Dennis Prager Show - Yeonmi Park on Fleeing North Korea's Evil Regime
Aired: 2021-06-17
Duration: 07:01


=== People's Desire for Care (04:13) ===

[00:00:00]  I read to you yesterday from the Daily Mail.
[00:00:04]  I didn't know that she was on Jordan Peterson.
[00:00:06]  She was on Fox News, spoke to the New York Post.
[00:00:10]  She is a student.
[00:00:11]  She's 27, a student at Columbia University, which has become a wasteland.
[00:00:19]  And she really has just said, you know what, I fled North Korea.
[00:00:29]  And I thought I was coming to liberty, and I see liberty suppressed and not valued in America.
[00:00:37]  Which is exactly right.
[00:00:39]  So, Yanmi, what I concluded in the last couple of years, a very big thing, and that is that human nature does not yearn to be free.
[00:00:51]  It yearns to be taken care of.
[00:00:55]  Yeah.
[00:00:59]  I mean, that's what I thought after going through all of that.
[00:01:05]  And I went to South Korea when people asked me, what do you think?
[00:01:10]  And nobody asked the question in North Korea.
[00:01:13]  Like, what I thought never mattered.
[00:01:16]  My destiny was determined even before I was born.
[00:01:20]  I never had to think for myself.
[00:01:22]  And it was such a pain to do that.
[00:01:26]  I literally remember if I had a guarantee of getting enough frozen potato and not getting killed by the regime, I would actually rather go back to North Korea where there was no responsibility and where I didn't have to think.
[00:01:41]  Because freedom was a responsibility.
[00:01:45]  That's exactly right.
[00:01:46]  Freedom is a responsibility.
[00:01:48]  That's exactly right.
[00:01:50]  So when we watch people crying hysterically, At the death of Kim Jong-il, for example.
[00:02:00]  That's not acting.
[00:02:02]  They're really crying.
[00:02:06]  Yeah.
[00:02:09]  Well, I do believe that when Kim Il-sung died, that was 100% it was a genuine cry.
[00:02:18]  Literally, my mom thought when Kim Il-sung died, it was God died.
[00:02:23]  She thought the Earth was going to stop spinning.
[00:02:26]  She really thought that was the end of time, end of universe.
[00:02:30]  When Kim Jong-un died, it was more mixed feelings.
[00:02:34]  But still, the majority of people, like 98% of people, believed it.
[00:02:38]  However, though, it's not like you have option not to cry.
[00:02:43]  There are spies everywhere.
[00:02:45]  There are guards everywhere right there looking at you if you don't cry.
[00:02:48]  And you go to political prison camp if you don't cry.
[00:02:52]  So in a way, people, you know, that's the thing, that's what I learned.
[00:02:57]  The will to survive is the strongest force in the human being.
[00:03:02]  We can't, like, literally move the mountains if we face death, right?
[00:03:07]  So people in North Korea, because of, like, life and death situation, they have to do it to survive.
[00:03:13]  Right.
[00:03:14]  So, well, that's what my original thinking was, this crazy crying.
[00:03:19]  I mean, everybody cries, but this is, it looked like an act.
[00:03:25]  But the more I think about it, it might, that's why I asked you, it might also be genuine.
[00:03:30]  So I don't know what to think, but maybe there's no way to know.
[00:03:35]  That's the whole point in North Korea.
[00:03:36]  You don't know what people are thinking.
[00:03:39]  No.
[00:03:40]  It is like they're leaving the tree man show, the movie, right?
[00:03:43]  There's no public survey.
[00:03:45]  We don't even know the concept of survey.
[00:03:48]  There's no way you go ask the group people, what do you think?
[00:03:51]  How do you explain your mother?
[00:03:56]  Well, I mean, she had to eventually come to her own realization.

=== Father's Betrayal (03:02) ===

[00:04:00]  It took a long time for her.
[00:04:02]  But there's no way she could see the truth.
[00:04:05]  No, no, I'm saying how did she get the courage to think independently and to try to escape with you?
[00:04:16]  It was my decision that I told her to escape with me when I was 13. Really?
[00:04:23]  Really?
[00:04:25]  Were you worried that she would report you to the police?
[00:04:30]  No, I wouldn't.
[00:04:32]  I did not.
[00:04:33]  So that was the one thing I had was I had a very, very loving parent who loved me unconditionally.
[00:04:40]  All right.
[00:04:40]  So what happened with your father?
[00:04:43]  He was out of prison and he was very sick.
[00:04:47]  And the thing is, when you escape, there's a higher chance of you not making it.
[00:04:53]  So if my father knew that I was escaping, so once I get caught, They're going to ask me, torture me, if I told anybody.
[00:05:04]  If I did tell my father, then he is actually responsible because he had to report on me.
[00:05:10]  Right, so then he would be tortured.
[00:05:12]  So yes, and then he's going to get killed.
[00:05:14]  So when I was escaping, I heard my mom, like, you are going to come with me, and then I didn't tell my father.
[00:05:21]  So he had no idea.
[00:05:22]  The ISIS one day disappeared from his life.
[00:05:25]  And we let all the victims do that to protect their family.
[00:05:29]  We cannot even afford to take a child.
[00:05:32]  Right, but you went with your mother.
[00:05:36]  So your mother also left without speaking to your father about it?
[00:05:41]  No.
[00:05:42]  So your father woke up one day with no wife and no daughter?
[00:05:47]  Yeah.
[00:05:48]  Do you know what happened to him since you escaped?
[00:05:52]  Oh, and then six months later, after I was in China, when I got to China, I was sold separately from my mom because I was sold by human traffickers.
[00:06:05]  So I was 13 years old.
[00:06:07]  I was virgin, so they sold me for less than $300.
[00:06:12]  And they sold my mom for less than $100.
[00:06:15]  So I got separated from my mom.
[00:06:18]  I was bought by another human trafficker, and of course he was trying to rape me, and I was going to kill myself.
[00:06:27]  But he told me if I become his mistress, that he could have saved my family for me.
[00:06:33]  And I decided to leave at that because, you know, I could have saved my family if I became his mistress.
[00:06:40]  So I became his mistress at 13. He bought my mom back from the farmer that he sold.
[00:06:47]  And then he brought my sick father from North Korea in October of 2007. Wow, what a story.
[00:06:56]  What a story.
[00:06:57]  By the way, you did the right thing.
[00:07:00]  I just want you to know.