CHANDLER, Arizona – North Korean defector Yeonmi Park spoke to a Davos in the Desert gathering at The Forum in Chandler Monday evening. The young author contrasted the totalitarian government she fled with increasing wokism in the U.S. Due to her speaking out, she said, “I have become the enemy of the woke.”
David Wanetick, who founded Davos in the Desert, spoke briefly first about the principles of the organization. It is an “anti-globalist movement dedicated to providing forums whereby business leaders, thought leaders and government servants share their ideas for safeguarding freedom and liberty.”
Park began her talk by discussing how people in North Korea don’t know anything about the U.S. They are taught to refer to the U.S. as “American bastards.” She explained, “How do you fight to be free if you don’t know you are a slave?”
Park said North Korean dictators stole the Bible and used it as their own story, telling the people they were gods who could read people’s minds. People don’t dare ask questions because it could get not just them killed but their families and relatives too. She said it was “safest not to think.”
They are prohibited from wearing jeans since jeans are associated with American capitalism. The government told people they must do things from dancing to cutting their hair. She said that Dictator Kim Jong Un banned Mother’s Day because he wanted people to view the government as the primary parent.
Park explained how the concept of “free healthcare” works there. Before she escaped at age 13, she went to the hospital with a stomach ache. She said there was no electricity, no heating, and the staff reused the same bandages on patients. They had no diagnostic equipment, so they just operated on her, without any painkiller, opening her up to take out her appendix, she said. Even though it appeared healthy, she said the doctors removed it anyway to save face.
She said the leadership deliberately keeps people starving so they have no energy to fight back; instead, people are consumed thinking of where they will get their next meal. She said there is so much death that “looking at a dead body is like looking at a tree” for them. She said Jong Un preferred to have fewer people alive since he said socialism is easier with lower numbers.
Women in their 30s are considered middle-aged, she said, noting that she recently turned 30. When she was 13, she and her mother were sold as sex slaves to China. Her mother was bought for $65, and she was bought for $20 as a highly prized child virgin. She said the Chinese government looks the other way at the practice since they have to appease all the young single men so there isn’t an uprising over the lack of women.
She went over how North Korean women also end up in brothels, where they last about three to six months until they die due to the brutal lifestyle. Others end up in villages of men who pool their money to buy one woman, who they gang rape until she dies.
Park agreed to be the mistress of a man in China in exchange for him helping her reunite her family. Finally, when she was 15, she met some South Korean missionaries risking their lives to save North Korean women. They told her to cross the desert during the coldest months when the guards would not be out looking in order to reach South Korea. They told her everything she’d been told was a lie and that the leaders weren’t gods but “fat dictators.” She escaped with an eight-person team.
In 2015, she came to the U.S. to study at Columbia University. She was shocked to see how woke it was. She criticized accusations of “perpetuating systemic racism” and treating co-eds engaging in drunk sex as rape victims, which she called “an insult to rape victims.” She contrasted the attitude that math is racist to North Korean attitudes about math. There, they were taught that one drop of water plus another drop of water doesn’t equal two, but equals one larger drop of water.
Park lamented how the woke Left criticizes inequality, but “a sign of inequality is a sign of progress” in the U.S. professors and others told her when Donald Trump emerged to run for president that he was similar to Jong Un.
She’s been disappointed to see YouTube take down some of her videos; “there’s no freedom of speech in America.” She praised Elon Musk for buying Twitter, stating that there is no other way her message would have gotten out due to the bias. Park criticized The New York Times for publishing her comments critical of Trump five years ago, but now that she likes Trump, she said they are questioning her truthfulness.
It disturbs her that there is no redemption or mercy from the Left, she went on. She called it “groupthink” and said when she goes to speak on college campuses, the Left protests and tries to get her appearances canceled. The Left doesn’t understand why she doesn’t act like a victim who is oppressed. She said, “Maybe when they start paying taxes, they will come to their senses.”
Park said the head of diversity at the FBI called her once to tell her she had to cancel a speech due to her “political opinions.” She found that ironic, considering she had just gone through the U.S. citizenship process where she was asked whether she had ever persecuted anyone for political reasons.
She’s been unable to get Hollywood to produce a documentary about her story, since they can’t have an ending with the U.S. being the haven she escaped to, she was told it would have to be China.
In the last few years, she said only 209 people have escaped from North Korea. She will never be able to live a normal life, since the regime will always seek to kill her, she said.
“America is prosperous because there is trust between people,” she said. In North Korea, everyone is spying on each other and reporting them to authorities.
She said Jong Un’s family is ready to replace him with his sons or sister if he dies due to health problems, and they will continue the totalitarian regime. Park has two books out, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom and While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
