In North Korea, it is common for people to save hair that falls from their head so that they have a fuel source for fires. Used paper from school children is also reused as toilet paper, while human feces are mandated by the government to be collected for reuse as fertilizer. Yeonmi Park, a North Korean woman who fled the country at the age of 13, spoke to hundreds of students and audience members on April 2nd about these harrowing conditions that North Koreans face every day. For UVA students, the speech offered a sobering reminder of the importance behind abstract ideas like democracy and freedom, and begged questions of how perspectives like Park’s should shape our thinking today.
Park began her talk, sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation and Jefferson Council, with a statement more startling than the revelations about the DPRK’s dismal abuse of its people – when she lived in North Korea, she didn’t realize that the ollection of feces, near starvation, and political authoritarianism were oppressive conditions. As a young girl born, raised, and indoctrinated in North Korea, Park existed in a society that, in her own words, “did not have a word for love.” Love in North Korea was rather defined as the history of ancestral loyalty to the revolution that originally instituted Kim Ju Un’s bloodline. North Korean society is split into three castes: those whose ancestors supported the revolution in 1945, those whose ancestors opposed the revolution, and others who are political wildcards in the eyes of the state. The system is so complex that it has 53 separate, well-defined labels impacted solely by factors related to state loyalty. For those in the lowest and politically suspect castes, which make up the vast majority of the country, conditions are as Park described, or worse.
Park came from one of the politically unreliable family castes. Her father was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment when she was very young for selling basic goods in the black market, further reducing their status. However, Park escaped at the age of 13 by bribing a border guard with her mother and sister while her father was still in prison. Throughout her speech, there were countless moments when the audience audibly gasped at the abhorrent situations, but her escape in China was even more challenging to hear.
Upon entering the Chinese city just over the border, Park and her mother were sold as sex slaves to different buyers, the implication being that the bribed border guard only let them through because Chinese men paid for them. Park shakily described this experience, saying that she threatened to kill herself if she wasn’t reunited with her family. The man who bought her eventually relented, so he bribed North Korean officials to release Park’s father and bought her mother back from the Chinese farmer to whom she had been sold. With her family reunited, Park was forced to undergo years of rape and abuse in this bizarre and sickening setting. It was in this setting that Park’s father, a victim of constant abuse in North Korea’s prisons, passed away. Park’s description of rape, manipulation, and maltreatment are apparently commonplace along the Chinese-North Korean border because of the easily exploitable situation of recently escaped North Koreans, and the profit that border guards can make from trafficking defectors.
Park was eventually contacted by Christian missionaries who directed her and her mother to flee China through the Mogi desert of Mongolia to reach South Korea. Faced with a long hike across open desert, which can fall to as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit, Park and her mother were armed only with a compass. Against all odds, Park and her mother reached South Korea, and soon, the US. Park would go on to enroll in Columbia University and become an outspoken advocate for human rights, anti-communism, and democracy. She briefly strayed into US politics at the end of her speech by condemning fierce anti-American rhetoric she sometimes faced in university. To her, naive beliefs in communism are a direct threat to return to her tortured days under Kim Jong Un and Chinese abuse. Concluding, Park implored the audience to, “always be vigilant for our freedom,” in the face of such threats.
A 20-minute Q&A followed in which Park tackled issues ranging from disinformation to US foreign policy approaches to China. While her answers to these types of questions emphasized the free flow of information, perhaps her most pertinent answer for UVA students was the important values that she believes youth of today should embody. When asked by an audience member how Park wanted to raise her own 7-year-old son, she talked about the importance of discipline, resilience, and above all, gratitude. Faced with today’s challenges, the message was clear: cherish the gift of American freedom without being complacent in extolling the virtues required to uphold it. These values are sometimes overlooked in the US, but when such ideals are expressed through the reality of Yeonmi Park’s incredible story, we would certainly be remiss to them.
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