The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230217_escaping-north-korea-woke-college-students-and-pro

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Feb. 17, 2023 - The Megyn Kelly Show

01:52:16

20230217_escaping-north-korea-woke-college-students-and-pro

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No Color in North Korea 00:14:43
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
	Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megan 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 Yeon Mee Park.
	She's here for the full show.
	You may have heard her name, possibly her story before, but not like this.
	Yeon Mee 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 Yeon Mee 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 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 claim that.
	But what's interesting to me is that people have been coming for her as they would, right?
	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, Yeon Mi 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.
	Yeon Mi, 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?
	It's...
	I almost, 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 me 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 like 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 a wrapping purple pink paper.
	And my son thinks that's like a lollipop.
	So he keeps asking me to buy him the lollipop from these people.
	And of course, I take subway like every New Yorker.
	And every single time I take this away, I see really unbelievable things that you cannot discuss here.
	And I feel like I'm risking my life every single time when I take a 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.
	Like I only came to America really 2016.
	And since then, I do not recognize a city anymore.
	And 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, 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're 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 it's my country from North Korea.
	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 land of K-pop and Samsung and innovation and freedom.
	And one country literally became the darkest place on earth.
	Entire country became a concentration camp.
	The people in North Korea in this 21st century, they don't even know the existence of internet.
	And it's not because something North Koreans in their genetics, they want to be oppressed.
	It is 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 North, the Hermit Kingdom, and they are playing the same ideology in America right now.
	You know, it's funny to think about because 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.
	He married her.
	They're living there.
	I think she works for Nike.
	And anyway, 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 saying 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 electricity.
	Not to even mention internet.
	That the two different reality, they became even two different planets.
	I think whenever I have to talk about my northern experience, it's almost like describing life on Mars or something.
	The people fathom 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 and 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 even painted in color other than there's one place that we had electricity.
	Those were where the King Dictators 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 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 like watching Hollywood movie that was a bootlegged Hollywood movie that came from China by smugglers.
	Or the most ridiculous offenses are like every newspaper in North Korea, the front page have to have the team's pictures and showing how they work 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 get punished to the concentration camp and along with all his family.
	And I remember in my room, in every household, every room, every class in North Korea have to have portraits of team 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 of 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 word stress.
	For instance, like, how can you be stressed living in a socialist paradise?
	You cannot be.
	There's no word for PTSD or stress or, I mean, depression.
	And at the same time, they don't teach us what happiness is.
	So if you ask 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.
The Absence of Stress 00:10:21
	So I remember every single day when we live in North Korea, if we made one day, now going 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 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?
	Were you able to tap into laughter and something that now you can see as joy, notwithstanding all of your surroundings?
	So this is something that, I mean, to be honest, it healed 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 are born in the oppression, they kind of numb you.
	They know 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 thing in this totalitarian state.
	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 on the holidays of dictators' birthdays.
	They have to make us to watch the propaganda film to brainwash us.
	Then that was the biggest thing that could ever happen to me seeing that light bulb light up.
	But more like 99% of 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 a Diane country do not have the concept of love.
	Like, we don't know what romance is or the mother's love.
	Kim Jong-mon 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 didn't deny that love that 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 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?
	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 sell her own daughter to be raped as a child in China as a sex slave?
	But because that was the only her way to make her child not die from starvation.
	And so, of course, we can judge North Koreans all day long.
	How can that is a lot?
	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 were stuck at the North Snow 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 child is going to die.
	And they forced North Korean people to make this kind of impossible choices.
	And of course, no North Korean should ever die from starvation because Kim Jong-won 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 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 that, 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 Myers-song was an admirer of Marx and Lenin and Stalin, and he wanted to be in North Korea as this perfectly equal society, equitable society where nobody's poor, nobody's richer, we are all the same.
	And once he, with that promise, and he said, in order to achieve that, you need to give us all your properties.
	We are 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 like even race difference into 51 different classes.
	So after the promise of the equality and no inequality, we became 51 different classes.
	And the regime decided to, depending on that classes, they're going to decide who gets feed and who gets to start 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.
	You know, how do you get the food?
	So in North Korea, right, nobody can choose their own destiny.
	When you are born, the regime tells you what to do, what to wear, what to think, what to watch, what to eat.
	And including your jobs, they corresponding 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 even a kilogram of rice.
	So the only way that common North Koreans 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 Korea was, you know, in the fall, I go catch the grasshoppers and that's what I ate.
	And the summertime, I would eat dragonflies and plants, tree barks.
	And some children even eat the muds.
	And if you eat the muds, you cannot go to the bathroom and you're going to die eventually.
	And children are still so hungry, they despite that to eat the muds.
	And that's how North Koreans are the same people with 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 only like 76 pounds because, 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 early childhood, you need the nutrition to develop your physics and your system.
	But we failed to do that.
	So even after they escape, nobody can ever fully recover.
	And all of us have that problem afterwards in gaining any weight 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'd say if you are above 138 centimeters, it's got to be like 4-1, 4-2 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.
Family Punishment and Execution 00:08:47
	And for women, it's five years.
	So, and when you go to military, they don't feed you.
	So women stop having periods because we 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 all hides its facts from the West and the international society.
	Now, what about friendship?
	What about romantic love as a young person?
	I realize you left before that was really realistic for you, but does it happen?
	Do people marry for love?
	Does the regime choose your spouse?
	How is our relationships developed?
	So about friendship, we don't have the word friends.
	We only have the word comrade.
	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 to show them their bigotry and biases.
	Right, North Koreans are a lot severe version, but they begin with the very like 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 we people need to live by from their own words, that 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 internally 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 the 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 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.
	Like 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 said, okay, this time, this many militaries each year, they graduate, right?
	They come out of the military after 13 years of service.
	Then he said, okay, this 29, maybe district going to marry the maybe 17 districts of women who is getting out of military.
	Like that, just random.
	Like he just matches the governments match 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, like 51 different classes.
	And the tricky thing about North Korea, which means 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 marries somebody lower, his family, entire two generation of family gonna go to lower class.
	So what's gonna happen?
	The family gonna oppose a 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 it, 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 in together to go see the public execution.
	And for the adult, the same, for anybody, is the same.
	How do they commit the executions?
	It's a, I've never seen the hanging.
	I heard that people literally in the concentration camps, they hang a person and they demand, if it was a mother, then they demand the son and husband have to come first person to have to draw the rocks to kill them.
	They use a 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.
	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 throw 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 saying 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 smooshed.
	And they drag them into their bodies.
	And when the time when Kim Jong executed his own uncle, he used the gun.
	I mean, that was Opyong shooting down the airplane.
	That kind of powerful weapon he used and made his body into literally 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 many ways they care people.
	Do they make the children and the spouse participate in the execution every time?
	Or is that reserved 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 executioners, my sister, 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 countryside.
	And the officials say, oh, we made a mistake.
	And she was not a spy.
	But there's no apology.
	There's not no condemnation after killing an innocent knife.
	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, the second row, seven years, and the older standing in the last.
	So since you grew up in North Korea, the first thing you see is people getting executed at 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 there?
Crossing the Frozen River 00:06:57
	It's a I think it's whatever you feel living in North Korea is going to be beyond depression.
	It's going to be a complete, I don't know, numbness.
	It's a complete fear.
	Like I still work with North Koreans and try to rescue them.
	And there are like Chinese bureaucracy we use to rescue these people and send information and get money out of North Korea and send the money into North Korea.
	And somebody tried to, you know, 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.
	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?
	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, that North Korea do not have electricity.
	And from border town, I was looking across the river and that was China.
	And they had a light on the street 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 stomachache.
	So my mom took me to the North Korean hospital.
	And, you know, this is a free healthcare, right?
	The government provides everything free to the people.
	But in the hospital, they use one meter to inject every patient.
	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 of people die even before they're 60 years old.
	So they opened me up.
	They cut my stomach off and my anesthesia don't work in.
	I didn't have any.
	So I was screaming and fainting.
	And they turned out like they thought I had appendix, like to removed, but I just had a malnutrition.
	So I couldn't go with my sister, but she left me a little note to saying, go find this lady.
	She's not helping you to go to China and find me there.
	So I said, I got-you must have been afraid.
	If you think that they can read your thoughts and that, you know, 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.
	Like in North Sky, you're 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 going to think what happens to me if I don't jump out of the window right now because I'm going to die from this burning.
	So it was, 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 only thing I just remember was crossing that frozen river into China with my like limping stomach just out of the surgery.
	I shouldn't get shot.
	I cannot get shot because the guards there with the machine guns.
	It's a secure order.
	They don't just like catch you.
	They are going to shoot you to death if they see you crossing the river.
	So that's all I remember.
	It 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 turned out a human trafficker.
	She was North Korean 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 drive the guard.
	But the thing is, in North Korean border, this Yalo River, there's every 10 meters there are guards.
	So you cannot possibly drive to all these guards, right?
	This doesn't cost so much money.
	And a lot of them are not maybe as corrupt.
	They're not going to let us go.
	So they grab this one guard in one post.
	But if other guys see us, they can shoot us from 10 meters away in each direction or 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 is 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, and Taiyu North King became a concentrating camp.
	So nobody can escape at my time.
	Thankfully, there was no electrified wire fences.
	There were no landmines.
	I just, if I were lucky to avoid that shot 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 like almost like yesterday was 2007, March 31st.
	It's 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.
Sold to Traffickers 00:05:36
	She was saying, she just done surgery.
	She can't, she's gonna die if we do.
	Like, so she offered herself.
	Did you even understand what was happening with that?
	Like, 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 a everything is fantastic.
	Like in North Korean news, there's not such a little thing as like accident 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 at school.
	I never even knew what kissing was.
	It's all I remember was I was seeing possibly the worst thing that a person can see without even knowing the context of rape.
	It looked just horrible.
	And that was my introduction to sex.
	So you could tell it was bad.
	That you, you, you at least could see this is bad.
	She doesn't want this.
	This is a hurtful thing.
	Of course.
	It's just so.
	And I remember was my mom was saying, like, turn around, turn around, like, cover your ears.
	Like, close your eyes.
	And she just keeps screaming and like, turn around, turn around, close your eyes, and like, hundred 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 she's going to go for her.
	Like, that broker still wants me.
	And yeah, just think to me, it's like, still like something happened yesterday.
	And after that, they took us to this apartment.
	And there, they, in the light, they checked our teeth and checked our height and our even our elbows to see how many races we are, like, if we are like viable or not.
	And then negotiating our price just in from 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 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 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?
	Yeah, so in this place, they sold us to another human trafficker.
	And because this trafficker didn't rape me, he could sell me more 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 he, I think he was very glad that he didn't rape me because he could make more money out of me.
	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 for another trafficker.
	And I was kept there.
	And of course, he kept me to rape me.
	And I felt like somehow I fought like hell.
	And I was sold to another trafficker afterwards.
	And that's also 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 going to kill myself.
	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 course, he was the owner of my mother.
	And he said he could help me to find my family and bring my sick father from North Korea to China.
	And that's when I thought, if I can sacrifice myself, I can save my family.
	So that's why I got raped and didn't kill myself there.
	How long were you with this man?
One Child Policy Consequences 00:03:53
	Less than two years.
	Oh, wow.
	So it was a couple of years.
	So 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.
	There's a reason there's such a market for child brides and the sale of women.
	What is it?
	So there are also, I never knew I was going to say this because back then I was fantasizing killing this guy every single day with an axe.
	Like 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 can make sure that abort 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 give birth to a girl, by secretly they would kill the child.
	They flicked them up and they murdered these little girls and they kept the boys because that one child was the only thing they could keep.
	If they had second, they would get punched and you cannot keep the second child.
	So now there's more than 30 million Chinese men cannot find wives because 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, 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, it's another thing.
	Like 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 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 denounce slavery all day long in the West.
	And when there's actual slavery happening, actual Holocaust happening, this is what Nawa, the UN says, what's happening to North Korean people.
	The only resemblance that we can find in human history is not to 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 the organs out and discard their bodies.
	And they so many people who are suffering.
	They 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.
Escape to the Free World 00:14:35
	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 your story.
	It's the story of resilience and perseverance and strength that you never knew you had.
	How would you?
	You just kept going.
	I mean, that's sort of how where we are in the story now.
	You just kept going.
	Yeah, say, I mean, there's 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 is the alternative life can exist.
	You don't even know there is a free world 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.
	And 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 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 owners, some other trafficker who bought me, he was a criminal himself and he lost all his money by gambling and he could not even feed me anymore.
	So I could not even buy 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 really horrible guy, I think he could have sold me to another guy and then 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's going to die from starvation with me.
	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 bought her.
	And from there, luckily, I met a North Korean woman, another defected 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 brother.
	It was not a, actually, man rapes me every day, but it was a chat room.
	I don't know if you know this.
	There are another many perverted people pay money to women touch themselves and show their body in front of the cam, like camera.
	And they said, there is a, in Chen Yang, a big city, there is a cam 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 that was the best thing I could get as a North Korean in China.
	We cannot get even job as a teaching, like washing dishes.
	Like nobody can give us any job without ID.
	And in the chat room, I met another lady and she said, I know these missionaries 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, and we can become free.
	So that was my path out of China through this meeting, help the missionaries.
	What does crossing the desert look like?
	It's the most serious 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 yuan 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, if you are born in North Korea, three years old is going to know how to behave.
	He knew that if he cries and give away, we're going to send back North Korea.
	So this baby will not even cry.
	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 the machine gun 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 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 scarf, somehow did not die from the floor, like freezing cold.
	We made Mongolia.
	That seems impossible with minus 40 degree temperatures.
	How long was the journey?
	It was just one day because we are in the 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 is 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, we 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 they go back to China side and get caught by the guards or keep circling around and circling around and they wild animals in the desert.
	They're going to eat them or just die from that, just pure nutrition, like malnutrition, right?
	But we somehow crossing, crossing, and then in the middle of desert, we could not use a flashlight to see the compass.
	What the missionaries told us that go find the north and west direction.
	Just go follow it.
	If you cross the eight wire fences, that's going to be your Mongolia.
	But we cross 16 of them and still can't find the Mongolia.
	We don't even know this is a China side or Mongolian side.
	And luckily, by the, after like two or something, don't remember 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 like 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 the guns.
	and asking us to put our hands up because they were gonna catch us and they were gonna send us to back to Chinese side because they want to they did not want to deal with us.
	Oh no.
	And in this time, at that point, like none of us have anything to lose anymore.
	Whenever North Korean detectors escape, it's like Jews during the hologram they were escaping.
	If you get caught and sent back, it's like the worst thing, right?
	You better off you kill yourself right there.
	So we were 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 swole out of 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 just was so fun for us begging and begging for life.
	And so everybody's plays with North Korean people because they know that we don't have protection from any government.
	We are just stateless, poor, I don't know, fugitives.
	Right.
	So they, 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 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 along buttons to Seoul in Tan Airport.
	And that's how I became free.
	Was there a moment, Yohnme, where you were like, this is it?
	You know, I made, was it when you went into Seoul?
	Was it when you got to America?
	Or was there never that moment?
	Was it more of a slow reveal?
	It's definitely a slow reveal.
	It's 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 is telling us.
	And they literally show us the posters of Americans showing they are cold-born litters.
	They are monsters.
	And if they see North Koreans, they're going to rape and kill us and eat us alive.
	And then South Korean government telling us, oh, Americans are not like their democracy.
	They are like brave people.
	They are not like monsters.
	And then obviously they are telling us that, you know, dictators, they are dictators.
	Kings are dictators.
	They are oppressing people.
	And we were like thinking, what's a dictator?
	You know, what's a democracy?
	What's oppression?
	Like, it's not about learning a new language.
	South Korea and North Korea 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, man, like, what do you mean?
	It's like, okay, so 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 time we can say I in North Korea.
	And then this teacher was saying, why just don't you tell me your favorite color?
	And I was thinking, I don't know, because in North Korea, they told me 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 as a day, suddenly I had to think like what I'm going to eat, what I'm going to wear, you know, where I'm going to live, what I'm going to study.
	And everything was just up to me now.
	Nobody going to decide after 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.
	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 remember like, what's that?
Learning to Think Again 00:05:12
	What's this?
	There's 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 regime demands that every person have to bring our own poop to the regime, to the collective farm.
	Goodness.
	So even there are poop faves in North Korea.
	We are that poor.
	We cannot even waste our own faces.
	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, right?
	And I was squatting on that thing because I did not know you had to supposedly sit on it.
	Yes.
	And seeing the toilet paper in my life for the first time, this soft thing smells so good.
	I thought it was the only fancy thing.
	I stole the toilet paper from the airport in my like, you know, shirt.
	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, 15, maybe half-hand of pork and garlic and different ingredients.
	There's no such a 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, I was like, what's your favorite food?
	I'm like, I don't know what's up there.
	You know, it's like, I did not know there are like different types of food even.
	What was it like seeing television for the first time or the movies or the internet?
	It's, oh, I mean, just even seeing the shower first time, like we don't have running water at home.
	We don't, you have to go to the river and stream to bring the water.
	And in the morning, like the hierarchy of family 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 then same water, we're gonna wash our rags and clean the home.
	And the last water, we're gonna throw it in our like 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.
	Like there's no such a thing called waste.
	And in South Korea, just she, I mean, if you hit the button, the electricity comes.
	Like if you put the tap, the water, cold or hot water comes.
	My mom's favorite thing, when she always so happy, makes her so happy is that when she hears the sound of refrigerator.
	The refrigerator.
	Yeah.
	I mean, 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 was the first, like when you started eating and, you know, 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?
	You know, is there favorite?
	Yeah, so 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 soily, like full nutrition food, your stomach cannot digest even throw it out.
	So when I remember, I was like, no, I can eat whatever thing I want.
	And I was eating and I was nauseous.
	I was throwing up.
	And then I learned it's like you need to gradually introduce your system into the for solid food and a bit of oil, a little bit of butter and inclusive a little bit of protein.
	Otherwise that our stomach is not used to eating for 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 or getting executed because he ate the collective farms 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 rights than animals 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 the steak.
	How long were you in South Korea before you came to the United States?
	I was in South Korea for five years.
Eating Steak with Gratitude 00:07:10
	While my junior year of college, I came to America to continue my studies and write my first book.
	Okay, and was that when you came to New York to go to Columbia, 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 it's 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 studied school.
	It was just full 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 don't know whether it was meaningful to you at all or whether it was 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, like I was very lucky when I was escaping from North Korea, even though I did not know that country like America, free nations existed, I had at least some place to escape to.
	And I'm eternally grateful for America that 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 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, it's just, this is such a special place.
	Like, I cannot run away from this place.
	You know, 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.
	Just wonder, what was your reaction the first time you saw Times Square?
	That's funny.
	So there's a very, always the North Korean keep saying we are going to make American bastards, their land in the sea of lights, right?
	By the bombing them with a nickel weapon.
	And the first place that I landed to after going to mission schools in Texas, I came back to write the book was they took me a bus from DC, some Chinese bus and landed me to a 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 can be the polar opposite from North Korea than the New York City and especially the Tahan 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 shows of financial success, the billboards, the excitement, the creativity of Broadway.
	It's all right there.
	The music, it's, and fun, you know, street artists on the street trying to lure you in, giving them a couple 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 the same thing for me, just seeing the New York City too.
	It was a completely wasted land before.
	And looking at the city today, I mean, all the world, 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 the 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?
	You know, like only one square of toilet paper or something that you don't.
	Is there anything that you are have you've carried over with you?
	It's it's funny.
	I guess even to this day, I don't like 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.
	It's everything's to excess.
	That's my favorite buffet.
	It's like my favorite.
	And I mean, this is the same thing.
	So my son is like five years old.
	His dad is not tall at all.
	He's like five.
	This is very short.
	I mean, average, like, right.
	But my son is like 99% higher child in the height and weight and everything.
Trusting in a New Life 00:03:40
	And it got to me 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, North Koreans became, keep getting shorter.
	So I never knew what my potential was.
	Right, right.
	You're going to see it.
	I was so obsessed that like my son would not get enough nutrition.
	I think the obsession with nutrition still stays with me.
	And my son still says like, you feed me too much.
	Because when he says like, I'm full, I'm not like, okay, chill about it.
	You know, you have to finish your plate.
	You have to eat everything you have there.
	So I don't think the old habits are going to go away.
	May I ask you about your marriage?
	Because I understand you got married, but then you got divorced.
	You got married, you had your child, you 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 end, 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'm always Kim Ir-sung race, our dictator race.
	North Korean calendar begins when Kim Irsong was born, not when the Jesus Christ was born.
	And literally, including my own race, was a lie.
	And I was thinking, like, so if everything that they told you 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's Animal Farm.
	That helped me to understand what happened to my country, what happened to myself, you know, why the country became that way.
	And why these people are saying, well, everything I told was lie.
	And how to trust men again was also 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 the American bastard.
	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 killing the child.
	They put the salt water with a syringe and the guards come kick the women's belly until baby dies.
	Or if baby is still alive, it comes out, they struggle the baby and kill the baby.
	They do not believe in mixing blood.
	Even with the Chinese, the regime that happened, then they do not accept that.
	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 so such a unique thing.
	I cannot believe it until they say my mom keep laughs.
	Like, I cannot believe we have children with American bastards.
	Yeah.
Collective Guilt and Regime Lies 00:06:39
	So, okay, so let's talk about what you've observed about our country because you came here, I presume, yes, you wanted 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.
	Like 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, like, where do I even begin the shock that I felt?
	And so I came to America and thinking, I mean, the story of America is a miracle.
	It is literally the best country in human history.
	It's not just the contemporary world.
	As the beginning of the humanity end, 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 one of the instructors asking us, okay, who likes to read Jane Austen?
	And as you know, like my best friend became Attorney Hosky was 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.
	I was 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 got to be a joke.
	And they were saying, I know, and they say, every class, they say, every problem that we have in the world exists because of white men.
	And I was like, why?
	Because my son is white and half-white, but then he also has a blood of slave, I guess, right?
	And 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 the same country, 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 available, 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 live through?
	And as soon as I express 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, emotionally, not physically, not bringing them down.
	If I can cause some, you know, like somebody unsafe at classroom, I can kick out of the university.
	And that fear made me stay silent until the graduation.
	I was too scared too.
	And it was the most result I could not distinct.
	It's so amazing.
	So the white supremacy and the colonialization and corrupt capitalism is the older evil of all.
	It's the same message that 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 Ivory League school by these professors.
	So North Korean students and American students are getting the exact same education.
	Wow, 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 now 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 emailed and they were Columbia graduates and Colombia 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.
	Colombia has a very expensive tuition.
	If you go to Colombia afterwards, if you cannot go a corporation job, you cannot pay for the students debt, 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 a Kimir Song sermon, that they cannot get a job.
	So your livelihood, your family's livelihood is depending on it.
	Of course, like now North Korea, the three generation 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.
Trigger Warnings for Trauma 00:14:27
	So a lot of Americans were afraid.
	Were the students, you know, we hear a lot of the students, especially at places like Colombia, talking about their own oppression because they fall into whatever racial group or whatever group, 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, when I was 21 years old.
	It's amazing.
	Learning a foreign.
	Yeah, learning a foreign language as an authority is a hard task.
	And when the time of Friends, there were no gender fluid people.
	There was only he and she.
	I barely learned these pronouns.
	And then I come to America to practice in your life.
	And going to my first class, they say, okay, so before even say who you are, what you like, where you're from, what your ambitions are, they say, tell us your pronouns.
	And they were the words like there are more than at the time was like 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, 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 day.
	So I called they him.
	Hey, like, Justin told me this.
	He told me I was.
	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 it's fashion or sophomore, and says his feelings are hurt.
	And by this point, I'm from North Korea.
	I'm like, okay, 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 doesn't have a difference.
	Because instead of referring to him as a they, you use the, you used he.
	And this was obviously a biological male.
	Yeah.
	My goodness.
	And he feels not safe with me.
	And like, I, I was, I was speechless.
	Like 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 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.
	Outdoors.
	But they're like child adults.
	None of them have any capacity to handle any reality.
	And professor, send you this email before the class.
	Say this reading is gonna can trigger uh like rape, memory of oppression, all kinds of difficulties.
	So if this uh class is not trigger 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, 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, 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 select 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 is, they say catalyzing 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, this green color thing they all like, these rich kids like, and they're pants in 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 an internet without free market?
	How would you like have food without free market?
	This is the only thing that we have.
	That makes us who we are.
	Like 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 the American school education system.
	And I mean, if 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 Korean 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 Yon Mee 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 gonna not need a trigger warning.
	It's a it's not because I'm exceptionally resilient or special about me.
	Just say life is tough and I have seen real life.
	And if you understand real life, hearing about it, talking about it is not even close to worst 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've never seen the darkness, you can never see the light.
	If you're just all your life was in the light, you're never going to 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, Yummy, 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 going to give you a special rate, like $200 per hour.
	And I was thinking, like, no, thank you.
	I'm good.
	And I have nothing to go against the 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 to 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.
	You're going to all die.
	And then if you ask North Korean, like, what's a 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 in the minority.
	They don't understand people have no luxury to talk about your feelings and oppression and, you know, the social justice they are talking about.
	It's a luxury they can 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 world, 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.
	And our last bit together, I want to couple, 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'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-defend.
	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 weight and your child gets executed, they're gonna die anyway.
	They're gonna shoot these officials and fight back like hell.
	If Hong Kongers had guns, the Chinese could never have, this people could never have taken them like that.
	It's a very important thing for the humans to defend themselves for the corporate government.
	And he was saying, I agree with you, but can you never talk about that?
	And then with the Tengun Random House, there are 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 have this list of pages of 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, Yami, let's write the 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 to 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 South Korean concentration camps.
	You can be the mirror to reflect to 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, North Korea free society.
	I mean, 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 with Klaus Colibor, I was invited to event.
	It's in my book by Jeff Bezos to something called 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 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 there was a time, the Hollywood, somebody was trying to make a movie about my story.
	And I got a movie script.
	And he said, when I arrived in China, China was the promised land.
	They protect 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.
Fighting Global Slavery 00:09:06
	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 them, 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 horrifying.
	But we've heard similar stories, not the same as yours, before that they, you know, this is why LeBron James won't criticize China.
	This is why we'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 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 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 why 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.
	He, I mean, 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.
	Oh, I was informed by the South Korean intelligence years ago that I was on his killing list.
	And I cannot go to many countries, like for instance, in Malaysia, in many countries where the North Korean operatives operate, especially China.
	And In America, I have friends who are like Iranian activists, Masih, and the gunman shows 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 U.S. government.
	And South Korean intelligence is the only country that was keeping informing me until a few years ago that I became an American citizen.
	And now I'm not their responsibility anymore.
	So now I don't get any more updates from this intelligence.
	And I actually get cancelled.
	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 North Korean people.
	And we agreed.
	I'm not going to talk about Colombia experience.
	I'm not going to talk about anything about American life.
	I'm going to purely help them, help them so they can't help these North Korean people.
	And they don't want to do that.
	They were just canceling me.
	And of course, I can't cancel the Samsung Ultra.
	I mean, they have business to 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 VLM protest in front of my son.
	I was attacked by black women.
	They stole my wallet and then 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 at 2 p.m.
	People were 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 depths, even though they were seeing these women taking my wallet and punching me down.
	So I don't know, like, am I going to be attacked by the woke people or the crowd that gone so mad in America that they can never see that everybody can become a criminal and every can be, somebody can be innocent?
	It's very important.
	You got to get out of New York.
	My audience knows we pulled, my husband and 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 is 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 my feeling on it.
	Right now, 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.
	But what's your future plan?
	I mean, 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.
	It's a thing.
	Like when you go through something like this, every North Korean is the same story.
	In their dreams, they are never in a free country.
	They are always back in North Korea in the prison.
	And as you said, like, how on earth, what luck would that explain?
	Among I became one of 210 North Korean debtors made it to America for the last 80 years and learned English and got have this chance to talk to you.
	Like, I don't think it's me like who I did it.
	I do 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 an obligation protecting the sanity of liberty in this country for my own son, because unlike me, he has no place to escape for.
	Imagine the world without America.
	That place is an unimaginable world.
	I don't want to even 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 want 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.
An Extraordinary Human Being 00:01:04
	Yon Mi, 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 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 Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
	30 gigabytes for bar 214.
	One call, it's not a good thing.

Chapters

00:00:00 No Color in North Korea
00:14:44 The Absence of Stress
00:25:05 Family Punishment and Execution
00:33:52 Crossing the Frozen River
00:40:50 Sold to Traffickers
00:46:26 One Child Policy Consequences
00:50:20 Escape to the Free World
01:04:56 Learning to Think Again
01:10:08 Eating Steak with Gratitude
01:17:18 Trusting in a New Life
01:20:59 Collective Guilt and Regime Lies
01:27:38 Trigger Warnings for Trauma
01:42:06 Fighting Global Slavery
01:51:12 An Extraordinary Human Being