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June 17, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
07:14
Yeonmi Park Fled North Korea For Freedom, But Was Shocked by the Curriculum at Our Universities
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I know you know about my work, and I'm very, very happy about that, obviously.
It means a lot to me.
I feel like I cannot believe this is really happening.
I have been following your work many, many years now.
Thank you for everything that you do to protect the freedom of speech.
Well, God bless you.
It means a lot to me that you said that.
Has there been any response at Columbia to your comments?
Well, actually, I have not gotten any comments from the school, but I actually got some notes from my classmates, actually.
They said that they felt the exact same way, but back then they couldn't express me because nobody knows.
It is almost a little bit like in North Korea, that we cannot really reveal what we think inside.
And it's always going along with the climate of the class and professor.
And I never knew there was someone like me who thought the same thing, but they never told me.
They never expressed it.
So that's how oppressive the environment is.
In America, in Manhattan, in the 21st century, we could have talked about it openly, but nobody did.
So back then I thought I was the only one, the weird one, thinking this is unthinkable.
And one of my classmates, she texted me two days ago after reading Fox and, you know, she supports me in this.
And she said the same thing.
But she won't go public.
No, she will not.
She said, like, even now I have a job.
I can never talk about it in public.
But what you did is very brave.
So, you know, I support you.
Just know that.
And that meant a lot to me because I've been getting a lot of messages from my friends.
And they say, I'm so worried about you.
I'm concerned about you.
I don't understand what you said on Fox.
And I need to talk to you.
So I have some calls scheduled ahead from now on.
And I have to, in a way, explain to people.
And these are all my close friends.
So I was going to ask you, do you have close friends?
Um...
I do have a close friend in America, yeah.
And I assume it's a she.
Is she at Columbia?
No, no.
She's a lot older than me.
And, yeah, they are now coming from Columbia.
Do you have any friends in Columbia?
I do, but we've never gotten that close.
It was a very superficial lover.
And given how I thought about the whole thing, I could never become, like, respecting their academic integrity.
So meaning was, it was not a place to search for truth.
It was a place to be, you know, becoming anti-Western, a tool almost.
Has any professor thus far said in class how bad America is?
Not any professor, Dennis.
Every single one of them.
Not just professors, the instructors, you know, the visiting.
Every single one of them.
Yeah.
So I want to know, have you ever raised your hand to say, you know, I've seen repression.
There is no repression in this country.
I'm not expecting you to say that But I'm curious if you ever did.
So I didn't go that far.
I guess I wasn't that courageous enough.
You're very courageous.
That's not an issue with you.
I'm just curious what you've said.
Go ahead.
Yeah, so Columbia has a core curriculum where you have to take the reference to music and art.
And in the right before the class, right, the orientation, they ask every single one of you what's your pronouns.
And then after we do all of that, then the professor was saying, so who has a problem calling this course Western Civilization Music?
And everybody was raising their hands.
I didn't like raising my hands.
And then everybody was saying, you know, because of this Russian evil white man silenced all those minority people, now we have to ending up studying these, like, you know, bigots like Beethoven and Mozart.
So, you know, we could have for the same energy studying somebody from Africa or somebody in the East or Asia.
And I raised a handbag, I told them, I mean, after all, we're in the West.
You know, in Korea, when you study Korean music, we don't study, who have problems studying Korean music, right?
Wait, you said this in class?
Yeah, I said, I don't...
Go on, right, right, go on, go on.
Yeah, so I said, I don't have problems studying Russian music.
After all, this is in the West, and, you know, every talent matters, every history matters.
This is just one of them.
I don't take it as an oppression.
But then, of course, the whole of them is looking at me horrified and say, I'm brainwashed.
You're brainwashed.
You're brainwashed.
Exactly.
Wait!
I feel like I've entered Pyongyang here.
It's bizarre.
First of all, this is a Western Civilization music course.
At Columbia.
And the professor asks, who has a problem with studying or calling it Western Civilization music?
And most of them raise their hands?
All of them.
All of them except you.
Your point, by the way, I just want to repeat it for my listeners.
In Korea, we don't ever have a problem with teaching Korean music.
Why in the West do you have a problem teaching Western music?
But I would go further.
In this regard, Yanmi, I would note that Korea is producing a disproportionate number of the world's greatest Western musicians.
Some of the greatest pianists, violinists in the world today are Korean.
And they're playing Beethoven.
Yep.
This is the thing, where the Western civilization created so much value into humanity, our advancement.
But now I'm coming to the heart of the West, and they despise it.
Yes, yes.
We're going to continue in a moment.
Yanmi Park escaped from North Korea.
And it's almost eerie to say, but she came to America for freedom and is watching it.
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