’s such a it’s an interesting word. So I really want one thing. I wanted to realize is that? Do you know how North Korea became how it is today? When Kimirsong came in the nineteen fifties, he made one promise to North Korean people. I’m going to feed you rice and meat stew each meal, and I’m going to get rid of all the inequality. If I do that, why don’t you give me all your land, on all your rights. So what you know, North Krian people did that. We wanted no inequality, so we gave our land, our rights to this one guy for that leader price. He took everything from us and he did not give us anything back. The only reason that Kime Zone states in power is because of Chinese Commist Party. Without Chinese Commist Party supporting North Korea for just one week, the regime of the collapse. So who is accountable is Chinese Commist Party And if we hold them accountable, we can’t save North Korean people.

00:16:50
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Yan me Park tell the story, the harrowing story of life in North Korea, particularly what that means to women, the odds of getting sold off to slavery or high tech slavery. Still in the twenty first century, you’re hearing it first stand folks and the anguish in her voice as she shares these stories, cry for help in the west of what’s happening in the East, Asian upon Asian atrocity. Right, the dear leader of North Korea offering to the people of his country the absence of inequality, if only they’ll surrender their land and right.

00:17:31
Speaker 2: And of course look what happened ever since.

00:17:34
Speaker 1: When we come back more of this remarkable tale, this lesson in what happens when we lose our rights and freedoms.

00:17:43
Speaker 2: Here on our American stories.

00:18:08
Speaker 1: And we returned to our American stories and yon me Parks story.

00:18:14
Speaker 2: Am my goodness.

00:18:14
Speaker 1: We’ve done some remarkable pieces from immigrants telling the stories of escaping from the torture chambers of for deel Castro and life from places like Venezuela. But this one, this is as bad as it gets. Let’s return to yon Met Park.

00:18:32
Speaker 3: It costs Raina about nineteen hundred dollars to rescue North Korean the factor to freedom. But unfortunately that rot even got canceled. Because of the pandemic and the development of the AI, the China facial recognition, it became impossible to I mean bring any North Korean out of North Korea or get them out of China. So basically North Korea, who cannot even freed. It’s on. People bought this technology from China and installed them in the border, so they have the AI recognition facial recognition cameras all around the country. And they put the land mines to the entire border of North with China. So Kimsong here, Kim zongung made the whole country a concentration camp. He put the electrified wire fences entire border and land mines and machine guns, and China’s side they did the exact same. So at this point, rescuing and in North Korean became impossible. So whenever in America, I came and people in Manhattan, living in the best city in the world, telling and passionately how America is so bad. So I asked them, so, what is it so bad about America that you hate so much? And they say, you know what, we have inequality in this country. It’s like, that’s amazing thing that you can rise to compare to other people. The enemy is a poverty, not inequality. I mean, really completely honest without maybe we need a brain surgery.

00:20:19
Speaker 2: I don’t know.

00:20:20
Speaker 3: How can you be? How can you I don’t It’s just I mean, I like every class through my Columbia was going and these kids vegans right and going on this juice clans twenty bucks per barbot body, soho weading this like fifty bucks yoga pants and telling me how capitalism is so evil and free market is so evil. Wing America is so evil. But they got to be smart. They come to very good schools, right, they took those history lessons. I haven’t gone to American middle school and high school, elementary school. So maybe something is wrong with this country’s education system. I think that’s the only thing I can think of. They really get brainwashed. I love books. It’s it’s the best thing that’s ever created, I think. I mean, I used to say, of course, like Georgia War’s book in nineteen eighty four, an Animal Farm that changed my life. But I love books, and I think I use more people read the books instead of going on TikTok and in Stagram. It’s a shame even I have to go on like social media. I’m not on TikTok but to relay my message. But I think I cannot believe that the shallowness and how people do not even know the base sick things anymore. So the only thing you can do is, I guess we have to pray. We need some power, some help from higher place at this point and hoping for your back. Thank you. Yeah. I became American this year, and it’s ay, I know, it’s I know, it’s to me, like becoming an American is like worth more than winning billion rotary tickets. So I used to so em bothered me, like how can you be not jumping up and down every second that you live in America? So when people see how much they are so angry, I like, yeah, you need to go to North Korea. Yeah. I love people in North Korea, and I love Chinese people obviously, I love all the people. But you know, after you go through all of that, I feel like I lived like at least thousand years by now, So whatever I’ve got afterwards is some kind of bonus life. And so I wouldn’t mind even if I get cared for fighting what I believe right, and that’d be a glorious life to me. Now home is America, and I’m ready to die for this country too, thank you. I think when I hear this word freedom is not freads. It’s very true because it took entire my family’s lives for me to have this voice today, because I spoke up and Kimeson and not only PRETI on his killing list, but he he took entire life through these generations family’s lives with him. I think I think that’s the reason why I’m warning America right now. The conset cass of us standing up for truth right now is maybe losing jobs, maybe getting harassed on Twitter, getting cancered, maybe deplatformed, But that is going to go to the extent of like becoming like China North Care, where they’re going to cure three generations to family if one person dissents. And I think that’s why we need to fight back before it’s too late. A lot of people actually even ask me like, like, how are you not crazy? Like how are you saying? I mean, they someone expect a survivor going through something like that, and then they expect us to be damaged. And I found that very interesting. I was writing my first book and I had agents in New York and she was telling me, you mean you’re traumatized. You need to go see a therapist. So I asked, like, what is therapist right in North Korean? I mean, this is like fifth dimensioned thing. And then she’s like, it’s somewhere you go and tell them I’m complaining about your feelings and how you feel so bad. And then this is something called the PTSD is a real thing. You need to cure it. I ask like, is it free? And now of course it’s like she’s gonna charge you two hundred and fifty dollars for per hour, and of course I didn’t have the money. But the second about thought, so if I gone through all of that and all I’m gonna be doing now is going to complain about it, why do you even survive? Like in the first place. But I think also, this is why I keep talking to people, is that I think having the perspective, I mean, even knowing what trauma is is a privilege, right, If we really want to talk about privilege, that’s the thing. If you know you’re depressed, if you know you’re pressed, even that’s a privilege people in North Korea have does not know what oppression is. They do not know that they are oppressed. I mean people say they are oppressed in America. I’m like, you do not You are not oppressed, right, that’s not like the people who can know. So I think keeping that perspective where I came from, and how can I be even grateful for for this heir, for this just freedom. I never have to worry about getting executed tonight. That helps. I think that’s what we need in this country to keep going. That keeping the perspective that how lucky we are.

00:26:34
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production and editing by Greg Hangler. A special thanks to jan Me Park for sharing her story and the Young America’s Foundation for providing this story. It’s so important that all Americans not only listen to this but share it. Her dear leader in North Korea, who had promised to end inequality, well, he turned our nation, our country into a concentration camp. Beyond me said, the enemy isn’t inequality. She added, its poverty. For favorite books, it turns out nineteen eighty four in animal Form by George Orwell, Becoming an American citizen, Well, it’s worth more than a billion lottery tickets. I’m living a bonus life. The story of yon Me Park a story of freedom. Here on our American Stories”