#1691 - Yeonmi Park

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] Well, very nice to meet you, first of all.

[4] So much, me, too.

[5] Thanks for coming here.

[6] Is this your first time in Texas?

[7] No, I've been here before.

[8] You've been to Austin before?

[9] Yes.

[10] So for people who don't know your story, I'm just going to give them a primer, just to sort of establish your history.

[11] You were born in North Korea and you escaped North Korea when you were 13.

[12] Is that a whole old you were?

[13] I think we should start off with what it was like living in North Korea.

[14] I saw your interview with Jordan Peterson and it was incredibly moving and it was incredibly disturbing and eye -opening.

[15] And it's hard to believe for people that don't.

[16] don't know what life is like in North Korea, the reality of you growing up in North Korea, but just talking about how you essentially had no food and you would go looking for bugs to eat.

[17] Yeah.

[18] This was the reality of your existence as a child that there was no protein.

[19] Yeah.

[20] What when you, now that you live here in America and you can kind of eat whatever you want, when you look back on that what does it seem like to you does it seem like reality does it seem like a dream what does your childhood seem like it's sometimes this feels like dream this feels like a yeah so i pinched myself a lot in the beginning because they say if it's not dream it hurts right when you pinch yourself so a lot of times i pinch myself because sometimes i'm really horrified if I wake up from this that I'm going to wake up in my living room in North Korea so it's sometimes that line is very blurry to me and because the one common thing that North Koreans all have is actually in our dreams when we sleep it's back in North Korea so in our dream we somehow never able to escape it so every day my mom wakes up like she tells me about story how she was back in North Korea and I have the exact same thing no matter But how many years we left afterwards, in our dreams, we are still in that country.

[21] So that's the nightmare.

[22] The nightmare is that you're still trapped in North Korea.

[23] When you lived there, you didn't know that there was another way to live.

[24] No. It's like here right now, we cannot imagine a life in some different planet in the universe.

[25] Right?

[26] We just don't know what their life looks like.

[27] Exactly the same thing.

[28] I never knew the life in a different planet could be.

[29] like and where you lived in north korea there was no internet yeah there's uh very little electricity right and how much education did you get i never even seen the map of the world so as even asian i didn't not even know that i was asian so the regime told me i was a kimil song race kimil song race yeah and then the north korean calendar begins when kymir song was born.

[30] That's like Zhu Cuiwan, that our history begins.

[31] So I don't even know what Jesus Christ is.

[32] And I don't know anything before Kim.

[33] So there was everything before Kim.

[34] The history was re -raised for us.

[35] And but the thing is that we are hungry.

[36] We're starving.

[37] If you eat breakfast, you worry about lunch.

[38] If you make it to dinner, you are not sure if you're going to make it to tomorrow.

[39] So in that scenario, who thinks about history?

[40] You know, nobody thinks about anything other than surviving, and that is why precisely Kim Jong -un keeping us starving mode, even though the UN, the international organizations, begging to give food and formula to North Korean people, but Kim Jong -un is saying no to this food aid, because he doesn't want us to be fed. So he's purposely starving the people to keep them weak so that all they think about is surviving, so they don't think about revolution?

[41] It's a hunger games.

[42] It's like when I was reading this book, Hunger Games, I literally like, oh my God, this person copied North Korea.

[43] There's a captar.

[44] You divide into 13 different districts.

[45] Captar people have everything they need.

[46] And on other provinces, their own purpose, they are being starved.

[47] So only thing you can think of your survivor, if we are full in your stomach, right, you're going to start thinking about meaning of life, art, what's out there in the universe.

[48] You can.

[49] do all of that higher thinking when you are full in your stomach but when you're hungry the only thing that matters is your hunger when did north korea become what it is now when did it shift to this totalitarian regime that's starving its people and puts people in these classifications like for one for one example one of the classifications is if your grandfather or great -grandfather committed some sort of a sin, you are perpetually punished for that.

[50] Everyone in your generation, your next generation, all of them are guilty.

[51] Yeah, forever.

[52] There's no redemption.

[53] If the one person commits a crime in that family clan, three to eight generations got to be perched.

[54] How many generations?

[55] Three to eight generations.

[56] Yes.

[57] Mostly commonly three, but the people like who challenge the regime or challenge the leader, then eight generations get perched.

[58] Eight generations.

[59] And then after the eighth generation, are they absolved?

[60] No, they're all gone.

[61] They're all gone.

[62] By eight generation, you even kill the in -laws of somebody in -law.

[63] So not even the blood you get perched.

[64] If your cousin, somebody marrying the in -law of somebody, so there was one official who escaped, 35 ,000 people were perched.

[65] A lot of them, 80 % of them, did not even know that they were related to this person.

[66] Wow.

[67] Yeah, cousins of cousins, somebody, somebody, that's how they find they get rid of the root of entire this clan when did this all start when Kim Ilson came into power so he was big Marxist and Leninist and he was a communist so in the before the Korean were in 1948 that's when he began this in the name of equality right let's take everything back from the capitalist let's nationalize the land get rid of private property but he made north korea into very in equal society dividing people into 50 different classes 50 yeah and the way the classes worked you couldn't marry up say like if you were a higher class and a man wanted to marry you if he was lower class you would then become a lower class Yeah.

[68] That's how they prevent the mixing with the class.

[69] So there's no marrying up.

[70] You only go down.

[71] So no matter what happens, if you are at a lower class, you stay there forever.

[72] Forever.

[73] No chance of moving out of that zone.

[74] And it has no, it's not based on merit.

[75] It's not based on your performance.

[76] It's not based on anything other than the way you were born.

[77] No. This is when I was confused when I went to South Korea, people say, if you work hard in South Korea you are going to be get rewarded and that's when I thought wow that is justice because in North Korea doesn't matter what you do what you want to do what your dreams are it's already determined by what your ancestors did but the thing is how do you choose your ancestor right you can never choose your parents and you had no idea that there was any other way to live when you're growing up like this because I never seen the map of the world I didn't even know like the Americans how they looked like because we don't have internet first of all we have only one channel that government you know controls every single contents we don't even have any we don't even have a cookbook that's the thing as a Korean I don't even know what cookbook is I mean first of we don't have ingredients like how do you find the half pounds of pork scaly and blah blah right so cookbook is like pointless and not only that there's no fashion because I mean we don't have freedom to what we wear So even when I heard the job called modeling, I was like, what is that?

[78] So everything that I learned here is like a new concept to me as a North Korean.

[79] So when you would eat, where would you get your food from?

[80] So we, so the land is governments, right?

[81] The house is, there's no private property.

[82] But those farmers in the working in the collective farm, they smuggled it out and set in the black market secretly.

[83] So those food, if we have money, we go to black market, buy, you know, corn, starch, those things.

[84] But mostly we just go to a mountain to pick up plants, flowers, and, like, grasshoppers is the biggest protein source for North Koreans.

[85] But the government doesn't provide any food for the people?

[86] I heard they did in the 60s, but I was born in 1993 in October, and that is right after Soviet Union collapsed.

[87] So until then, Soviet Union was subsidizing North Korea's economy heavily.

[88] And China did the same, but when they collapsed, they stopped helping North Korean regime.

[89] So the regime policy was, if we as long as keep the 10 % alive who are in the capital, our rule is successful.

[90] So they were not going to do anything until 90 % of the population dies.

[91] Wow.

[92] Still there are same rule they have.

[93] Until the 90 % dies out, as long as they were.

[94] as if we keep the 10 % alive, we are not going to do anything.

[95] Intervene the starvation.

[96] So there's no effort whatsoever to get food to the people?

[97] It's not like effort.

[98] They're actually actively preventing people to get resources.

[99] Preventing, right now even last time the Biden was calling Kim Jong -un, can we give you a vaccine?

[100] And Kim Jong -old said, no. South Korea was calling North Korea last year, there was a big flood.

[101] Can we give you at least some medicine?

[102] And Kim Jong -sa said, no, we don't want any medicine.

[103] So because they don't want any aid from the West?

[104] They want to keep people as weak as possible.

[105] Exactly.

[106] They want us, today I was on the way here thinking, getting up in North Korea, the child was challenging because every day you get dizzy from the starvation.

[107] You get, like, hear noise every single morning when you wake up.

[108] It takes like 30 minutes to gather your thoughts to able to walk straight because everybody's in that mode of starvation.

[109] Yeah.

[110] So as you can see me, like very small.

[111] I eat a lot.

[112] I'm like still 80 pounds, but when I was escaping, I don't even know how rich I was.

[113] And North Korean men above four, 10 feet high, they have to go to military.

[114] Women is mandatory.

[115] Men have to serve in the military 13 years, mandatory, and women is 10 years.

[116] And most men are very small because of malnutrition?

[117] Yeah, for 10 feet.

[118] 410.

[119] Yeah.

[120] Wow.

[121] And so so they just allow people to forage for themselves that's the idea like find your own food yes are you allowed to have a garden can you grow vegetables can you have animals well uh one of the executions that my mom saw was a a young man was eating beef a cow because he killed a collective farm cow and he got executed for that is everything is owned by the state in also you don't even own yourself right so I remember going to South Korea, people, I got a gift one day, and it was a planner.

[122] So what you do, what you're trying to do is a notebook.

[123] And in North Korea, like this, you don't plan your day.

[124] You don't get to plan what you do with your life.

[125] Like a week before, or a day before there's announcement from the government.

[126] How you're going to spend your day?

[127] When, what to eat, where to go to work, what to do, when to go to sleep.

[128] Everything is determined by your own state.

[129] So this guy was executed because he killed one of the state's cows, and you're not allowed to have your own animals?

[130] So you can't have like chickens or something along those lines?

[131] They might hide it, but last year, Kim Jong -un confiscated entire dog from the population.

[132] All the dogs?

[133] Yeah.

[134] That was because of COVID -19, right?

[135] No?

[136] Because he said it was a corrupt Western sentiment where we have pets.

[137] So he ordered to kill the entire dogs for the meat.

[138] So get rid of dogs because even he just didn't like that.

[139] It looks like Western having a dog, having a friendly relationship with animals.

[140] So everyone's dog and all of North Korea was confiscated and killed?

[141] Yeah.

[142] And what did they do with the dogs?

[143] I don't know what the regime leaders did.

[144] Wow.

[145] Yeah.

[146] So do they provide you with any food?

[147] No. No. So you have to find food on your own and most of the food is wild food, like grasshoppers and flowers that are edible.

[148] Yeah.

[149] So this is why the most bizarre thing is that, regime initially said, oh, give us your land, give us your freedom, we are going to provide free health insurance, right?

[150] For education, free housing, free of everything.

[151] You don't have to worry about anything.

[152] The state is going to be taking care of everything.

[153] But after Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea came idea like this idea is called self -reliance.

[154] So you're relying on yourself.

[155] But you can't farm.

[156] No, you don't have land.

[157] How do you farm?

[158] You don't have freedom.

[159] There's no free market.

[160] My father was sent a prison camp because he sold medals.

[161] He sold the metals, right?

[162] Initially, he sold like rice, dried fish, clocks, and trading is illegal.

[163] It's not like he was selling weapons or drugs.

[164] Trading is illegal.

[165] So how do you be self -reliant?

[166] Yeah.

[167] So they just, let you figure so the whole idea is just to keep everybody weak yeah it is so strange to someone who has been in america their whole life like me to even imagine that the same time i'm living here like one of the big problems in america is that people eat too much yeah i heard that isn't that crazy i was shocked i never understood having too much can be a problem because i just never knew that could be a possibility of a problem.

[168] It's the number one problem here.

[169] Exactly how having too much is a problem.

[170] I don't get it.

[171] I think the, what is the percentage of people in America that are obese?

[172] I think it's large.

[173] I think it's more than 50%.

[174] I think it's a huge factor with diseases and I mean, 78 % of the people that are in the ICU for COVID are obese.

[175] What is it?

[176] 42%.

[177] 43%.

[178] So almost half of the people in the country are obese.

[179] or obese, meaning they eat far too much food.

[180] Yeah.

[181] And for you, that concept must be insane.

[182] You might, like, you're in the upside down world.

[183] Like, you're in, right?

[184] That's the thing.

[185] It's like different planet.

[186] The common law that I knew in North Korea doesn't apply here anymore.

[187] And it is just so confusing to me how hard is not to eat.

[188] It's hard when you don't have food.

[189] You can't find it, and to me is that, I don't know why that is so challenging.

[190] Can you do me a favor and just push the microphone forward?

[191] Yeah, like this.

[192] Yeah, so it's right in front of your face.

[193] There you go.

[194] So, yeah, it must be, yeah, like another planet, the idea of having too much food.

[195] Yeah, and that's the source of, I mean, they're complaining about it.

[196] So I'm like, even that is a reason for a complaint.

[197] Yeah.

[198] That's something unbelievable.

[199] I just don't get it.

[200] It's so easy if you have too much, just don't eat it.

[201] You just don't put in your mouth, right?

[202] No one is forcing you to eat a lot.

[203] Yeah, but food is addictive, and people like to comfort themselves with food when it's everywhere.

[204] And it's also, it's a strange problem, right?

[205] The problem of excess.

[206] It's a strange problem, like you have too much.

[207] But this is, I mean, humanity, all our humanity, we've been starving.

[208] It's the very first time Humanity having this much access And I have some compassion for the But you know A lot of problems Like I met American friends in New York I went to school there And like my friends Complaints I couldn't sympathize in the beginning I literally Because their problem is like some guy They went on date and they don't call them back And they call me and complain Like you know like There's a people actually problems like life and death This is not a problem But Well, it's an issue of perspective, right?

[209] Like your life, you've seen horrific things, whereas so many people, the worst thing that's ever happened to them is someone broke up with them.

[210] Yeah.

[211] When you were talking about going to the doctor when you were a child and that this is a very disturbing story, but I want you to try to explain it to people, how people were dying in these hospitals and rats would eat the eyeballs of the people who are dying and children who were starving would eat the rats and then the children would die and the rats would eat the children yeah explain what this was like that you what how how did you see this well i mean seeing that the bodies on the streets like everyday thing it was no where were the bodies like just laying around on the streets so they are floating in the rivers and then they also So train station somehow had a lot of dead bodies because North Korea is very cold and there's a train waiting area.

[212] And North Korea has one train, go to one distance, like once a month.

[213] And like here it would take like one hour to go the other place.

[214] In North Korea, it takes a month at least to go because there's no electricity.

[215] And sometimes people have to push the train.

[216] They have to push the train.

[217] Traveling in North Korea is an unbelievably difficult thing within North Korea.

[218] So, I mean, anyway, so in train stations, that's when people die mostly.

[219] And in North Korea, the hardest thing as a child for me is that when my mom goes away to find food, like we don't have phones, we don't have letters.

[220] If I say goodbye to her, I don't know when I'm going to see her again, or if I'm ever going to see her again.

[221] Because she could have cared and, like, raped and starved.

[222] You just never know how to find people.

[223] so in the morning when you go like walking the train station they just put the piles of the bodies and they're all like become rigid right they're almost like like wood piled on them and taking away and one but the thing is for me i didn't even know the word compassion like nobody told me you have to feel bad for it because for me it's like like fish in the water don't notice the water right like that it was like something every day i saw as a child so you you know you know never went days where you didn't see.

[224] This is a normal thing to see dead bodies.

[225] It was every day as normal as like breathing the air right now.

[226] And one thing that I still remember is, my sister and I was walking by the world.

[227] Like in North School, we don't have a sewage.

[228] We don't have running water, obviously.

[229] We have to go to a river to bring the drinking water.

[230] And there's a young teenage boy, I think, lying down and his intestines coming out of his back.

[231] When you're really managed, that thing all opens up.

[232] You got zero, zero fats.

[233] Every hole all opens.

[234] And you see dogs, like, dogs looking at his organs coming out.

[235] And he was just somehow conscious begging for food at the time.

[236] He was begging for food while his organs were hanging out of his body.

[237] Yeah.

[238] And I don't know why he was, like, pants were off.

[239] And I feel nothing.

[240] That still haunts me to really say, like, I don't know.

[241] how I feel nothing at that point and that just looked horrible and because he's just the fact that he's alive and so much flies flying by on his organs and how he's somehow consciously begging for food and I I didn't feel anything you have felt no compassion no it was just normal yeah it's yeah so that's that was like daily life thing and then in the hospital when I was 13 years old my parents took me to hospital because I was a bad stomach egg and then we don't have like x -ray machines we don't have none of that's doctor robs your belly and then he says oh we need to operate on her I think her like appendix or bursting or something so that afternoon they they cut me open without any anesthesia and but it's normal thing people in North Creek operation without anesthesia but the chances of you going to surgery is a lot higher for you getting infected because we don't have penicillin.

[242] The nurse is using a one meter to inject every single patient.

[243] So who do you know what the other person has?

[244] You get from actually more sick by being in the hospital.

[245] Right.

[246] And this is where we don't of course have an indoor bathroom for the patient.

[247] We have to go outside.

[248] And in between there, there's a piles of dead human bodies.

[249] and that's when I was seeing this somehow rats eating human eyes first for some reason because they're probably soft and doesn't eat and these women I don't know in my age probably show hair wearing these flower pants and when they're all like their mouth is somehow open and their all eyes are hollow and you see children like looking at the rats and laughing and chasing them And adults telling them, like, don't eat those, you're going to get sick from it.

[250] But, of course, kids don't care.

[251] Like, even finding a rat is delicacy.

[252] Because even finding a snake is a big price.

[253] You don't find those often.

[254] So they were finding the rats and then just trying to eat them?

[255] Yeah.

[256] Were they eating them raw?

[257] Sometimes if you find the skin you do, but they do find some, like, fire and roast them.

[258] So they were excited to find a rat to eat?

[259] So they were catching them with their hands?

[260] Yeah, oh, yeah, of course they do catch them around with their hands.

[261] And these piles of human bodies, like, she was on top.

[262] That's why I was able to see her reading this flower and pants to this.

[263] And then, like, her eyes are so hollow.

[264] It's like, we need to look at the human body.

[265] Like, nothing is left.

[266] I think that's what, it's not like just death is that.

[267] It's just like how it becomes nothing.

[268] So empty inside.

[269] She does not know the shame or pain.

[270] She was lying there like that.

[271] And you see children just chasing them and laughing and try to catch the rats.

[272] And the children didn't feel anything being around the dead bodies.

[273] It was normal.

[274] It's our daily normal thing.

[275] Seeing a death is like our daily life.

[276] And they would eat the rats and then they would get sick and some of them would die.

[277] Yeah.

[278] A lot of them die.

[279] And then the rats would eat them.

[280] Yeah.

[281] So the cycle we talk about.

[282] It's like that spring is for North Carolina's a season of death.

[283] And so the diseases that they would get from the rats, they were willing to risk those diseases just because of hunger.

[284] Because when you ask, there's a North Korean proverb.

[285] There is no wish for the person who died after their stomach is full.

[286] So even in the mid of the earthquake, the North Koreans not tried to run.

[287] So my mom was talking about the day when she was in the university, there's an earthquake happening.

[288] And do you know what this student's doing is not running out of the building and try to survive?

[289] They go to kitchen.

[290] So before they die, they eat at least so they can die.

[291] So if you have that promise of eating a one meal, they're going to risk everything for that.

[292] So it's just an entire country in a perpetual state of starvation?

[293] Yeah.

[294] I remember playing with this game with my sister.

[295] As a young girl, I never ate until I felt full.

[296] So I would compare my sister.

[297] I tell her, like, I can eat 100 bread.

[298] And she's like, I can eat the mountains of bread.

[299] I can eat like 10 ,000 more than what you just said because I don't know the limits of my stomach I never tested it so you always were hungry always hungry never felt full so you escaped so your father was arrested for trading in in metals right and he was he was just trying to find resources trying to get money for the black marker for food and things like that is that what it was To get us alive.

[300] He had to, because regime does not provide food for the people.

[301] So they had to break the law, which is trading to survive.

[302] Without trading, how do we even survive?

[303] So he was trading these matters.

[304] And he got, and he got caught, and that's how he sent a prison camp.

[305] And how long was he in prison for?

[306] Several years, but he was sentenced more than 10 years.

[307] So I think he was totally in prison, 3 ,4 years.

[308] But he got out of for sick leave, which is had to go back once he got better.

[309] But of course in North Korea, that's like who cares if you die.

[310] He was a very smart guy.

[311] So he tricked the guard saying, if you gave me out for the sick leave, I'm going to get you money.

[312] Because North Korea is the most corrupt country that you can find right now in today's world.

[313] So corrupt.

[314] So he tricked the guard, told him that he'd get him some money.

[315] And so he was in, for how many years?

[316] You said four years?

[317] Three, four years, yeah.

[318] And what was it like when he got out?

[319] I didn't recognize him when he came back to me. I did not know that was my father.

[320] Even his voice changed.

[321] When I call North Korea until this day, I do have people underground.

[322] I get information.

[323] Their voice is different.

[324] It's like their voice is so oppressed.

[325] You can tell this is North Korea.

[326] Korean is speaking.

[327] You can tell just by their voice.

[328] Yeah.

[329] That's the thing.

[330] When some Chinese, like, we have the brokers try to trick us.

[331] By voice, we can tell.

[332] If you're Chinese, like, Korean, ethnic Chinese living in China trying to trick us, or actually North Korean is speaking to us.

[333] Wow.

[334] So you can actually hear the oppression in their voice.

[335] Yeah.

[336] You can.

[337] What does it sound like?

[338] It's a complete fear.

[339] Like, terrified to the point.

[340] They don't even know their attention.

[341] terrified.

[342] They're like, I don't think even bug would be that scared.

[343] Like he was calling me in his voice, I didn't see my father.

[344] And he was so scared.

[345] And I could see he was so scared.

[346] I was like only nine something, ten.

[347] I don't even know.

[348] I was like young.

[349] And I could say, why is he so afraid?

[350] And so he does get out and they never put him back in jail again?

[351] Because I rescued him after I went to China.

[352] I got.

[353] got him out so he had to go back he had to go back to jail but he died in in china so you were 13 when you you and your family you was it you and your mother it escaped yeah how did you get out so that hospital right initially my sister and i was going to escape but when north koreans say when you are escaping of course we don't have phones we don't have a map we don't know what's the outside world look like right luckily i would living in this border town of North Korea by then.

[354] So at night, do you know if you see the satellite photo of North Korea, it is literally the darkest place on Earth.

[355] Yes.

[356] We don't have electricity.

[357] So I was seeing these lights coming from China.

[358] So I thought, like, if I go where the lights were, we would be finding some border rice.

[359] So at 16, my sister left with her friend, and she left me on note while I was in the hospital and got like removing my appendix and then as soon as I got out of a house where I found a note and initially my mom and I went to look for sister where she went but when we found a lady she told me that she could help me to go to China that day and so this was you and your mother and you were 13 years old yeah so how did you get across and what is that what was that experience like so this is so I told my mom like come with me to China and she my mom was like you know father is like my father was home he was waiting but the thing is that the tragic thing for north can say we cannot even say goodbye to our loved ones so if we got caught on the journey and if my father knew that we're escaping he's going to be punished so much so it's better off that he does not know that we're escaping for his own safety because they're going to torture you to the point that you're going to say anything because they do this or so conscious, like, torture, that they make you not sleep.

[360] In a single room has, like, no air, much air.

[361] If you put there for 40 days alone, you go crazy, you say whatever they ask you.

[362] So if you, he actually knew that we're escaping, it wouldn't good for him.

[363] He would be dead.

[364] So I told him, I'm like, you cannot tell father that we are escaping.

[365] So that day, we climbed up this, like, several mountains.

[366] And then we went to the really, riverside but she had a connection with the guards why did you not bring him with you because he's a man and he was sick and somehow she said only women can go only women can go i did not know why what she meant by that she's like you should just go with your mom and don't even tell those people that's your mom she said like you are like 18 or something and my mom was something dirty so she told me that our age was different so and this would somehow another help you you when you were going across yeah how would that help you i don't know or she told me what is going to be helpful and well part of the issue is um in china there's a disproportionate number of men in comparison to women yeah and so they want as many women to come across as that are of legal age like women that can be married or can right is that the idea behind it it's it's a smuggling so like it's you got it right because of one child the policy right a lot of girls got aborted in china so they kept boys now so there's many many men that have no chance of ever finding a woman because there are no women yeah over 30 million men in the rural areas cannot find wives so they over 30 million and it's the number going to keep going up right now.

[367] So that's a big problem for Chinese regime.

[368] But the thing is, even that they don't allow North Korean women to stay there.

[369] They catch us.

[370] And they send us back to North Korea.

[371] Last month, China repatriated 50 North Korean de facto is back to North Korea.

[372] It's sending them our suits.

[373] Literally, they are sending them to death camp.

[374] But the Chinese regime still do catch us and send us back because they think we are a post -a -old.

[375] causing a threat to the regime, and they don't want the regime to collapse.

[376] So they are catching all the de factoes, but the human traffickers sees the opportunity here, because we are so vulnerable, right?

[377] We are running away from Chinese authority.

[378] So even they rape us and kid us.

[379] The last place that we are going to go is going to police and then report on them.

[380] Why did they think that women coming over from North Korea are going to somehow how to collapse the empire?

[381] Because that's what Kim Jong -un believes.

[382] He thinks they're going to collapse through the defections.

[383] Through the defectors.

[384] So after Kim Jong came into power, he literally, the country cannot afford the electricity.

[385] Proble electrify the fence entire border.

[386] Not only that putting the machine guns with the guards, have a shoot -to -kill order.

[387] Whoever crosses, they don't even bother this ask you stop.

[388] They shoot you right there.

[389] And not only that, he buried a land, mines on top of that so there's electric fence and then there's guards shooting to kill and then past that there's landmines yeah entire country became a concentration camp entire country when did they start putting the landmines in a few years ago so this is after you had already escaped yeah now there's no you can you don't see north can defect escaping from north korea anymore it's impossible to escape at this point um one of the more horrific thing that um jordan and you discussed was you seeing your mother raped and that your mother sacrificed herself because they wanted you yeah and this is the first time you had ever even seen what sex was so i didn't even know that was sex i did not know even that was rape because we didn't have the vocabulary in north korea so in north korea there's no word for stress because there's no word for stress because how can you be stressed in the socialist paradise so there's no word of trauma there's no word of depression because you cannot be simply depressed in socialist paradise there's no word for liberty there's no word for human rights there's no word for rape or even sex so I just thought something I was seen was horrible but later they told me that was rape I did not know that was rape but you also said that you never heard the word love yeah no there's no word for love in north korea so your mother never told you she loved you you never told your father you love him yeah none of that so in north korek there's even no word for i so they don't want people to be individualistic right that's the worst thing you can be it's all a collective vision so when north korean and say, I like water, I say, we love water, we love kimchi.

[390] So that's how, when I'm in South Korea, we keep saying, in South Korea, there's difference between we and I. So when you say, I like this, say I, and then, of course, all the North Koreans keep saying, we love this country, and South Koreans get so frustrated that we are keep misusing I and we, and that's how regime controls your minds through language.

[391] It is Georgia -O -N -1984.

[392] double speak why language is so important because it controls your thoughts.

[393] So that's how I got rid of the romantic love.

[394] We don't even know possibly another human can love another human.

[395] Only love that neuroscience know is like a rich and form love that when we describe our feeling towards the leader.

[396] And we don't know that word can be used to describing our feelings to another human.

[397] When Kim Jong -il died and people were crying in the streets and people were sent to prison for not crying enough what it was the strangest thing for us to watch as americans because it was performative where people were performing they were they were they were not really crying they were they were wailing in this very theatrical way to let everyone know that they were complying it's uh your life is on the line people watching you if you don't more enough That's the thing.

[398] If you don't mourn the most extreme high, they're going to send you to prison camp and execute you.

[399] So we are doing it to survive.

[400] Did you see anyone who didn't mourn enough?

[401] No, I mean, it's impossible.

[402] How do you not mourn enough?

[403] How do you not possibly?

[404] Your life generation is depending on you when you mourn.

[405] So everyone knows this?

[406] Of course we all.

[407] And everyone knows it's a threat.

[408] Even babies no. Even babies know.

[409] When you're born in North Korea, you know what it is.

[410] You don't like start questioning.

[411] It's, I mean, the first thing my mom told him as a young girl was not even be care of strangers, be care of, you know, call like none of that.

[412] She would say, be careful of your tongue because that is the most dangerous weapon you got in your body.

[413] Don't even whisper because the birds and mice could hear you.

[414] So that's the first thing you hear from your parents, how dangerous what you say is going to be.

[415] Did you personally see people that you knew get imprisoned because of things that they said?

[416] They just disappear.

[417] Like one of my sister's classmate, her mom when they executed.

[418] And then because they're accusing her to receiving money from the foreign CIA or the South Korean intelligence.

[419] But a month later, they said, oh, it was not a problem.

[420] She was not a spy.

[421] So they brought the family members back out of the concentration camp.

[422] So they killed her for nothing?

[423] And they don't even say sorry to that.

[424] It's like, we don't even know that the concept government can be sorry or they can ever make a mistake.

[425] So how did they find out that she wasn't really a spy?

[426] We just don't know.

[427] Just one day that classmate came out and my sister's classmate came out and then she, they said like her mom was not a spy.

[428] So they got out of the prison camp.

[429] And that's it.

[430] There's nothing, nothing we were, none of that.

[431] And so this was a common thing.

[432] And you just lived in constant fear.

[433] It's like this is the thing.

[434] And I, we are three people sitting here, right?

[435] I'm watching you.

[436] And he, Jamie's watching me. And you're watching somebody else.

[437] So even I'm being a nice person, not going to report on you.

[438] I know Jamie's being watching, watching me. He's not going to report on me. But even if we try to be nice, but he knows he's being watched by somebody to you.

[439] So you're being spied on and you're spying on somebody.

[440] So no escape.

[441] And everybody has to report anything that they find.

[442] Like if you said something negative about the government, I would have to tell on you.

[443] Otherwise, I would get in trouble.

[444] Yeah.

[445] And the other person don't report on you, that person get in trouble.

[446] There's no way out of it.

[447] That's how they create distrust.

[448] Like one thing I shocked me when I came to the West, like how trust exists.

[449] In North Korea, there's a saying, like, don't even trust your own back.

[450] Because you can, you don't know who is a spy.

[451] You don't know who is listening, who is watching.

[452] And people just disappear.

[453] Yeah, just disappear.

[454] And public executions happens in a stadium next to market where most people go.

[455] And in North School, there's no concept of minor, right?

[456] There's no concept like minors cannot do labor.

[457] Like, that's another thing.

[458] As a child is seven years old, you go to school, you work.

[459] You go to working in a dam construction in the farm.

[460] And you are mining, and therefore, when there's public execution happens, you are on the front line because you are the shortest.

[461] this day line of five, six years old in the beginning and then like the age going to sit like all it's mandatory to attend so it's mandatory to attend public executions and how do they kill the people after Kim Jong -un got in power he became more brutal how he kills people he used this the air like a missile that shoot down the airplane that kind of powerful weapon so when he kills people they blow up into peace like they literally become just red pieces and fireworks that's how it that's what I hear from now nowadays executions but my time was more the guard standing and shoot you here here and three times nine shots and then if body becomes like a world world world and then like they just put in the luggage and take it out but nowadays I heard they are using way more they they are started hanging too before my time was just execution But Kim Jong -un said, even the bullets, we don't want to waste on this, like, trash.

[462] They call us trash, and so just hang them or, like, stone to death.

[463] So bring the people around the town and hit them with the rocks until they die.

[464] So the people in the town would contribute to the execution.

[465] They would be the ones throwing the rocks.

[466] Yeah.

[467] Otherwise, you get punished.

[468] You have to.

[469] And what are the crimes that you could be sentenced to death for?

[470] is as little as So in North Korea Every room has to have a portrait of Kim's And the inspector comes out of nowhere in the middle of night And then touch the portraits if they see any dust They say your world is not high enough And then you can get executed And send a prison camp Three generation of your family So if the picture is dusty you get executed Yeah and if your house get on fire The first thing is not you run with your family or your children or parents.

[471] You have to protect the portraits with your life.

[472] Otherwise, the three generations gets punished for that.

[473] Even murderers, rapists, North Korea don't exist.

[474] We don't even know what rape is.

[475] I mean, they have pleasure squat.

[476] Every year, they go around the country, pick up the virgin girls, bring them back to Pyongyang, make them call the satisfactory groups, train them to become sex machines.

[477] Every year they do that.

[478] So these officials, now the guy who's in the second, and power in North Korea.

[479] His name is Charyong He.

[480] He has his own pleasure squad, and he takes entire teeth out of these girls.

[481] So when they kiss him down there, he has more pleasure.

[482] So this thing is not a crime in North Korea.

[483] Like literally, when women walk down, if the guys stand you and rape you, you cannot go to police, you got raped.

[484] It's your fault.

[485] So this country, I mean, every wife's get beaten by a husband in North Korea.

[486] This is not a crime, But if there's a newspaper, there's a portrait of Kim Jong -un, right?

[487] You didn't see the front page.

[488] In the back page, you ripped it by mistake.

[489] That's how you get executed.

[490] That is what we call crime in North Korea.

[491] Wow.

[492] Having escaped that and looking back on it now and knowing that it exists right now, what can be done?

[493] What could the rest of the world do?

[494] I mean, North Korea has nuclear weapons.

[495] it's uh they have a powerful military yeah what can the rest of the world do to stop this from happening because it seems like this is horrific it's a it's a form of genocide and it's happening right now it's a holocaust in 2014 UN conducted this investigation for a year and the conclusion was the only resemblance that we find in our history what is happening to nursing people is a holocaust so holocaust is happening again And, of course, we're denying it again.

[496] When it was Holocaust, it was happening.

[497] A lot of people said, how is that possible?

[498] It's so hard to believe that.

[499] And North Korea, using this concentration camp, these people do the biology test.

[500] They put them in the gas chambers.

[501] Right now, they do that.

[502] A biology test?

[503] Of course.

[504] What's the biology test?

[505] They test a lot of the weapons, biology weapons.

[506] So they, you know, keep trying to, they are North Korea's, It spends entire their GDP on developing nukes and weaponaries.

[507] I mean, they are the biggest provider to the Middle East.

[508] When there's a world, they buy missiles from North Koreans.

[509] North Korea makes money by selling as, I mean, the crystal meth and opium.

[510] That's how Kim Jong makes money in hacking, right?

[511] He steals a lot of Bitcoin and get up banks, like ATM machines.

[512] That's how he makes money.

[513] Because they don't export anything other than drugs and weapons and hacking.

[514] and human trafficking.

[515] So they experiment on their own people to find out that these biological weapons were?

[516] Yeah.

[517] And also they need a lot of concentration like prisoners because they have to clean the nuclear debris.

[518] Because they do a lot of tests.

[519] So since 2017, North Korea conducted almost 30 missile tests.

[520] If the one test missile costs to feed 25 million the entire year.

[521] So if he chose to do four, like, less test, nobody had to die in North Korea from starvation.

[522] And right now, Kim Jong recently admits that 11 million North Koreans are severely malnourished, and he's proud to say that.

[523] And he's not even, like, he's not even, like, like, in the past.

[524] Like, yeah, they are starving.

[525] And he's fat.

[526] Oh, yeah.

[527] That's his problem, being too fat.

[528] Wow.

[529] So they're forced to clean up nuclear waste from these.

[530] Tests sites?

[531] And, of course, they die from radiation.

[532] They don't last three months.

[533] Normal life expectancy when you go to concentration camp is three months.

[534] Three months.

[535] Yeah.

[536] So they need a lot of those people.

[537] And they just use those people for fodder.

[538] Yeah.

[539] How many people are, do they know how many people are in these concentration camps?

[540] Nobody knows exactly, but several hundred thousand of them.

[541] But there's also prison camps.

[542] Consentureen camps.

[543] prison camps and labor camps And some people are born into these camps Yeah, those are people in the concentration camps And they don't even get to know the name of Kimmer -sung or Kim Jong -un They're too to below the level They don't even bother to tell them who's the leader of the country is And what did someone in their family do That would make them get put into these concentration camps?

[544] So they find out later their great -great -grandfather was working with the Japanese for like a week when the Japan was colonizing or the Korean was starting they were talking to American soldiers or they were their like cousins of nephews of like some in -law was a Christian because North Korea's number one Christian persecution country because they copied the Bible right they said oh Kim Il -sung loves us so much he's a God he gave us his son Kim Jong -eer and he dies but he spills with us all the time that's why they can read my thoughts knows how much hair I have and that's how so when you become a god you need to explain you don't need to make sense so they essentially use the story of the Bible for Kim Jong -il and Kim Jong -il yeah they copy the Bible exactly copy the Bible wow that's why like I believe that Kim's was reading my mind and if the people believe in the head was like that just knows what you're thinking why do you think is surprising the North Koreans believe that.

[545] So someone's great -grandfather speaking to the Japanese would be the reason why they would be raised in a concentration camp and never even be told the name of the leaders.

[546] Yeah.

[547] And that's happening right now.

[548] It's been happening for the last almost 80 years.

[549] Yeah, this has been going on and as you just ask what can we be done.

[550] Kim Jong -un cannot last even one week without Chinese regime support.

[551] The only reason the regime is is because of Chinese Communist Party.

[552] How do you test missile without oil?

[553] Kim Jong -un cannot even drive his bench in Pyongyang.

[554] China refused to not helping the regime.

[555] They keep helping Kim Jong -un.

[556] Keep sending the oil.

[557] Even last year, the New York Times covered the ship oil, the ship with full of gas oil, going to North Korea.

[558] So Kim Jong could test missiles, even amid the pandemic.

[559] Why does China support North Korea?

[560] I really, really, I think one is they don't want that democracy come to next door, right?

[561] That South Korea, Japan, America is all right next to North Korea geographically.

[562] And North Korea is like this almost like a buffer zone for them, for this Western movement coming into their country.

[563] And also they think of North Korea more like Tibet or Xinjiang.

[564] If they let North Korea go, then Xinjiang people are going to want to go.

[565] Tibetans are going to be independent.

[566] Hong Kongs want to be independent.

[567] So they cannot give up any one of them.

[568] So because of the stability and symbolic thing for the Chinese people within the country wants to be independent.

[569] So they want to maintain North Korea forever.

[570] And Mao said that relationship between China and North Korea is that the relationship between your lips and the teeth.

[571] Without lips, you cannot really close your mouth and eat.

[572] without your teeth you cannot chew so you need each other to survive and that's how Mao's son died to Korean were by defending communist party in the north that's how Mao lost his son that's how he believed that they need North Korea and so the the Chinese Communist Party today shares a sentiment and they're they're using it strategically yeah they run the dictatorship in North Korea they run the whole thing and that's the thing like We have not been serving North Korea because we just never named the accountability.

[573] Who is responsible for this crisis?

[574] That is China.

[575] And, of course, in America, mainstream, they do not want to call out North Korea, China, to committing genocide.

[576] That's why I've been having so many attacks from Marxist, communist, and Maoist, and Leninist, all these people.

[577] And North Korea is almost this last country that holds ideas.

[578] called Socialism.

[579] So it's a very symbolic country.

[580] So a lot of empathizers of communism and anti -Western civilization people they defend North Korea like here.

[581] But do they, when they speak of it, like the Chinese Communist Party, when they speak of North Korea, do they have a distorted image that they project of what it's like in North Korea?

[582] Do they have a, do they change the narrative?

[583] Do they have a story of North Korea that's false, that makes it seem like North Korea is a nice place?

[584] No, they know exactly what's going on.

[585] They know.

[586] Even Chinese people know.

[587] So there's no defending it?

[588] No, no. Even Chinese people see it, like when North Koreans get captured, Chinese is still better nice than North Korean guards.

[589] They like handcuff off, sort of eye blinds us, but North Koreans come and put the wire in between.

[590] here in between your bones so connecting all the prisoners together so they cannot run like cows they put a wire like through their collarbone yeah so they they prevent us to escape so why we're in china that's when the outsider's watching but imagine what they're going to do inside the country when there's no camera so this is what china does to north koreans the china catches us and give us to North Korean guards, and they watch it.

[591] And they watch them do that.

[592] And then they even horrified, but of course, they don't do anything about it.

[593] There's like, you don't have to go that far, but of course, North Koreans do not accepting defection, right?

[594] That's why we are defectors.

[595] We are not refugees.

[596] When we escape, we defy the ideology.

[597] Yes.

[598] That's why this is North Koreans are not just refugees.

[599] They are political prisoners.

[600] They are political refugees.

[601] They should be covered by Geneva Convention and international law.

[602] So China catching a sentence back That is a crime against humanity They're breaking the international law But no one will punish them for that And nobody going to talk about even here in the West Right why I mean there's a Michelle Obama Right Nobel Peace Prize giving the girls Like captured by ISIS Or like Taliban like Malala Michelle Obama stands up for the girls who are captured by ISIS and Boko Haram Who is standing up for North America?

[603] Korean girls being captured and raped in China right now.

[604] There are 300 ,000 North Koreans right now when we are speaking in China and are sexual slaves.

[605] 300 ,000.

[606] Yeah.

[607] And most of them are women and girls.

[608] China has incredible power.

[609] Yeah.

[610] And when you see the power that China has and that they're supporting North Korea and that there's no pushback from America.

[611] Yeah.

[612] What does that feel like to you when you see this, knowing what you went through?

[613] And not only knowing what you went through, but the fact that you talk about this openly, you talked about it in your book that came out in 2015.

[614] Yeah.

[615] And you speak about it as often as possible.

[616] But yet, there's not a lot of support from, especially from political leaders.

[617] Yeah.

[618] There's no one is stepping up to say your story.

[619] Yeah.

[620] It's total hypocrisy.

[621] It's, I mean, all these people in America talk about how slavery is wrong.

[622] I agree slavery is the worst thing that we can do to another human being.

[623] But why some slavery matters over some other slavery, right?

[624] Like, I mean, all these corporations talking about how they do not support the bigotry and racism and slavery.

[625] It's happening right now in China, and they have business with China.

[626] And they don't say anything about it.

[627] No, like, this is the thing.

[628] When Hulu made a movie about this thing.

[629] No, about assassinations, about Kim Jong -nam's assassination, three years ago in Malaysia.

[630] Remember, the Kim Jong -un's half -brother got...

[631] Yes.

[632] So they made that movie Hulu was supporting to make that movie.

[633] He killed his half -brother and someone else, too, right?

[634] And his uncle.

[635] His uncle.

[636] Yeah.

[637] So his brother is more shocking because he got killed in the international territory.

[638] In a VX nerve, the poison.

[639] And they made a movie.

[640] But when the Hulu was bought by Disney, Disney wanted Hulu to drop that movie.

[641] So that movie couldn't be shown in Hulu.

[642] Because it would offend China.

[643] Yes.

[644] Why there is not even one single movie coming out of Hollywood about North Korean people suffering.

[645] They made about Congo genus.

[646] They made all about genocide, not about North Korea.

[647] That is a strange hypocrisy, isn't it?

[648] Of course it is.

[649] And it's about money, right?

[650] Absolutely.

[651] It's all about money.

[652] All these people talking about justice, what they care about.

[653] I mean, none of them do.

[654] when in his real life.

[655] And this is not, these are not secret stories.

[656] It's not, I mean, so this is the thing.

[657] Oh, don't make it up.

[658] And Kim Jong -un kills his uncle, right?

[659] That was on the national newspaper.

[660] He kills his half -brother.

[661] And look, remember the order one year, the American 21 -year student?

[662] Yes.

[663] He was accused to stealing the banner.

[664] He was brain dead.

[665] By the time he got to America, he was beaten to death, right?

[666] Yeah, and he was sentenced to for 15 years.

[667] in the labor camp for trying to steal the banner.

[668] But this is a country that did to white American mayor to the most powerful country citizen.

[669] Imagine what they're going to do to their own citizen.

[670] You can't even imagine what they do to their own citizen.

[671] So North Korea, this nationalism is to the highest.

[672] So when North Korean go to China, get raped, and we get pregnant, when we go back North Korea, the guards kick our belly until baby dies.

[673] They don't let the baby leave.

[674] They, yeah, it's, it's unbelievable.

[675] This is happening in 21st century and still, well, we somehow don't talk about it.

[676] Not just don't talk about it, but it keeps going, generation after generation.

[677] Yeah.

[678] I mean, if it's been happening like this for more than 80 years, what's going to stop it from happening for another 80 years?

[679] And if people are quiet, nothing.

[680] It's going to keep going.

[681] And this is what is to me, it's an answer.

[682] activists, right?

[683] I'm a dissent.

[684] I'm fighting against this regime.

[685] We know when Jamar Khashoggi get cared in Saudi Saudi consulate, there's no accountability for the dictator, right?

[686] Saudi prince didn't get anything.

[687] When Kim Jong -un killed his hot brother in Malaysia, nothing, there's no accountability that we are asking of these people.

[688] So standing up fighting, it doesn't incentivize people anymore, right?

[689] So you don't see justice being served.

[690] and I think that is why it's so hard to fight now because people think justice is there but I don't think it is that it's something I don't see in real life when you actually fight against injustice it's most likely you're going to be just like get cared and nobody cares and just keep moving on what can be done I mean if the United States and the relationship the United States has with China they're unwilling to do anything or even speak out about it.

[691] When they talk about the problems of the world, North Korea is rarely discussed.

[692] And the horrific crimes of the North Korean regime against their own people rarely discussed by politicians.

[693] They'll talk about Afghanistan.

[694] They'll talk about Iraq.

[695] They'll talk about all the problems we have with Iran.

[696] They don't talk about what's going on right now.

[697] What you're describing in North Korea with these concentration camps and these people, they don't talk about these things.

[698] Yeah.

[699] what can be done I think by talk I think this is a beauty about living in democracy like when I go to Whole Foods coming from North Korea I'm shocked by how many hand washing is like by I mean all about like environment friendly products right and that means a lot of people want to support this cause right that they want I mean look at how many vegan restaurants are popping up in New York.

[700] So a lot of people demand that now.

[701] So if individuals are being educated on what is happening and who is actually responsible for supporting North Korean regime and how hard it is for the people who are being oppressed, if they start demanding the politicians and the world leaders and companies to be conscious and act, I think that is at this point my only hope is individuals.

[702] I have stopped trying to talking to UN.

[703] I don't even give talks anymore at the UN.

[704] Did you give talks in the past?

[705] What was the response?

[706] They, in Geneva, in September, the Human Rights General Assembly meeting, how dumb of them.

[707] They literally put me alone to right next to North Korean delegation team because geographically you are somewhat close.

[708] So these five guys from North Korean delegation team are sweating at me. And the UN, that's what they do.

[709] That's how dumb they are.

[710] They sat them next to you.

[711] Yeah.

[712] They put me right next to North Korean delegation team.

[713] No protection No I was so scared that's going to like hotel him that night So I don't have like Anybody protecting me So I have tried of course But at the UN Who decides The human rights violators Chinese and Putin And Saudis do They decide Who actually violates Human rights That's crazy Yeah So I have to go ask Chinese Who actually committing This crime And complain of course They're not going to Listen to me so what is the even point of the UN for this right and of course i mean i met nance pelosi i made a lot of politicians and on surface like oh that's really horrible let me think about what can i do but of course this is not what they care they care about the systemic oppression that is happening in america more they care about what's going to get them votes yeah and what's popular what's what's on people's minds right now and whatever the narrative is they're currently pushing yeah it's going to allow them to get elected again.

[714] Yeah.

[715] It's all about their own interest.

[716] So when you spoke at the UN, what was the reception like?

[717] Oh, they are saying like this is the West propaganda trying to interfere other people's autonomy.

[718] In North Korea, the state of their own.

[719] You should not interfere the other people's affairs.

[720] That's like still to this day Chinese narrative, right?

[721] They don't ask us of what we are doing to Xinjiang Uyghurs or Falun Gong or like organ trafficking all of that.

[722] It's our own business.

[723] Organ trafficking.

[724] Yeah.

[725] So when North Koreans go to China we're ending up like several different sources.

[726] Worst cases they take us and take our organs out and suddenly we die.

[727] Like which organs?

[728] Everybody, your eyes, hearts, lungs, liver, liver, all of it.

[729] They sell them.

[730] Of course, in China, you order the organ it gets to you within three hours.

[731] How is it how somebody dies miraculously in three hours for you?

[732] Like, China is, do you know how many hospitals are being built for the organ transfer in China?

[733] How many?

[734] This is the biggest, like, revenue right now being built in China.

[735] So do people from other countries go to China for organ replacements?

[736] Yeah.

[737] A lot of the Middle East and those countries go to China to get the origin.

[738] So they just turn a blind eye to it?

[739] Yeah.

[740] They don't think about the origin of the actual organs.

[741] cells.

[742] Yeah.

[743] They just go.

[744] Get it.

[745] Oh, I need a lung replacement and China says, well, if you go here we can get it for you.

[746] Yeah.

[747] And they go and then they kill someone and take their lungs.

[748] Yeah.

[749] It became a biggest now, like a new industry that is rising in China.

[750] It's an organ transfer.

[751] Those people are generally North Koreans?

[752] Those are a lot of them were Falun Gong, practitioners in China.

[753] Okay.

[754] Uyghurs?

[755] Yeah.

[756] Now the Uyghurs.

[757] But Falun Gong is different, like peaceful religion they were wanted.

[758] Falun Gong, Uyghurs, and not as much Tibetans, but more like Xinjiang now with the Falun Gong and North Koreans.

[759] And so they have them in some prisons somewhere, and they feed them and just wait for someone to come along that needs their organs and they kill them.

[760] Yeah.

[761] Wow.

[762] Yeah.

[763] And this is proven?

[764] It's, I mean, a lot of other things are proven because when these people die, how do we ask them?

[765] How did you die?

[766] They are dead.

[767] So that is a lot of Falun Gong survivors do testimony.

[768] They have told about this.

[769] It's very well -known.

[770] Like, Jamie cannot get up.

[771] It's a very, you ain't even condemned China for that.

[772] Even they couldn't like turn the eyes blind on it.

[773] It was too evidence.

[774] And another thing, North Koreans go is a prostitution, brothers, right?

[775] And this girls resist.

[776] So what they do?

[777] They give them drugs.

[778] So they make them become drug addict.

[779] So now they all.

[780] they want drug.

[781] So that's how they go to brothers.

[782] And then this man I said in this villages cannot afford women in these little towns.

[783] So they buy one girl and they rotate the entire man in that in that town.

[784] And then like me, some of them just being sold like my mom was sourced for just like mentally retarded family, the farmer's family.

[785] And we go became a free labor for them and being a sex slave.

[786] and and then being a sex slave for a mentally retarded family yeah i mean because if they're normal and they wouldn't they can find wives they all the like mentally retarded and not functioning people those people cannot find wives so that's why we're ending up in the most horrible places we don't just go and like fall in love and meeting some normal person so when you were 13 you escaped when tell us what it was like first of all where did you escape to you escaped to China yeah and how did you get across it was a frozen river in March 20 March in the end of March in 2007 so you travel on the frozen river yeah and we luckily then get shot by the cars and when we got into the other side of the river bank of China that's my mom got raped and then they took us in a house and they were like turning me around like a slave market right they checked my teeth and my body structure and somehow being virgin is very precious in china so they sold my mom for around $65 and it's 21st century and they sold me less than $300 and they sold us separately but the thing is they didn't even try to force us They were asking, if you don't want to be sold, you can go back to North Korea, right?

[787] And even North Korean regime doesn't punish me. I couldn't find food to eat.

[788] I was going to die anyway.

[789] Even if the regime doesn't kill me, the starvation was going to kill me. And for the first time, I remember that night in the traffickers' house, I saw a trash can.

[790] And I did not know what it was.

[791] So I asked this lady, like, what is it?

[792] that and then like one thing it's oh that's a trash like what is trash oh the things that you don't need to throw there like he's not throw a bin away and it's like what do you mean you have things to throw away because we never needed a trash bin in north korea and we had nothing to throw even these hairs it comes down we don't have like heating like that we have to start the fire and starting fire takes the paper is very precious so we burn like hair there to try to start the fire like literally nothing was thrown away in that kind of human poop right yeah I mean that's a thing that regime cannot have a fertilizer they don't even have the technology to have the fertilizer so they demand us to bring the poop and as a kid you go to school the teachers beat you and then go home and look for poop so I would go on the streets and looking if anywhere like a dog pooped or somewhere of course like all those dogs are poops gone so finding a But when you don't eat much, you don't poop like in North Korea, like a few times a month.

[793] It's a very precious thing, yeah, of course.

[794] A few times a month.

[795] Yeah.

[796] And it becomes very precious, and you have to give it over to the regime.

[797] Yeah.

[798] So that's nothing.

[799] It's being wasted in the regime.

[800] So do they have toilets or do you go to the bathroom in outhouses?

[801] Oh, we have all outhouses, like the digging a hole.

[802] But we have to lock it because some people come and steal it.

[803] They come to steal the poop.

[804] Yeah, it's a garbage.

[805] government quota you get punished if you don't bring poop everything is punishment in that country so how much what is the quota like how much poop do you have to give them so sometimes per family they say one ton how do you find that a ton yeah so 2 ,000 pounds i do the kilogram so like 1 000 kilograms so yeah it's about right yeah yeah yeah so per family or they give you the kora so that's per year yeah And then we have to bring them in usually January.

[806] So because farming starts around March.

[807] So they have to, you know, in like January, they collect them and pile them up.

[808] And then they started bearing it.

[809] And then when the doll happens and they started farming process in the spring.

[810] And even then, you don't get any of the food that they're growing.

[811] No, it's a collective farm.

[812] So they take the 98 % of the food to the regime.

[813] And then that 2 % is spread among the food.

[814] elites who's running the farm.

[815] So you work entire year in the collective farm.

[816] You get nothing from it.

[817] There's also cannibalism.

[818] How does that happen?

[819] It's it really like people said, oh, don't dehumanize people of North Korea.

[820] And like because they say, oh, just say, tell us a nice things, right?

[821] Like, that's just too much for us to handle.

[822] And like, well, I just, this is a thing.

[823] like in there's like people go to black market you sell meat people don't ask what meat it is we don't ask it's like pork or like it's a rabbit we don't and we just sometimes we go find a very very cheap meat and we don't ask and luckily I was to afford to afford the meat I didn't get to eat them a lot of children just disappear but the thing is There's no evidence.

[824] Everybody dies and on some corner get drawn.

[825] So we go to river to bathe.

[826] We only bathe a few times a year.

[827] Winter time we don't even bathe.

[828] And during the winter, we have to go to wash our clothes.

[829] So we make a small hole in the river.

[830] And sometimes it's just falling and sleep through and you die like that.

[831] So it's just so easy to murder is not a thing.

[832] So it's so many cause killing you.

[833] So some people, you lose your children.

[834] we just don't even know what killed it and nobody bothered to go out and find it for you so many people die so that's why easy to sell the human meat so either they're killing the children or they'll find them dead and then just cook their meat and sell it yeah this is common so when you escape to China what is the process like when you're in China before how How did you, how did you event, you eventually got to South Korea.

[835] Yeah.

[836] How long were you in China for?

[837] Almost two years.

[838] And what was that like?

[839] What was the process like?

[840] Well, living in two years of China, I feel like I lived thousand years on this earth.

[841] I feel like very old.

[842] Yeah, I remember after there for six months one day.

[843] I was walking alone and then it's like, I literally felt like I lived thousand years, right?

[844] Like making it one day was such a struggle.

[845] Whenever you let one day leave, you think like, oh my God, I made one more day on Earth.

[846] In China?

[847] Yeah.

[848] So it was that hard in China.

[849] What was so hard about it?

[850] Because one, you don't know when you're going to be arrested.

[851] So you always put your shoes on tight, shoe races.

[852] And whenever you get into some indoor, you look for the place to run.

[853] If you are somebody's house, you see all the checked doors, where can I run?

[854] Which route do I run?

[855] when you even sleep you know how to run right you get ready to run from the police and that is a constant threat and and of course you raped every single day by these human traffickers and they even come follow you to bathroom there's no human dignity in it they beat you and they i mean you're not your own person and they the common things that they tell us that you our lives are even not valuable like pigs Because even they kill us, they know that we cannot go to police.

[856] How did you escape from all that?

[857] This is, so the man who bought me, he was very impressed because by then I went through two human traffickers prior me. So by the third human trafficker, nobody's virgin.

[858] They all got raped.

[859] So he was Han Chinese and couldn't believe that I made it to him as a virgin.

[860] because the first trafficker my mom covered second trafficker i felt like hair i'd literally lose my mind and thankfully he had his like mistress in the next room so i didn't get raped even he tried so hard i didn't so by the third time han chinese i always tried to kill myself and then he said oh if you become my mistress i'm gonna help you to get your family to you but before that he showed me the phone he had because I never seen a phone in my life as North Korean and he showed me oh this phone can take pictures and look at these pictures I took and you know one one picture was I saw as my mom in it and I started telling that's like my mom my mom and that's how he knew that I had that the woman that he saw was my mom and obviously he raped or two so he said if I become his mistress he's gonna get me help me my with my family so he took my virginie he raped me and thankfully he did help me he brought my mom back from a farmer that he sold and he brought my sick father from north korea that's how i brought my parents back to me how did you escape from him two after almost two years he became a gambling addict he was a big gambler he's spending all his money and somehow this evil man was letting me go because he couldn't even afford to give me food at that point he was broke.

[861] So he said, like, I'm letting you go.

[862] And in some ways, in his most evil way, he loved me. So after two years, I was let go, and then I went to this chat room.

[863] So this is another thing.

[864] A lot of North Korean girls capturing these chat rooms where we do body cams.

[865] Clients are South Koreans.

[866] So we chat, and then we show our body.

[867] But North Korean women, we choose that right because it's better than being touched by men in person right you're not raped in person so this is all on the internet with web cameras yeah that's number one thing the north korean women do in china or this nightlife so in that room i heard about something called south korea for the person because the clients are south koreans you didn't know what south korea was i knew the different name like different name but i knew that country was colonized by americans i heard that in south Korea, the South Korea was very corrupt capitalists and raped by American soldiers every day and they are like, kids cannot go to school and they all want to come to North Korea.

[868] That's what you learned from North Korea.

[869] Oh, yeah, that's what I thought.

[870] Wow, they all want to go to North Korea.

[871] Yeah, they all want to come to North Korea.

[872] The entire humanity wants to be like North Korea, so we are so fortunate.

[873] They tell us that we have nothing to envy in this world.

[874] Wow.

[875] Yeah.

[876] So you find out about South Korea from these chat rooms and you start to get a different idea of what South Korea must be like.

[877] Yeah.

[878] And we met this defector lady in that chat room.

[879] She told me she knows some missionaries.

[880] And if we become Christians, they're going to help us to go to South Korea and be free.

[881] And that's when I heard like free for the first time.

[882] I asked like, what do you mean free?

[883] And she said, oh, you can watch TV and you can wear jeans.

[884] and nobody can arrest you for that in South Korea.

[885] So that's what I thought about freedom.

[886] Watching TV and wearing jeans, that's what you thought of freedom.

[887] It was never like freedom of speech or none of that.

[888] I was like, oh, that's cool.

[889] I can wear jeans.

[890] Because I was a teenage girl.

[891] I wanted jeans.

[892] And in North Korea, you get sent to prison camp for that.

[893] You get sent to prison camp for wearing jeans.

[894] Yeah, it's just a joke for Westerners that North Korea and even haircut is, like, ordered by the regime.

[895] The only thing that North Koreans allowed to do that in that country fully is breathing.

[896] Everything else is controlled.

[897] What we wear, what we watch, what we listen to, how we dance, what hair could that we get.

[898] Every single thing is controlled by the regime.

[899] So you're working in these chat rooms and you meet this woman and she says you just have to become a Christian?

[900] No, we have to go to shelter that Christian.

[901] had.

[902] So we have to go and their study Bible and we have to prove our faith to them.

[903] Then they're going to rescue us.

[904] That was a condition to be rescued by Christians.

[905] So it's a Christian missionary from South Korea.

[906] Yeah.

[907] And so did you have to go to South Korea in order to prove yourself to them?

[908] Or did they do this all through online?

[909] No, we couldn't go South Korea obviously.

[910] So they had a shelter in China and somehow, hidden so we went to their shelter and then we joined them as a group and studied the bible every day so we would go fasting i mean we've been started all our lives but they say you know god provides so you go fast you study bible you memorize verses they come test to you and we pray together and then once they think we are actually christians then they tell you how to go to south korea how long do that take several months and but when you're so desperate, right?

[911] Like, I'm going to believe in rocks if somebody asks me to believe in.

[912] Like, you believe in anything, literally.

[913] So, and it was so easy, like, North Korea regime was Bible.

[914] Like, I was like, what the heck this thing called Jesus and God?

[915] And, like, North Koreans, like, don't worry, baby.

[916] Just, like, plug God to give me your song and Jesus to give them here.

[917] And perfectly made sense.

[918] It's like, God loves us so much, gave us his son.

[919] He's there to protect us.

[920] We got to suffer and go to paradise with him later in life.

[921] So I did become a Christian.

[922] So it made the same sense to you because it was so similar to the story that they taught you in North Korea.

[923] Exactly.

[924] The logic was so similar.

[925] So you became a Christian?

[926] Yeah.

[927] And several months of studying the Bible.

[928] Yeah.

[929] And then they eventually got you to South Korea.

[930] They told us how to go.

[931] How did you do that?

[932] Which was literally walking across the Gobi Desert into Mongolia from China.

[933] You walked?

[934] Yeah.

[935] So they gave us one compass.

[936] We had even toddler in our group.

[937] We had one father and his father and the seven ladies and few teenagers.

[938] They told us.

[939] You went by compass.

[940] Yeah.

[941] Did they give you a map?

[942] I mean, you cannot look at the map in the desert.

[943] You don't have GPS.

[944] How do you know?

[945] Nothing tells you if you are going circle or straight or backwards.

[946] That was the horrifying thing about desert.

[947] He said, you look so the same.

[948] Right, right, right.

[949] Nothing tells you what you're doing.

[950] You can just keep going circle all night.

[951] And then, so they told us, go follow the west and the north between in that direction.

[952] And if you cross the eight -wire fences, hopefully that's going to be Mongolia.

[953] Hopefully.

[954] And then you find the Mongolian soldiers and tell them that you want to go to South Korea, not North Korea.

[955] So that means so dangerous, the chances of you making in that desert is not even like, two, three percent, right?

[956] Like, in 90, 80 percent of time, you're going to fail.

[957] So they cannot lead us there.

[958] It's random luck.

[959] That's why they believe that God is going to show us a miracle.

[960] How long did it take you to walk from the Gobi Desert?

[961] It was just only one day.

[962] One day.

[963] But we chose that in February 2009 after Beijing Olympic.

[964] And in the frozen Gobi Desert, it's like minus 40 degrees.

[965] So the soldiers is thinking nobody's crazy enough to cross right now in this freezing time.

[966] So that's how you can do it?

[967] That security is lower.

[968] Other times, they're going to shoot you.

[969] Because in that desert, nobody knows if you got killed or not.

[970] So who would be shooting you?

[971] Chinese or the Mongolians, both of them can just shoot you.

[972] They would just shoot anybody walking through the desert.

[973] It's called a shoot -to -order.

[974] It's like a shoot -to -kill order.

[975] So they don't, like, bother, ask who you are, just going to shoot them right there and kill them.

[976] So we don't even have ID, none of that.

[977] So we chose a time it was frozen.

[978] and court, and even guards don't want to come out and look around.

[979] So we, from walking from Chinese side, but they took us to the border of China, inner Mongolia, which was still China.

[980] From that border, we started walking towards Mongolia.

[981] And the entire day of walking, we got there.

[982] So miraculously, we didn't die from the court.

[983] Did you bring food?

[984] Did you bring water?

[985] What did you bring with you when you were walking?

[986] Like in minus 40 degrees, you cannot even stand still for three seconds.

[987] Like if you stand still from 10 seconds, you're going to die right there.

[988] You're going to get a heart attack, frozen to death.

[989] So you don't even need to eat.

[990] You just have to, only thing I remember was moving, moving, moving.

[991] Keep going.

[992] Keep moving.

[993] Whatever I was doing, I had to keep moving.

[994] Otherwise, you get very, like, you don't get enough oxygen.

[995] So very, like, hazy and not clear.

[996] You get very sleepy.

[997] That's the thing, like, dying from cold wasn't bad as, like, I thought.

[998] It was just, you become very numb.

[999] and you don't really desensitized and you become very, very sleepy and that's when you know we are dying in that court.

[1000] How many people were with you?

[1001] We had one baby and seven people and the toughest thing is when we were going across China we had to give him sleeping pairs because he would cry and he doesn't speak Chinese.

[1002] But in the desert he had to be wake up because he's going to die frozen to death in the desert.

[1003] So this baby keep falling asleep.

[1004] So we had to keep shaking our passing around between us and he made it eventually so he has to stay awake because if he if he falls asleep the cold will kill him oh yeah of course so but he's not walking right you're carrying him he's a total he cannot walk his fears but he still needs to be awake so we had to keep like shaking him and like massage his feet and hands and shaking up and so he could be like conscious and up because he was keep falling asleep What kind of clothes are you guys wearing?

[1005] Well, we didn't have gloves.

[1006] We didn't have any...

[1007] You didn't have gloves.

[1008] Four degrees below zero.

[1009] Yeah.

[1010] So my mom didn't even have like shoes at that point.

[1011] So she eventually borrowed the shoes from a guy and rubbed it so big.

[1012] And I was like just wear a thin coat.

[1013] And somehow that's why I guess we needed a miracle.

[1014] That's why we had to pray.

[1015] I don't know.

[1016] It's a very low chance making it.

[1017] So nobody not escaping.

[1018] through Mongolia anymore.

[1019] So you walk through Mongolia, it takes you 24 hours?

[1020] Just roughly one day, I think we took, yeah.

[1021] And then what happens when you get to the other side?

[1022] We didn't get to the other side.

[1023] One just suddenly in the morning, the guards with the guns coming at you and asking to put your hands up.

[1024] So we were like lifting our hands up, right?

[1025] And then they were like saying they're going to send us to China and then back to North Korea to get killed.

[1026] So North Koreans said very many escape we bring the laser and poisons with us to try to kill ourselves.

[1027] Because, I mean, going to North Korea get killed is way worse than killing ourselves right there.

[1028] So we...

[1029] So you brought poison with you to kill yourself?

[1030] And a laser, yeah.

[1031] And a laser?

[1032] Mm -hmm.

[1033] What kind of laser?

[1034] Very, very thin laser.

[1035] That's like China only North Korea has said it.

[1036] Like, very, very thin laser.

[1037] Oh, razor?

[1038] Like blade, yeah.

[1039] Blade, metal.

[1040] Yeah, metal.

[1041] Yeah.

[1042] Very thin one.

[1043] Yeah.

[1044] Right, right.

[1045] It's razor.

[1046] Oh, razor.

[1047] Yeah.

[1048] hiding the belts like everywhere.

[1049] So to cut your veins.

[1050] Yeah, like right here, like here, it's very easy to cut.

[1051] So we were, this is like what still shaks me is that these Mongolian soldiers didn't have the sense to China, but they want to see how we react.

[1052] So that's what they were playing with us, right?

[1053] For us, it's like a life and death.

[1054] For them, it's like a joke.

[1055] And thankfully, they would not let us kill ourselves.

[1056] So like very last minute, they were still.

[1057] stopped us and turned a car back around to the Mongolian side.

[1058] But the next team that crossed the border got all arrested in Sandback, North Korea.

[1059] But the following team, they were doing that, and Mongolian soldiers went too far.

[1060] So one of my friends, she swallowed the entire sleeping peers to kill herself.

[1061] And then they took her to ER and the revive her, but forever her brain got damaged.

[1062] So this was a joke to them.

[1063] so they thought it was funny to scare the refugees yeah it's funny to see how we fight for our lives it's yeah but thankfully nobody's cheating their route anymore so when they capture you and they threatened to send you to China and then back to North Korea how did how did you get out of it how did I remember was telling my mom like we did everything to survive and it was like because in China in the prisons they even get rid of the buttons everything is all like you cannot swallow to kill yourself right they don't even give you a spoon so that's how prevent a suicide because all the nurses can kill themselves before they go because they know the fate so I know like if I missed the opportunity to kill myself in their car on the way to China we are never going to get the chance by so we were ready to cut and then swallow the thing and that's when they stopped and sometimes they just go too far with it so it's always a joke to them yeah that's we did not know but later when we were leaving mongola that's when they told us actually we didn't mean to send you guys to china like we just do that every time and you arrive here and some people wind up killing themselves anyway yeah so eventually they let you go yeah they did reach out to south korean embassy and then south korean embassy comes, right?

[1064] They interrogate you to make sure that you are actually North Korean.

[1065] So several months in Mongolia, we do different detention centers.

[1066] They move us around and interrogate us.

[1067] And when they confirm that we are North Koreans, that's when they gave us a fake passport.

[1068] And from Ulaanba Tor to South Korea, we flew there.

[1069] And so when they determine that you're North Korean, what are they trying to find out?

[1070] They're trying to find out if you're actually a refugee, if you're a spy.

[1071] Like, what are they trying to find out?

[1072] So in China, there's a Korean ethnic Chinese who were Koreans back then, but they became Chinese, the ethnic Korean.

[1073] So, you know, China has 56 different ethnicity.

[1074] It's a very diverse country, right?

[1075] So one of them are Korean ethnic Chinese.

[1076] So those people try to go to South Korea.

[1077] So they rule out those people and also spy.

[1078] So they rule, everybody's de facto.

[1079] When you escape, you become de facto right away.

[1080] So they rule out the spies and also rule out if you are actually North Korean or ethnic Chinese, ethnic Korean Chinese.

[1081] That's what they try to investigate you.

[1082] And so you finally eventually get to South Korea and then what happens?

[1083] And then what happens?

[1084] I hear about this thing called Freedom.

[1085] and then hear about this country is obsessed with the competition and hard work and studying the vigorous academia that these kids study English when they're in their mother's tummy right and they study like crazy people yeah and then I'm like almost like you know high schooler and they did a placement test on me and I'm like I need to go study with seven years old.

[1086] I don't even know what continents are, right?

[1087] I don't even know what Africa is.

[1088] Right.

[1089] I don't even know what different races.

[1090] I don't even know the map.

[1091] So I'm like blank -paced, like adult baby.

[1092] Mm, adult baby.

[1093] Yeah.

[1094] And how old are you?

[1095] I was Korean age.

[1096] It was 17.

[1097] You were 17, but you really, about 10 years behind.

[1098] Yeah.

[1099] At least.

[1100] At least, at least.

[1101] That's what it is.

[1102] And so what kind of education did they give you in South Korea?

[1103] They did, they She told us that South Korea was free country, that Americans are not bastards.

[1104] Because they told the Americans were cold -blooded snakes in North Korea.

[1105] So I remember one of my friends I took to South Korea, she was a white lady.

[1106] My mom got drunk with Sosu and touching her, right?

[1107] And then, like, I just want to make sure that you are, like, actually warm bloodied.

[1108] Because that's what they...

[1109] And in school, we have posters of Americans.

[1110] Posters?

[1111] Because we don't have actual pictures.

[1112] of them.

[1113] So our enemy is Americans, right?

[1114] They are like our enemy.

[1115] So we've got to know how they look like.

[1116] So they are called a bloodied huge nose and blue eyes, green eyes, monsters.

[1117] Wow.

[1118] So where did they educate you in South Korea?

[1119] There's a re -education center.

[1120] Oh, so they have a place where they take in people from North Korea?

[1121] Yeah, for three months.

[1122] So they take you to eight.

[1123] ATM machine.

[1124] So we never had a bank in North Korea, right?

[1125] Like in the past I heard there was a bank, but regime asked you to put the money and they don't give the money back to you.

[1126] So nobody uses bank in North Korea.

[1127] So I literally thought ATM machine, there's somebody inside the machine handing the money out to you through the window because I don't know automation.

[1128] And they teach you how to take a bus, how to even like go to a movie theater order a ticket because we never seen the digital devices.

[1129] you know how to take the elevator what is an escalator you know I mean it's like you're just landing in a completely different planet what is that like overwhelming it's very having that choice like when you go shopping and you have 10 different pants right and it's up to you to choose what you wear and in North Korea it was like chosen by the regime freedom was difficult I was literally saying if I had enough frozen potato had at least minimum food to eat I would go back to North Korea Really?

[1130] Yeah Why?

[1131] Because I was not used to thinking Thinking was hard Thinking was not something I'm used to Like I never had to think But not only that you have to think for yourself What do you want to do your life And I was like, do you have to know Can you just not tell me what I need to do Because I'm so good at following the orders But they go like in South Korea They were asking me so what do you want to do and what do you think and what I thought never mattered I couldn't believe like why what I think matters to you so really thinking for yourself was very difficult I would have been so tired after thinking for five minutes I was getting exhausted all day I literally get like working out with thinking is so hard like I would get so exhausted how does people like keep thinking here all day long they say the same thing happens to people when they get out of prison that when they get out of prison they call it being institutionalized that when they get out of prison they want to go back to prison and oftentimes they'll commit crimes just so they can get arrested and go back to prison because in prison they're told what to do and they become accustomed to it that's what it felt like for you yeah it's but like for me like when I was born that was my lifestyle and like I wasn't able I mean thinking was not a natural thing so a lot of North Koreans do have hard time to adjust to freedom.

[1132] When you first went to South Korea and you were able to eat whatever you wanted, what did you eat?

[1133] Eggs.

[1134] Bored eggs.

[1135] That's what you wanted?

[1136] Yeah, because even beef was two fans.

[1137] I did not know what cow was, right?

[1138] You didn't know what a cow was?

[1139] I never knew the milk came out of cow because I never had milk in my life.

[1140] So, all North Koreans we know is like change.

[1141] chicken and the eggs.

[1142] So in North Korea, like, egg is the most fenced thing you can imagine.

[1143] So I literally thought I could eat, you know, bucket of eggs.

[1144] Egg is the most fancy thing that you can imagine.

[1145] Yeah.

[1146] So in North Koreans, we bought eggs and we like, let me see how, actually, how many I can eat, right?

[1147] But after five, you cannot eat more than five boiled eggs.

[1148] So that's when I realized, I mean, not that even much it takes for me to full.

[1149] I wasn't able to do that in that country.

[1150] So that was, do you remember the first time you ate until you were full?

[1151] Yeah, in China.

[1152] But the thing is, you're going to eat everything.

[1153] It's that in China, like, our stomach is not used to seasoning, like oil or fat.

[1154] So I was getting nauseous a lot.

[1155] I couldn't, like, eat the normal food that America, like, that Chinese even South Koreans eat.

[1156] because I mean our system was eating without seasoning just all the wild like you know plants and flowers and like not not much going on so going to China eating for the first time that was seasoned food was very hard on my stomach and so it was actually not that great like you would think like oh my god it's a paradise the your system doesn't take it take a while for you to adjust to the new kind of food How long did it take in South Korea before you felt comfortable?

[1157] Eating like inbo hamburger, I think.

[1158] At least like two, three years.

[1159] Wow.

[1160] It's two, three years took me. If not, like, getting used Coca -Cola, I literally thought some, like, fire was happening where I never had a bubble in my life.

[1161] So, like, learning about now champagne is, like, in the beginning, I couldn't, like, what is going on in my mouth?

[1162] They're popping everywhere.

[1163] You had never had anything carbonated No, so it was like shocking It hurts me in the beginning It took a while Now I drink a bit of few steps of Coca -Cola But it couldn't do it For a long time I still don't drink sparkling water I don't know why anybody does that To torture themselves Yeah, it's very painful In your throat Yeah, they're like, like, you know Pounding you with something I don't know Wow, that's crazy What about alcohol people make alcohol illegally from corn in north korea yeah yeah but they are like very moonshine like very strong very strong and like very thick and not diluted at all right right you get like the worst hangover from it yeah that kind of alcohol did drink and never knew what wine was so i went to napa with my mom last year and they will keep telling us what do you I'm like, how do I know?

[1164] Oh, they're so crazy with all that wine tasting stuff.

[1165] Like, I just heard about wine.

[1166] Right.

[1167] Oh, they're saying hints of nutmeg.

[1168] Yeah, so I'm like, exactly oak, yeah.

[1169] And they're smelling.

[1170] Yeah, it's the strangest thing in the world.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] For someone who's coming from North Korea to go to net, that might be the polar opposite of North Korea is a Napa wine testing.

[1173] I know.

[1174] I was like, and a lot of people tried to get me burning men.

[1175] Don't they wanted to take you their burning men.

[1176] I saw some pictures, I was like, I don't think I'm ready for this.

[1177] I might go crazy there.

[1178] That's hilarious.

[1179] That's hilarious.

[1180] Burning Man. That might be the opposite.

[1181] Well, there's probably like multiple polar opposites of North Korea.

[1182] But Burning Man's probably one of them.

[1183] But the fancy people of Napa, that's got to be up there.

[1184] So if somebody was treating me to this restaurant called a single thread, like the French laundry same restaurant in Napa.

[1185] Oh, okay.

[1186] They did those tour at their front yard, farm.

[1187] They grow on their tomatoes and peppers.

[1188] And, like, my mom was like, we've been eating this every day in North Korea organic.

[1189] We did not know we were having, like, $500 a meal, you know.

[1190] Because here people keep telling us it's organic.

[1191] It's like everything was organic in our country.

[1192] Right, right.

[1193] Like, what I want is, like, big portion.

[1194] Right.

[1195] But here, people really obsessed, like, a North Korean lifestyle.

[1196] So, yeah, my mom would never do this to me ever.

[1197] game she's like you're told you you never don't ever do this to me that's funny that's funny so your experience in south korea they're they're educating you are you working do you start working you're 17 years old right so what did what did you do while you were there so i start i mean i remember at the disintegration man was asking me so what's you're going to do in south Korea.

[1198] It's like, I don't know, maybe study, because I'm still young.

[1199] And it's like, why do you think you can study?

[1200] Because he thought I was a hooker in China because all North Korean women are them.

[1201] And a lot of North Korean women ending up doing the same thing in South Korea because they don't even know how to turn the computer.

[1202] They don't know even what it's Gmail is.

[1203] Creating account online is impossibility for them, who never grew up, grew out of it.

[1204] So they cannot get like nice office jobs, right?

[1205] So only job they can take is like washing dishes.

[1206] They cannot become even the waitress because we have an accent.

[1207] And South Korea is very racist.

[1208] They discriminate people who have an accent.

[1209] So they hear the North Korean accent?

[1210] Yeah.

[1211] What is the difference?

[1212] Like what does it sound like?

[1213] Like in South Korean we say, Anianayo is a hi by North Korea.

[1214] Anyongasnika.

[1215] Very formal.

[1216] More like the, we call our friends.

[1217] There's no friends in North Korea.

[1218] Comrade.

[1219] Like, only comrades exist.

[1220] So they know by the way you talk?

[1221] Yeah.

[1222] So even, but is it an accent?

[1223] Are you saying the same words?

[1224] No. You're saying them in a different way or are you using different words?

[1225] Both of them different.

[1226] It's bigger difference than British and American English is that in North Korea, as I said, there's no bank.

[1227] So for me to understand credit card.

[1228] What the heck you build your credit?

[1229] They give you money, you pay back and debit card.

[1230] Right.

[1231] saving.

[1232] I mean, like, for me to understand hedge fund, it took 10 years.

[1233] I still don't get a lot of parts, but that's the thing, like, we don't have the vocabulary.

[1234] Right.

[1235] So learning from South Korean to English is a lot easier, because I know what credit cards.

[1236] You know, South Korean means and America means.

[1237] But, like, gay.

[1238] What is gay?

[1239] You didn't know what gay was.

[1240] Of course, there's no diction.

[1241] So I remember in San Francisco a few years ago, when I came to America, after my speech, somebody came and hugged.

[1242] me and I get really stiffened because some guy hugging me and then he said like don't worry baby I'm gay like what the heck is gay you didn't know what gay was how old were you when this was happening it was like 20 20 wow so there was no gay people in north korea we don't know the word so now tell me about the sexual non -binary but like whatever how many pronouns that I found later I was like this is a different planet so we don't know the concept and we don't know the concept of romance or love, how do you expect us to know what gay is?

[1243] How do people find their husbands and wives and relationships in North Korea?

[1244] Usually governments assigns a marriage or do the family, like families, the parents do the assigned marriages.

[1245] So the South Koreans are racist against the North Koreans, even though you look very similar.

[1246] Can you tell a difference by looking at someone?

[1247] High difference.

[1248] height difference because of malnutrition yeah on average three to five inch shorter on average but the younger generation in north kore gets shorter that's a thing our grandpa was a tallest and my father and me he keeps getting smaller and small south kore's opposite it's going up and north kore's keep getting smaller and smaller so in south korea because of nutrition and so when you are learning where do they have you stay?

[1249] I had to find this like thing called the Koshita, like one feet room where like very cheap in Seoul.

[1250] So I was working at this like Dai So it's like one dollar store in Korea.

[1251] So I was teenager.

[1252] Like I was, American age, it was 15 years old.

[1253] South Korea is a different way of counting age.

[1254] So you're going to be confused.

[1255] So in South Korea, North Korea, when you're born, the day you are born, you're one.

[1256] You're one when you're born.

[1257] Yeah.

[1258] And then January 1st, you are two.

[1259] So if somebody was born December 31st, they're one.

[1260] Tomorrow, January 1st, they become 2.

[1261] Even when they're a baby?

[1262] Yeah, they're 2 days old and they are 2 years old.

[1263] Really?

[1264] Yeah, so they count age like that.

[1265] So when you're born, you're 1, and you gain age not on your birthday.

[1266] January 1st, you gain 1 year.

[1267] This is only North Korea.

[1268] And South Korea both.

[1269] South Korea, too.

[1270] Really?

[1271] Yeah.

[1272] So if you're born in December, you're one year, years old and then in January, you're two, even though you're only a month old.

[1273] Yeah, exactly.

[1274] So I was born in October.

[1275] So I was born, I was one.

[1276] And then December, two months later, I became two years old.

[1277] So you were two years old when you were two months old?

[1278] Yeah.

[1279] So even though you were 17, you were really 15.

[1280] Yeah, so America, that's why they were so confusion when I was giving interviews in the beginning.

[1281] When I escaped from North Korea, North Korean age, I was 15.

[1282] So in South Korean press, I had to tell them Korean age.

[1283] Right.

[1284] Right.

[1285] Then it translates to English article.

[1286] So why was it 15 and 13?

[1287] Because of the age counting is different.

[1288] Oh.

[1289] So I arrived there as American age, it was 15.

[1290] But South Korean Age, I was 17 years old.

[1291] Wow.

[1292] So you're really 15 years old, American age.

[1293] Yeah.

[1294] And you are working in a dollar store.

[1295] Yeah.

[1296] And staying in a very, and so you're supporting yourself?

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] And learning.

[1299] Yeah.

[1300] And I taught myself, I took GED.

[1301] So I crashed the.

[1302] from one year, I mean, elementary, middle school, high school, everything within a year.

[1303] So that's how I went to university, even of 17 years old, American age.

[1304] And which is amazing, because a lot of people here don't even go to university when they're 17, and they're studying their whole life under normal circumstances.

[1305] And you, but you were obsessed, right?

[1306] Yeah, I was obsessed.

[1307] You were obsessed.

[1308] Like, you got into the point where you were malnourished, because you weren't eating because all you were doing was studying Yeah I know it's like I end up in the ER somebody called and there's like you're malnourished So I'm still like 79 80 pounds But way smaller than this So right now you're 80 pounds Yeah yeah But back then you were like I don't even Didn't have the scare It was too poor Not for the scare So but you weren't even thinking about food You were just trying to learn And there was a food It was expensive So It was you know In South Korea as a student working in the dollar store and studying everything was expensive so it was uh you know i couldn't really afford three years a day obviously right yeah and so what were you studying and how were you doing it i was doing the old school requirement project for gd right biology physics math english history all those writing everything but on top of that i was reading books i read like last I read like a few hundred books, but in South Korea, I was reading at least 100 books outside of the school curriculum books that you require to read.

[1309] So because I was, I mean, I did not know what Shakespeare is.

[1310] How embarrassing is that people talk about Romeo and Juliet.

[1311] I'm like, who the heck is Romney and Juliet?

[1312] Yeah.

[1313] I remember I got to South Korea, this guy, somebody called Michael Jackson died, right?

[1314] It's on TV and there's some funeral.

[1315] Like, who the heck is Michael Jackson?

[1316] and then some time later this guy called like Apple Steve Jobs died and like is that a big deal that Steve Jobs died Steve Jobs So I don't know what Steve Jobs is Right So like that's amusing Why these people are so upset And like obviously There's like some days later Nelson Mandela Who is Nelson Mandela Right?

[1317] I don't know This can be so strange Yeah To be 15 years old and learning about the whole world not knowing anything that's happening in other countries, other continents, not knowing anything about pop stars and world leaders?

[1318] No, I think that's so, that's a thing like when I came to America, like, I did not even know what Arab is or Hispanic is, right?

[1319] I have no preconception of a race, so that was great.

[1320] Like, I don't know the difference.

[1321] For me, it's like you guys are all strangers.

[1322] So, I remember, like, I had a talk in Charleston, South Carolina, or North Carolina, I don't know, Charleston, like, in a room, for the first time I was, like, there, and then, like, a thousand people or, like, white people.

[1323] And, like, they looked all the same.

[1324] I just couldn't believe they all looked the same to me. That's hilarious.

[1325] That's funny.

[1326] So one of the things that struck me is that you were so obsessed with learning that even, even.

[1327] when you went to sleep you would you would play like ted speeches yeah and i listened to a lot of your podcast did you i'm sorry no it was wonderful this thought i mean even till this day english i learned even i was 21 like five years ago so it's a still like struggle for me so you were listening to podcasts you were listening to npr you were listening to ted talks and What was it like for you to try to absorb all of this information at such a frantic pace?

[1328] It was, I mean, it's amazing.

[1329] First of all, that you read whatever you want, like the one point that changed me as a child was reading Georgia West Animal Farm.

[1330] Yeah.

[1331] That was random.

[1332] Like, I literally went up and then picked up the book, the thinest book.

[1333] And I thought, okay, it takes this time for me to finish it.

[1334] And reading that book.

[1335] made everything sense to me because after North Korea, of course, I mean, learning what subways is challenging, right?

[1336] Learning what hamburger is, it's like a learning experience, but learning how to trust again.

[1337] I think that was the hardest thing.

[1338] Like, obviously, I don't trust guys.

[1339] I didn't, right?

[1340] Right.

[1341] And not only that, like they say, everything that you believed in North Korea was a lie.

[1342] They are dictators.

[1343] They are not gods.

[1344] They didn't love you.

[1345] They are dictators.

[1346] You'll be lied to entire life.

[1347] And I was thinking, so how do I know what you're telling me is not lie then?

[1348] Right.

[1349] That was so scary.

[1350] How do I trust ever again?

[1351] So only reading Georgia was 1984 and the animal farm.

[1352] That's when I understood what happened to my people.

[1353] Then you understood double speak and propaganda.

[1354] And then price of, you know, silence.

[1355] The price of silence.

[1356] That's when I knew I, until that point, I was blaming the dictator.

[1357] Why did you do that to us?

[1358] But I was starting thinking, what all those people, like my grandma, she knew life before Kim's.

[1359] She knew the alternative life.

[1360] Like in that animals, you've seen the revolution generation, then next, and the new ones don't even know what the world could be like.

[1361] So that's the thing.

[1362] Like when people say, why there's no revolution in North Korea, I'm like, I mean, how do you fight to be when you don't know your slave?

[1363] Right.

[1364] It's impossible.

[1365] And this is a thing, like, in America, everybody talks about how they're oppressed systemically.

[1366] I'm like, you know people in North Korea don't even know they're oppressed.

[1367] If you know you're oppressed, you are not oppressed.

[1368] Like, not knowing is a true definition of oppression.

[1369] Well, unfortunately, in this country, they've made oppression a valuable thing.

[1370] Like, if you can say that you're oppressed and people look for oppression that sometimes doesn't exist.

[1371] sure there is oppression in this country and for sure there is racism in this country but it's become a commodity and it's become a commodity that you can claim and you can use it to bolster and fortify your personality and your personal status and it's a real problem and like I went to right after all of that I ended up at Columbia University in New York and as you can see I love learning I'm very curious person and go there and like truth It doesn't matter.

[1372] It's all matters your feelings, how you fear.

[1373] Well, you caught Columbia University at a terrible time, right?

[1374] Like, what year was this?

[1375] 2016, I joined after Trump became president.

[1376] The worst time you could ever join, right?

[1377] Because this is, like, political correctness at the peak of its frenzy, and also they feel justified because they feel they have this despot in the White House, this terrible person who's going to destroy people of color and gay people, and he's a, this and a that and a homophobe and a racist and a sexist and anything and so everything that you can possibly do to stop a person like that must be justified including distorting truth yeah it was it was unbelievable I I couldn't believe it I came out after four years later scared more than ever what I say like I was seeing myself censoring every day again And it was like, I never thought, right?

[1378] America, I had to go censor myself.

[1379] What was it like the contrast between learning in South Korea and then learning at Columbia?

[1380] So South Korea is like I was too little I knew about the world.

[1381] So everything they told me was truth.

[1382] Like, everybody who I met was a teacher.

[1383] Do you know what I mean?

[1384] In South Korea, my knowledge was so little.

[1385] I was like one year old, right?

[1386] Everybody told me, do you know Africa?

[1387] I mean, that's new.

[1388] What's Africa?

[1389] Do you know I've been to Australia?

[1390] Like, what is Australia?

[1391] Right.

[1392] That's new.

[1393] Like, so everybody was my teacher in South Korea.

[1394] Right.

[1395] So I never, like, questioned anybody.

[1396] Just everybody was my teacher.

[1397] Everything was new.

[1398] Yeah, everything was new.

[1399] And everybody taught me something new, for sure.

[1400] And coming to America, it was a bit different.

[1401] Because by then, I read, like, a lot of books.

[1402] And I was a bit of advanced.

[1403] then when I was in South Korea.

[1404] So now going to Columbia, I mean, as soon as I tell them, my view, they say, oh, you're brainwashed.

[1405] You're brainwashed?

[1406] Yeah, that's the reason.

[1407] They said you were brainwashed because of what?

[1408] What was your perspective?

[1409] So, like, my professor was arguing that the, like, she was asking, so how to, the sensitivity training, why you got to be sensitive to all finding this hidden oppression.

[1410] And, like, what do you think about men holding a door for you?

[1411] And I was thinking, okay, that's a sign of dissoncy.

[1412] Like I hold the door for other people And so, no, that's a sign of toxic masculinity That's like how to show you the overpowering you Holding a door open is overpowering you?

[1413] Yeah, it's a man when men does that What kind of class was this?

[1414] What was the subject?

[1415] I took a junior or something It was like it was humanity class, of course And then And she was like, I told her, no, I think that's sign of distance And if that's over, like you're brainwashed.

[1416] Your brainwashed.

[1417] How rude is that?

[1418] Well, I mean, for them, it's, I mean, that's a thing, like, for me, a safe placement where you can express your views, right?

[1419] And especially in the universe, you can be done to search for truth.

[1420] But here, in the name of safe space, no other than the mainstream view, you cannot have them.

[1421] But it's just so sad to me that there's such a lack of nuance because for sure, some men will hold open a door for you because they want.

[1422] to pretend that they're stronger than you or they want to show you that they're better than you or they want to pretend they're being nice because they're trying to manipulate you yeah because there are people like that but also some people who open the door to be polite because they're nice and to deny that is to deny reality and to deny nuance and that's what's really scary is the sacrificing of nuance to promote a narrative that fits your needs exactly I think if things are so complex why humans do what is very complex and they lose entire complexity right and also seeing that how this thing called like white guilt yes or privilege was so new to me it's like how are you guilty for what your ancestors did right that's exactly what north Koreans did to us exactly and I was like why you didn't choose to be born as a white I don't choose my birthplace it's again the same thing.

[1423] It's the commodity of accusations of finding people that are guilty for no reason of their own and may be guilty and they don't even know it.

[1424] Or maybe they have some hidden bias that they're not even aware of and they're going to search it out.

[1425] And so you have these paranoid people who are like, oh my God, am I like secretly a bigot?

[1426] Am I secretly a racist?

[1427] And they'll reaffirm it with you.

[1428] And then in order for you to get points, you have to say, I will do better.

[1429] I'm going to find And then I'm going to be not just not racist, I'm going to be anti -racist.

[1430] And then they'll say, well, now you're a good ally.

[1431] And it's this really strange way of communicating.

[1432] And when we were complaining about it years ago, people would say, why are you complaining about this?

[1433] It's just a few random fringe people in universities.

[1434] And the people that I knew that were professors that were secretly terrified of this, they would talk about it.

[1435] This is like before Jordan Peterson started talking about this openly.

[1436] When they would talk about this, they would get chastised by the people in the university.

[1437] Because these people had a vested interest in continuing this sort of this type of thinking and behaving.

[1438] And this was like they had gold in this.

[1439] Like there was profit in this.

[1440] There was some social brownie points in this.

[1441] And they were going to continue to mine this vein of gold.

[1442] And when everybody was stepping in and talking about the dangers of this, people were saying, no no no this is the future this is progressive this is this is all about love and trust and anti -racism and all these and then the people that were scared of it they were sort of silenced in the universities until it started trickling over into corporations and then when it started trickling into corporations people started getting genuinely scared and now we're at a point where I think the dam is broken and I don't know how they're ever going to put the genie back in the bottle so to speak I think that's the thing initially I was thinking maybe only the academia is just crazy, right?

[1443] I thought, but then last year I spoke at TED and then these people who run social media companies like post for Facebook, Twitter, all these people come.

[1444] And I told them I had an engagement in Texas.

[1445] And they were saying, why do you go to Texas?

[1446] I was like, well, because America is America?

[1447] And I said, that's a Trump country.

[1448] I decided not to set a foot below a certain line of states that supports Trump And these are the people who runs biggest media companies in the world It's ridiculous Especially ridiculous in a place like Austin Which is a progressive city Yeah And then last year During the looting in Chicago I was robbed by these Three black women And robbing is okay Anybody can become a murderer Anybody can be a thief But just they happened to be a black woman women.

[1449] And I have a nanny who is Muslim in the nation with the hijab carrying my stroller behind me. And then I was trying to catch and call the police and these people on the street, the bystandards of white people, calling me I'm a racist, telling me that the color of skin does make them a thief.

[1450] And I became...

[1451] Wait a minute.

[1452] Wait a minute.

[1453] So you got robbed by these three black women.

[1454] And I got punched.

[1455] You got punched and robbed.

[1456] It's a violence.

[1457] Yeah.

[1458] And so you called the police.

[1459] And who...

[1460] I tried to call them and they did.

[1461] to prevent me not calling the police.

[1462] Who was trying to tell you not to call the police?

[1463] It's all the people on the street, on the Michigan Avenue, yeah.

[1464] People that saw the crime?

[1465] Yeah.

[1466] Because they said you're racist for calling the police?

[1467] Yeah, and accusing these girls of being a robber, right?

[1468] How does that make you a racist by accusing them of being?

[1469] Because I'm not black and they are black.

[1470] So calling black person a thief is a racist, even though when they are thief.

[1471] So, of course, I couldn't, I got punched, I couldn't call the police.

[1472] And later, I called, thankfully, this girls took my car to spend the money on the sacks.

[1473] And then police got the footage of them.

[1474] Sacks Fifth Avenue?

[1475] Yeah, in Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

[1476] And then, of course, they are not going to prosecute this girls, right?

[1477] There's so much crime in Chicago.

[1478] They are not going to prosecute somebody who robs.

[1479] And that's when I was thinking, this country lost it.

[1480] Like, even in North Korea, if you see somebody one small girl being robbed and being punched by three big girls, they're going to help the victim, right?

[1481] They are not going to just, I don't know where scream at you're a racist.

[1482] So they were screaming you were racist because of the phone call that you were making?

[1483] No, because I was, I held their arm.

[1484] Like, I told them, I'm not accusing you anything.

[1485] I'm just going to call the police.

[1486] Can you wait until the police comes?

[1487] You're holding whose arm?

[1488] The girl who robbed my wallet.

[1489] Oh.

[1490] So the girl who robbed your wallet, you were trying to hold on to her?

[1491] Yeah, because she was trying to run.

[1492] Okay.

[1493] So I was trying to call the police.

[1494] And then she was like, you're a racist.

[1495] The skin of color person doesn't make me a thief.

[1496] And then she was punching me here.

[1497] And this is after she already robbed you.

[1498] Yeah.

[1499] And then the people gathered.

[1500] And I remember there's a bus station.

[1501] There's one white mom with teenagers.

[1502] And I became the lifetime example for her to show her children how racism exists in America.

[1503] Like me became a bigot And calling this black girl a thief So she didn't look at that kind of racist That's the problem that we have How many people were around you?

[1504] It's like I don't know Some 20 people And they were like 20 people They circling me around So I cannot call the police Circuling you and calling you a racist Even though this girl just stole from you These girls so ran away And they let the girls run away Yeah Just go go run right They told the girls to run Wow So that's when I That's why when I I started speaking out, and now I became the enemy of the wok.

[1505] So I got the North Koreans going on.

[1506] I became the Kim Jong -keng's killing mist a few years ago.

[1507] And South Korean intelligence, like, you are on the key's killing list, right?

[1508] Oh, boy.

[1509] And I'm like, cool.

[1510] I expected that.

[1511] And now I'm Chinese, like, enemy, Chinese regimes.

[1512] And now in America, I got so many enemies.

[1513] Oh, boy.

[1514] Jesus.

[1515] Yeah.

[1516] Yeah, that's when you realize that this stuff spills over into real life, right?

[1517] That's when I knew that my son is American.

[1518] I have a son in America.

[1519] And on his birth certificate in Chicago, like a father's birthplace America, USA, and mom is North Korea.

[1520] Right?

[1521] Like on birth certificate, his mom is North Korean.

[1522] And to me, it was giving him that American citizenship was the bigger than winning the lottery.

[1523] I thought I did everything I could To give him a better life Making him American And seeing that last year in America I was like This is not a safe country Because he got the worst He got half Asian Who wants to be work hard And we believe in meritocracy And he got half wife Who was like supposedly oppressive Because of their So he's so screwed He's a cast is so low right now That's funny That's funny it's sad and it's truly sad unfortunately it's in some circles it's true i think there's a lot of people that are waking up to this problem i hope so there are yeah and a lot of it's because of people like you speaking up from a place of true oppression like north korea in comparison to what's going on here or these privileged weirdos are attempting to distort reality for their own personal gain because that's what it is but i think what do they gain from me i don't get it they're social status they they gain status in the like if if there's a narrative that's being pushed and they go along with it people say oh you're on the right side you're doing the right thing you're saying the right words if you go against it they'll chase you down and yell at you you will you'll be on the outside you'll be an outcast people are cowards they're terrified even if they know something is true they're terrified of saying it because they don't want the blowback for it.

[1524] So that's what a lot, you see a lot of that going on this country.

[1525] And you see a lot of people, unfortunately over this last year and a half because of the pandemic, you see a lot of people that are more than willing to sacrifice personal freedoms in order for a little bit of safety and a little bit security.

[1526] And they'll give up those freedoms to the government, which will never give them back to you.

[1527] When the pandemic is gone and you've given them vaccine passports and it allowed them to track your whereabouts and allowed them to contact trace you, that's not going to go away.

[1528] They're going to use it for other reasons.

[1529] They're going to find other reasons to control you and keep you scared and keep you compliant so they can suck resources out of gigantic corporations that are funding their campaigns.

[1530] That's what they're doing.

[1531] And they're going to continue to do that if we let them.

[1532] And we're going to slide further and further away from freedom and democracy, freedom and the ability to express yourself openly.

[1533] And all of these things, people are willing to give up if it supports their side.

[1534] And that's what's so terrifying.

[1535] They don't understand if you give the government vaccine passports and if you let them censor social media posts that you don't agree with.

[1536] The problem is then what happens if someone who's far worse than Trump gets into office?

[1537] Because that's probably going to happen.

[1538] Unfortunately, we're going to have this teeter -totter back.

[1539] We've divided this country so thoroughly that there's going to be someone that's a far -left person that makes people so angry that they're then willing to vote for a far -right person.

[1540] And when that far -right person comes into office, they will have access to all of those powers that you so willingly gave up because you wanted to stop this idea that you didn't agree with.

[1541] And they've done this in this horribly short -sided way.

[1542] And they've done it in the name of the woke.

[1543] They've done it in the name of progressivism and wokeism and all this stupid shit that is this social contagion that's running through this country right now.

[1544] It's like, to me, I never been to American public school system, like onto universities, that, like, nothing has been more dangerous than governments to individuals, right?

[1545] Right.

[1546] Think of us, I mean, molecular 60 million Chinese people.

[1547] Wanting for someone to take care of things for them.

[1548] People are scared and they get delusional.

[1549] They have this bizarre idea that someone's going to come along that has power that's a benevolent dictator.

[1550] It's going to take care of things in the right way.

[1551] And you just give them the power.

[1552] You know, give them the power to shut these people up.

[1553] Freedom of speech does, it's not the end all be all.

[1554] Maybe it's more important to just say what I want you to say.

[1555] Yeah.

[1556] It's just strange.

[1557] The short -sightedness is so strange.

[1558] because you hear people on CNN, it's supposed to be the news, and they're espousing these ideas.

[1559] And they don't recognize that if you give that power up to the people that are in charge currently, the next people are going to have it too.

[1560] This was the thing about the Patriot Act that people were so terrified of in this country that were aware of the consequences.

[1561] They were saying, well, Obama's never going to do this.

[1562] Obama's not going to be in office forever.

[1563] He's going to be in an office for eight years.

[1564] You love Obama and you trust Obama.

[1565] That's great.

[1566] Look what came after Obama, Trump.

[1567] And now you have a dead man. Now you have Joe Biden who doesn't know what the fuck is going on.

[1568] What are you going to have after that?

[1569] But you're probably going to have someone on the right.

[1570] And it's going to be someone that is a reaction to what you have in the left.

[1571] I mean, this is what we do in this country.

[1572] We go, left, right, left, right.

[1573] And we pretend, well, this guy has our interest in mind.

[1574] Oh, he fucked it up too.

[1575] Let's go with someone who's polar opposite.

[1576] Oh, he fucked it up.

[1577] And you give him eight years each side or four years each side.

[1578] And it just keeps getting worse.

[1579] And for whatever reason, people are constantly willing to give up powers.

[1580] They're constantly willing to ignore the core principles that this country was founded on, which is freedom and liberty.

[1581] And you need those things.

[1582] You need to be able to express ideas and debate them in full view of the world so that we get to see whose ideas are correct and whose ideas are incorrect.

[1583] But in this society and today, you have people on the left, which are supposed to be the progressive people, the open minded and intelligent people, supposedly, the people that are educated.

[1584] supposedly, and they're the ones who are willing to censor people.

[1585] It's bizarre.

[1586] It's very, very strange, very strange.

[1587] I'm not like Christian, but I was like when they was like asking if there's God, right?

[1588] Like he says everything has for a reason.

[1589] Like, why does North Korea exist?

[1590] Right.

[1591] It makes no sense.

[1592] Why does it exist?

[1593] I think.

[1594] Why does China exist?

[1595] I think it.

[1596] Or why does the Communist Party, I should say, exist?

[1597] Why do they have the power to run the country that way?

[1598] Because of that delusion, ignorance in the people, do not learn from history.

[1599] It is, I don't know, do you think, do we have hope in this country?

[1600] Or, like, how do we get out of even this?

[1601] I'm worried.

[1602] I'm worried because it just seems to be sliding further and further in this direction of totalitarianism.

[1603] And these people are willingly giving up these rights because they believe that that's going to support their side and they think they're on the right side of history they're on the right side of the truth they're in the right side of facts and and kindness and anti -racism and all the whatever concepts that they are willing to you know subscribe to that they think that giving up these rights will promote it's strange it's very strange because it's it's it's an anti it's it's an anti -objective perspective.

[1604] They're not looking at all of the, and we're so polarized with the right and the left in this country.

[1605] We're so polarized with Republicans versus Democrats in this country that there's no middle ground anymore.

[1606] The center is this weird place where no one wants to exist because they don't want to be attacked by people on either side, particularly with people on the left.

[1607] It was funny the other day when I was after Jordan Pearson interview about he, I don't know, where like randomly asked how did you like Columbia?

[1608] And it's like it was terrible.

[1609] And then that wasn't, we never discussed that we were going to talk about that.

[1610] And then Fox asked to ask me to have an interview about it.

[1611] So I did.

[1612] But then all my friends in the, like, liberal, why did you have to go on propaganda channel Fox to talk about the work culture in America?

[1613] And I was like, I'm still waiting a call from New York Times.

[1614] If they call me about warism in this country and danger of it, I'm going to talk to them.

[1615] Wait, even, the New York Times has never called you?

[1616] Absolutely.

[1617] I mean, they only called me when I was.

[1618] criticizing Trump about meeting Kim Jong, without preconcessions.

[1619] Whenever I...

[1620] They never wanted to talk to you about your experience in North Korea?

[1621] No. Only when I was talking about Trump, they wanted me. Who has tried to talk to you about this?

[1622] Some British newspapers still do, like Daily Telegraph.

[1623] They still do want me to talk about China.

[1624] But whenever in American media, it's whenever I talk against Trump, that's when I meet their narrative.

[1625] really yeah that's the only time they want to talk to you yeah so that's the thing but the thing is you know fox never accused me why did you get on new york times and criticizing trump therefore we don't want you but the people in the liberal mainstream media why did you get on fox so i'm like there are people too they are both newspapers so it's unbelievable i just there's a there's a big thing that's happening now where liberal people who are saying things that are outside of the narrative that you hear from CNN or MSNBC.

[1626] They're going on like the Tucker Carlson show and people are furious at them.

[1627] Yeah.

[1628] But they're saying all the same things that they would say on MSNBC or CNN.

[1629] They're not saying right -wing talking points.

[1630] No. They're saying things that they believe in, whether it's Glenn Greenwald or Brett Weinstein or whoever these people are that go on these shows and talk.

[1631] These are progressive people.

[1632] Yeah.

[1633] But they're being chastised.

[1634] And they're being attacked.

[1635] It's very strange.

[1636] It's really dark.

[1637] I know like I'm happy to talk to anybody.

[1638] I want to go and see it and talk about this.

[1639] But they just don't give me a platform to talk about it.

[1640] They don't just call me. Well, it's in support of this narrative that's occurring now where it's okay to, air quotes, de -platform people.

[1641] This is the idea.

[1642] You're deplatforming people off social media that say things that you don't agree with.

[1643] Like Alex Berenson, who used to work for the New York Times.

[1644] he's critical of the way the government and the FDA and everyone is handling COVID, right, or the CDC or the World Health Organization.

[1645] And so he's got a lot of stuff that he talks that's critical about the COVID response in this country, critical about the vaccine effectiveness, critical about all sorts of different things in the health care system.

[1646] And they removed him from Twitter for a week.

[1647] Yeah.

[1648] And he's not, I mean, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, the actual CDC's reports on the effectiveness and ineffectiveness or whatever on COVID vaccines.

[1649] Wow.

[1650] It's very strange.

[1651] You know, and you can't, I mean, maybe they think he speaks in a way that's inflammatory or in a way that's causing people to distrust certain institutions, but then oppose him, oppose him, debate him.

[1652] The way to answer speech that you don't agree with is to counter.

[1653] it with what you think is a more sound argument.

[1654] It's not remove someone from social media, but everyone is like, yes, he should be deplatformed.

[1655] You see people from the left just calling out, willingly calling out for censorship.

[1656] It's a disturbing trend.

[1657] And I don't think they understand that it's going to come for them.

[1658] Because censorship is a monster that is never full, and it's going to come for you.

[1659] It's going to find, it's going to keep pushing the boundaries, and go further and further left until you can't be woke enough.

[1660] And then it's going to come for you.

[1661] Exactly.

[1662] I think it doesn't think.

[1663] In North Korea, right, even though one top janitor in the meeting a few years ago, he was falling on sleep, and that afternoon he got executed.

[1664] And this guy was working for this system and tired his life to supporting the system.

[1665] But he was tired.

[1666] Yeah.

[1667] And his uncle, right?

[1668] He did everything to make Kim Jong -un to succeed a line and be secure.

[1669] he get executed was the uncle did they think that the uncle was planning to overthrow Kim Jong -un was just an accusation wasn't true no it wasn't so it was every time when they do it like that thing they get cared what was the thing that happened recently where Kim Jong -un was missing and they said that they thought he was sick was that a trap no it was a CNN got some source from CIA saying Kim Jong -un was having some surgery and he was gone away for like a long time disappeared and didn't show up in the very important meetings and Kim Jong -un does have a health issues at this point What kind of health issues?

[1670] I mean, he's over 330 pounds and he's like 5 -7 and he gained away very rapidly and he eats he drinks like 13 bottles of wine like a night and he has insane parties every single day so he's not healthy he does not know how to control himself So recently, Kim Jong -un last way, dramatically in one month.

[1671] But people say that's like, oh, is it becoming healthy noise?

[1672] He just became very, very ill. So they are preparing who's going to succeed him afterwards now already.

[1673] How old is he?

[1674] He's 36.

[1675] In Korean years or American years?

[1676] American years, I believe.

[1677] Good.

[1678] Yeah.

[1679] Wow.

[1680] Yeah.

[1681] But it doesn't seem like there's any hope for North Korea to get.

[1682] out of their current situation.

[1683] As long as China, the CCP is there, it's not going to be out.

[1684] And whoever gets in next day, China maintained exactly the same thing.

[1685] So without changing Chinese Communist Party, we never get to change North Korea.

[1686] But what's crazy is that Chinese Communist Party recognized that they had a flaw in their own system and they allowed free market to run through China, and it's only made China stronger.

[1687] But that's the thing also.

[1688] So we thought economic freedom going to bring the political freedom.

[1689] But that's a unique thing about freedom.

[1690] Unless you fight for it, you don't get it.

[1691] Right.

[1692] They don't have political freedom.

[1693] Like right now, the censorship, this social credit system, if you don't have the highest credit, you can't even buy a bus ticket to see your mom in the countryside.

[1694] Right.

[1695] You can't even get on an airplane and bus and public transportation.

[1696] Well, that's what comes next after vaccine passports.

[1697] Yeah.

[1698] It's like what you say on social media.

[1699] Like, they're going to read your text like what China does already.

[1700] Yeah.

[1701] and give you the social credit, and, like, people wait you, and you are forever controlled.

[1702] I think to me is that this is the last time that humanity ever tried to be free as individuals.

[1703] And, I mean, being an individual is such a unique thing to me, like, that I can be different than you, right?

[1704] It's the people talking about, like, oh, comparing the biggest difference that people have is between individuals.

[1705] Like, the difference you and I have is unthinkable.

[1706] Right.

[1707] And the difference that I have with, my mom is unthinkable.

[1708] That's the beauty of America that you can be different.

[1709] You can be an individual.

[1710] But now you cannot be an individual.

[1711] That's what North Korea did.

[1712] So when the North Korean regime criticizing me, they said she was as a younger, very individualistic and ambitious.

[1713] That's hilarious.

[1714] That was the worst thing that came up with it.

[1715] Because in North Korea, that's a worst criticism to give somebody.

[1716] So they did not know that thing was embraced here.

[1717] So North Korean propaganda channel on YouTube, you can see, they say, and this is another amazing thing about YouTube is that I talk about women getting sold in China.

[1718] And those all videos get demonetized because, I mean, it's some others meet the YouTube guideline.

[1719] And they letting North Korean regime to have their propaganda channel on YouTube.

[1720] So they give a platform to dictatorship.

[1721] But they do not want to give a platform to the people who is fighting the human rights.

[1722] just as fine.

[1723] And this is a thing, like one video I made about the Second Amendment.

[1724] It was like my thoughts on second, I thought like if every Hong Kong had a gun in their hands, Chinese would not take them over like that.

[1725] Seventy -five percent of population went on the street demanding they want to be independent.

[1726] Right?

[1727] One country, two systems, they wanted that.

[1728] But China took it over because these people did not have any self -defense.

[1729] Right.

[1730] Imagine North Korea, even if 20 % of population had guns.

[1731] We would have assassinated.

[1732] them, we would not let our children die like that.

[1733] Right.

[1734] So to me, it is, you can't have crimes with the guns.

[1735] Accidents happens, but it's very important when people have a ability to defend them from the governments when they become corrupt.

[1736] And of course, sharing this is just one perspective, you get, like, blocked.

[1737] Right.

[1738] So this is a country that I am in now.

[1739] I have to fight for freedom of speech in America.

[1740] And I thought my journey to be freedom ended coming here.

[1741] Of course, not, no, not even, yeah.

[1742] The Second Amendment is a very contentious thing in this country, and one of the interesting things about it is that people always want to cite mass shootings.

[1743] Yeah.

[1744] But what they don't want to talk about with mass shootings is pharmaceutical companies.

[1745] They don't want to talk about the fact that most, I mean most of the people that are committing mass shootings are on some kind of psychotropic drugs.

[1746] Most of them.

[1747] Yeah.

[1748] And they want to conveniently ignore that.

[1749] Yeah.

[1750] Whether they're disassociatives or SSRIs or anti -exiety medication or anti -psychotic medication, and it doesn't mean that that medication is causing them to do that, but they don't even want to address it.

[1751] It never even gets discussed.

[1752] The only thing that gets discussed is the actual weapon itself.

[1753] The ability to do that is so beyond most people, the ability to kill random strangers just in horrific acts of violence.

[1754] Most people are not capable of doing that.

[1755] but most people want the ability to defend their family if someone's trying to break in their home and kill them or steal from them or you know or kidnap a child or whatever it is when you see what's going on right now in Australia Australia confiscated all of their guns in the 1990s and not saying that they should raise up against the government but there's some crazy shit going on right now where the army is trying to keep people inside in Australia And one of the things that I read was that as they're doing this, only nine people have died from COVID over the last, like, see if that's true.

[1756] Like how many people have died recently from COVID in Australia?

[1757] Because they have full -on government lockdowns where the government is flying helicopters over the street zone.

[1758] Go back indoors.

[1759] You're not allowed to be outside, which is crazy.

[1760] Like it's like this disease doesn't even transmit well outside.

[1761] Like it doesn't make any sense.

[1762] Like being outside and getting vitamin D from the sun is probably one of the best things you can do.

[1763] Exactly.

[1764] I mean, like, the babies that were born last year, and during the pandemic, like, my son is like three over three.

[1765] They didn't go outside the house for a year and a half.

[1766] And I told their mom, your baby might die from not getting a son once even in their life, then getting a COVID and die.

[1767] Right.

[1768] It's not a dangerous thing for children.

[1769] But the thing is, like, not going outside for a year and a half is actually very dangerous.

[1770] Wow, zero -zero -deaths.

[1771] Oh, my God.

[1772] couple at the July okay so on July there's a couple so you have zero deaths from literally from October 20th October 20th you have zero deaths until July 11 yeah yeah July 11th and you get a little spike there what's that spike how many people's that one or two actually oh that's crazy so I think it's nine deaths total since September and they have a a full -on government lockdown or the military is locking down the streets testing has gone up but yeah of course but the deaths have gone down that's the thing it's like folks people die from heart attacks in staggering numbers every year you're not making the government force people to exercise and put down cheeseburgers I mean we have to decide like and say they say oh well the heart disease is not infectious okay it's so but the actual cause of death is pretty staggering, like the numbers of people that are dying from heart attacks and cancer from preventable decisions, like decisions that people make that actively wind up costing the public in untold numbers of, I mean, what's the amount of money that's the burden, the financial burden on the health care system because of people that are obese, because of heart disease, because of cancer, it's crazy.

[1773] And a lot of his lifestyle choices, and the government does not.

[1774] nothing to stop those deaths.

[1775] Did you read that like on Guardian?

[1776] They're talking about fitness is a sign of white supremacy now.

[1777] Fitness?

[1778] Fitness.

[1779] Sign of white supremacy.

[1780] Yeah.

[1781] I know a lot of black people that are really fit.

[1782] No, but they need to talk to David Guggins.

[1783] He's a white supremacist.

[1784] He doesn't even know it.

[1785] Well, that's just people looking for things to be upset about and to call things racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever or bigoted.

[1786] They're just looking for things.

[1787] to target.

[1788] But this is like in North Korea is that in North Korea when they said this is our sworn enemy death Americans doesn't mean much like there's so much words that doesn't mean anything and now I mean America is the same thing like everybody's Hitler everyone's a Nazi everybody's a racist and I'm a racist I'm a biger right I'm a Nazi now too like I didn't even know what the like Nazi was the problem is they're just trying to shut people down by using those words and those words are horrible.

[1789] If someone is an actual racist and you call them a racist and everybody else sees that they're racist, it's a horrible accusation.

[1790] So they're using that so freely that they're distorting the meaning of it and it doesn't work anymore.

[1791] It's like crying wolf, the old expression of the boy who cried wolf, the story.

[1792] That's literally what's happening right now in this country.

[1793] It's very strange.

[1794] I know this is what people told me this is new to them too because I came here in 2016 January yeah and I thought this was always America was like and I go what was a country that I dreamed of far away right so it's it's still here you know that the ideals that built this country still here with a lot of people you know a lot of people that support freedom and the freedom of expression and the ability to speak freely and to debate thoughts openly all that stuff still exists with a lot of people here But there's a lot of people that are willing to give that up.

[1795] They're willing to give that up, but their side can win.

[1796] And it's very confusing because it's a mixture of toxic tribalism and short -sightedness mixed with ideology.

[1797] And it's a disturbing moment in time.

[1798] It really is.

[1799] So how do you, what do you think we, how can we oppose Chinese regime?

[1800] It's infiltrating everywhere.

[1801] That's a good question.

[1802] You know, when you see John Sina from the WWE apologizing for calling Taiwan a country.

[1803] And you're like, holy shit.

[1804] Lauren James.

[1805] Yeah.

[1806] This guy talking about justice all day long in America.

[1807] Yeah.

[1808] So what do we do with China?

[1809] Well, they're corrupted by money.

[1810] That's the problem.

[1811] The problem is China.

[1812] Look, when that movie, The Fast and the Furious came out, I think the numbers, I'm roughly saying the numbers.

[1813] But I think the numbers were, the box office weekend was 160 million.

[1814] dollars a hundred and thirty six million of it was from China yeah it's terrifying so when he had to apologize and said i'm so sorry i made a mistake i was really tired all he did was called taiwan a country i mean it wasn't it wasn't something where he said you know china's a terrible place it sucks i hate the chinese people i hate he didn't say anything like that he didn't say anything like that all he said was he called taiwan a country it's crazy it's crazy that people are willing to give a country like China that much power because of money.

[1815] But that's the reality of this world that we live in.

[1816] We don't manufacture anything in America anymore.

[1817] I mean, all these woke people tweeting on iPhones that are made at Foxcon in China where they have nets around the building to stop people from jumping off the roof because there's so many people that commit suicide that they have to have fucking nets.

[1818] And the fact that people don't make that connection, they don't understand how crazy that is, that you're literally supporting this company that is making people work so much for so little and they're so desperate and so sad that they're jumping off roofs in numbers so high they have to put nets on them.

[1819] No one even brings it up.

[1820] Convenient.

[1821] Yeah.

[1822] It's a strange form of hypocrisy.

[1823] Yeah.

[1824] Do you think, I mean, I don't think capitalism is a problem because then people say oh because of the capitalism make people greedy right because people in capitalist countries were way better than people in communist country that I've seen and way less corrupt I think they look at the worst examples of capitalism and there are horrible examples of capitalism and there are people that are willing to do anything for money I mean you've seen that with people like John Cena apologizing for China right And that's the kind of thing where that is a form of capitalism that you're seeing, apologizing to the Chinese Communist Party, but it really is about capitalism.

[1825] It's about his ability to make money and the chance that he might lose money or that his film might not be distributed over there anymore anymore.

[1826] It's like a real problem that he had to apologize for.

[1827] You're seeing that with like these subprime mortgages that cause the housing collapse.

[1828] You're seeing that with when you see corruption, the stock market.

[1829] or when you see that with you, you see any kind of savings and loans corruption.

[1830] When it is financial corruption and stealing money and the corporate influence that they have on politicians and lobbyists and special interest groups, that's all capitalism run amok, right?

[1831] But the bare bones of it, the idea that there's many parts of this country that are still a meritocracy, there's many parts of this country where you can work hard and do better for yourself and accomplish things and provide a service that people in.

[1832] enjoy and they give you money and the harder you work and the better your product is the more you profit from it and that gives people incentive to do well that the foundation of that still exists we just have to be very careful that we don't give that up we have to be very careful that we don't give that up and give the power over to the government because the government is ultimately they're human beings and people human beings when they have unchecked power it's very dangerous and it has been throughout history the default position if you go throughout history and you look at all of the governments that existed until America really came along, it's dictators.

[1833] Yeah.

[1834] All of it.

[1835] It's always been the case.

[1836] It's always been one group that's in power.

[1837] The best way to be in power is to be ruthless and to attack anytime you're challenged and confronted and punish people in open air, execute them publicly.

[1838] Any dissent gets shut down instantaneously.

[1839] Censor any speech that doesn't go along with the speech.

[1840] that the government is projecting that's always been the standard that's been the standard throughout human history every king every emperor they all did the same thing until the United States and there's people in the United States that are willing to give that up yeah they're willing to give that up because they want their side to win and it's terrifying it is it's terrifying because once you give it up you're never getting it back unless we go to war again we go once we have a civil war in this country and then if we have a civil war in this country gets who's going to sneak in.

[1841] China.

[1842] China's going to sneak in and they're going to take over all sorts of corporations by buying them out.

[1843] They're going to take over all sorts of politicians by influencing their campaigns and changing the laws that they're willing to support and changing the amendments and the different ways that we govern the country.

[1844] They're going to change the way people vote.

[1845] They're going to change all kinds of things.

[1846] And this is just, it's just It's almost what the founding, the founding fathers somehow or another knew that this could happen.

[1847] When they put in place the Bill of Rights and all these amendments, when they were putting in the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, all these amendments, they were doing it because they understood human nature.

[1848] They understood what has happened in the past when people have organized, what has happened in the past, when free speech has been stifled.

[1849] What has happened in the past when we allow someone to censor us and we allow someone to dictate what gets discussed and what doesn't get discussed?

[1850] It's very dangerous.

[1851] I mean, the only thing at Columbia entire four years that I hear is that the only way to solve the problem that we have is tearing down this foundation of this country.

[1852] Because the Constitution itself is a bigotry written by white supremacist.

[1853] So that is, I mean, I don't know.

[1854] That's every conclusion of every class that I took.

[1855] It's crazy.

[1856] What's the alternative?

[1857] The alternative is socialism, and they always say that socialism hasn't been done correctly.

[1858] Okay.

[1859] But the problem with socialism is what Jordan talks about all the time, Jordan Peterson, he says, you cannot have an equality of outcome.

[1860] And it's true, you can't.

[1861] It's very dangerous.

[1862] And people don't see it that way.

[1863] They tried, and one guy became a god, and everybody don't even know they are slaves now.

[1864] And you can manipulate the truth to fail.

[1865] the narrative that allows you to stay in power and keep utilizing the tools that allowed you to get into power in the first place and then make it no different than every other government that's ever controlled the people throughout human history.

[1866] We have a chance to not have it like that in this country.

[1867] That's why when people oppose universal restrictions, when people oppose widespread government powers to do things.

[1868] Like that was one of the big oppositions, one of the big things that people opposed about lockdowns was not that we shouldn't be careful with vulnerable people during a pandemic.

[1869] The problem is you're giving the government the ability to decide what is essential and what is not essential.

[1870] Who can work and who can't work?

[1871] What chances is you can take and not take.

[1872] And they're not being honest about all sorts of aspects of the disease.

[1873] They weren't even willing to discuss whether or not this disease possibly was leaked from a lab until long after Trump was out of office.

[1874] And even to this day, liberals are terrified of bringing that up because they think that if you bring it up, somehow or another it can connect you to Trump, or Fox News, or you've said something that Fox News said, what if Fox News is right?

[1875] Do you care about the truth or do you care about supporting your side?

[1876] Do you care about your tribe?

[1877] And more people are terrified of being rejected by their tribe than they are of the truth not getting out.

[1878] You should be terrified of lies.

[1879] You should be terrified of the truth not getting out.

[1880] You should, you don't know what the landscape is unless you're allowed to assess and analyze all the aspects of life, all of them, and people are terrified of doing that today.

[1881] And a lot of it is because of social media.

[1882] It's because there's so many people that just live on social media all day long, you know, and they're on there, just constantly going to war in the worst way possible with text messages.

[1883] Get triggered by every single thing they see.

[1884] Well, didn't they talk to you about that in Columbia too they tell you about things that triggered you so before the class they send your email and say oh in this material we're gonna talk about maybe racism or rape or any kind of oppression whatever it is if you it hurts you it triggers your feelings do not even do the reading and don't even come to the class and in before the class they announced even at any point during this class it triggers your feelings leave the class and don't even tell me what what you fear and they people emotionally not stable so they bring the comfort dogs in the classroom.

[1885] They bring dogs?

[1886] Yeah.

[1887] So dogs are licking around the people because they need the comfort from the animals, right?

[1888] They cannot even sit in the...

[1889] How many dogs?

[1890] Several dogs at a per class, right?

[1891] What if the dogs start fighting?

[1892] They bark and they leak and they chew and I asked one day, like, can I take my baby?

[1893] He was going to take a nap in the straw.

[1894] I said, no. So they say no to the baby, but it's okay with the dogs.

[1895] No babies, but you can have a dog.

[1896] Yeah.

[1897] And, yeah, this is the...

[1898] It's my emotional support baby.

[1899] Exactly.

[1900] What if I said?

[1901] I get triggered easily so I get a baby.

[1902] I wonder.

[1903] Why can't you do that?

[1904] Why can't you say that?

[1905] But this is so madness.

[1906] The problem is your baby's half white.

[1907] Yeah.

[1908] And so your baby might be racist.

[1909] Exactly.

[1910] Your baby might be a part of the patriarchy.

[1911] But what is this self -loading?

[1912] Why are they committing suicide by themselves as a civilization?

[1913] Like, this is the thing.

[1914] In North Korea, we have a gun.

[1915] next to our head.

[1916] But in this country, you have freedom to learn and read and think, why are they doing this?

[1917] It's so the thing about human nature, right?

[1918] We chose Hitler.

[1919] We voted him.

[1920] Right, people did that.

[1921] You know, there's an expression that I've said on this podcast many times, but I'll say it again, is that hard times create hard men.

[1922] Hard men create soft times.

[1923] Soft times create soft men.

[1924] Soft men create hard times.

[1925] we are now around soft men and hard times we're in the time of toxic masculinity right where you could be toxicly male and then if you're if you're suppressing masculinity you're going to bring on hard times you're going there's it doesn't mean masculinity doesn't mean you're mean you're angry it means strength it means discipline it means the ability like like You need a military, and if you don't think you need a military, you need to go and pay attention to the rest of the world.

[1926] Because there's militaries all over the world that are doing horrific things.

[1927] If you don't have a military in this country that can combat that and at least act as a deterrent to them doing things, you're going to get taken over.

[1928] That's what's happened.

[1929] I mean, look what's happening to Hong Kong, right?

[1930] I mean, this is a city that essentially doesn't have a military, and they were a British colony for a long time, and they gave it back over to China.

[1931] and they were kind of acting like they were independent until recently.

[1932] And during the pandemic, they ramped it up and it's gotten even worse.

[1933] It's exactly what we talked about.

[1934] You can't be weak.

[1935] And in this country, being weak is thought of as a virtue.

[1936] Jordan Peterson has a really interesting way of looking at this.

[1937] And he said it to me once, and it made a lot of sense.

[1938] He said, people think that you should be weak and you should be docile.

[1939] and then you should be a pacifist.

[1940] He goes, no, you should be a monster.

[1941] He said, you should be a monster, you should be ruthlessly ambitious, and then learn how to control it.

[1942] And it's that old expression.

[1943] It's better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.

[1944] Wow.

[1945] It's an old expression, but it makes sense.

[1946] Because it doesn't mean that you can't be kind if you're strong, but it does mean you can't be strong if you're weak if you're weak you're fucked and there's a lot of weak people in this country right now that are trying to take control and they're gathering up all the other weak people and they say yeah let's all be weak together and they're willing to embrace all sorts of ideas that have been disproven not just disproven that have caused the deaths of untold millions of people and Mao is China and Stalinist Russia and it's crazy And they're short -sided, and they're short -sided because in the short -term, they want their tribe to win, and there's so many weak people that'll join along with them.

[1947] There's so many just simple -minded dullards that just want to promote their tribe.

[1948] Yeah.

[1949] I mean, they encourage you to be triggered.

[1950] They encourage you to be weak, right?

[1951] When you go, then they try not to expose you to any reality.

[1952] That's the thing where university does, like, share you.

[1953] and you are never getting a real sense of the word.

[1954] I mean, the fact they cannot, they trigger the bite hearing of the word rape.

[1955] What they're going to do when they get raped?

[1956] They're never going to revive again afterwards.

[1957] Well, it's, the disturbing thing is that when you're learning things, if you're going to learn, you're going to be exposed to some horrific truths.

[1958] Yeah.

[1959] Like if you're going to learn about Stalin, you're going to, I mean, I've talked to my friend Lex Friedman when he was talking to.

[1960] me about some of the experiences that his grandmother's people had when Stalin was running Russia.

[1961] And people were eating their own children.

[1962] I mean, that's...

[1963] And it's the same sort of thing.

[1964] They were starving these people to death in order to keep control of them.

[1965] And the results were horrific.

[1966] If you don't hear that, if you don't hear that in all of its terrifying, brutal detail, then you're not going to be a way.

[1967] And even then, you're not going to really be aware.

[1968] Like, you're aware.

[1969] You are absolutely aware of what can happen when things go horrifically wrong because you are born into a society that was horrifically wrong.

[1970] You were born into this terrifying dictatorship that exists right now.

[1971] While you and I are sitting here in Austin, Texas, talking, drinking coffee, having a good old time, there's people in concentration camps for no fault of their own in a country of you were born.

[1972] And if that doesn't get discussed, people don't understand.

[1973] If you say, oh, are you triggered by this?

[1974] Well, you don't have to hear it.

[1975] You're not going to learn.

[1976] If we're not going to expose these things, we're not going to learn.

[1977] And even then, just the abstract concepts that you're discussing it, the way you're discussing it, it's resonating.

[1978] I understand what you're saying, but I don't know what the fuck you experienced.

[1979] I'd have to go there.

[1980] I would have to live your life.

[1981] There's only, you would have to, like, physically experience it in person in order for it to really get into your head.

[1982] head and we're not even allowing kids to read words that fuck with their heads yeah no it's almost you are so capable and by going to this school system they make you almost a handicap they disable you they change your potential and as you say we're born as a warrior who knows but they make us too incapable of anything and the biggest problem you have is somebody calls you wrong pronoun and this triggers and this makes them depressed and this is a thing or they think it's the biggest injustice they've ever seen.

[1983] Yeah, we've weaponized people being offended, too.

[1984] Yeah.

[1985] When people are offended, they get a massive amount of extra attention.

[1986] All they have to do is yell about it and scream about it and talk about how horrible it is.

[1987] And everyone is like, oh, my God, I hear your truth.

[1988] I feel you when you're saying this.

[1989] And it makes them special.

[1990] You're encouraging people to act up instead of encouraging people to change their perspective and to see things for what they are or to look at the way other people see things.

[1991] To look at it from someone else's viewpoint, from someone else's life, from someone else's learned experiences.

[1992] No, it was really funny.

[1993] Like, while I was writing my book, my agent was telling me, my editor was telling me, like, you're traumatized.

[1994] So you need to go see somebody called a therapist, right?

[1995] So it's like, what the heck is therapist?

[1996] And then they were like, oh, you gave, like, pay her, like, she's normally $200, I mean, $700 per hour.

[1997] she's going to give you a discount so per hour $200 an hour really that's what they get but then like she's going to give me a discount rate so $200 per hour basically go talk to her how hard my life was and then I was like the fact that I know what trauma is what PTSD is the fact that there are people like right now 25 millions of my people don't even know what trauma is right this is ridiculous and I was like I mean What is the point of me, then surviving all of that?

[1998] Now it's going to complaining how hard it was.

[1999] What is the point of me surviving any of it?

[2000] So someone can tell you you're going to be okay.

[2001] It's okay to have these feelings.

[2002] Exactly.

[2003] You know what I'm okay?

[2004] It's okay to have these feelings.

[2005] Yeah, it's okay to hate man. It's okay to be bitter, right?

[2006] It's okay to be complaining and blaming everything else.

[2007] Did you go to therapy?

[2008] Did you do it?

[2009] Absolutely not.

[2010] But, I mean, 80 % of my investment bankers, consulting friends in your go to therapy and I support that they should is they can afford it it's a thing but the fact I couldn't fathom in the beginning that you need to go to therapy to survive in Manhattan I think people need to be able to talk to people about things to try to work through them and I think a lot of people feel like they can't find someone in their life that they trust enough with their true feelings and their real thoughts and that's a that's a sad testament to the kind of relationships that a lot of people have and a lot of friendships and and and romantic relationships that people have in their life that they can't talk openly about the real live experiences it's like people like we have so much versions of ourselves inside us right like i can see why people become the guards of concentration clamps right like that's a thing humans are not initially good or bad it's all about how we shape them when you were talking about experiencing dead bodies in the street but feeling nothing or feeling that boy with his intestines hanging out his back and feeling nothing yeah that's because of the way you grew up yeah that's a thing like humans are most adaptive species we are so adaptable yeah and that's also good and bad is we can adapt We can adapt to the concentration camps, right?

[2011] We can be the guards and not feel guilty about it.

[2012] And I think it's not talking about that, not talking about the evil or what we are capable of the darkness.

[2013] That's that, like, everything in North Korean news is wonderful things.

[2014] Now in this country, because they say there's no room for hate speech, they want everything to be lo -l -l -l -l -lal, happy, flowery words.

[2015] Yeah.

[2016] But the thing is, we have darks, no matter what you do, they're going to be murderers, they're going to be rapist.

[2017] Yeah.

[2018] Even we don't talk about rape, rape got not happen.

[2019] So getting rid of these people and deep platforming them, cancelling them.

[2020] We don't get rid of actual problem.

[2021] So in a way, it's better off us to talk about our full nature, what we are actually capable of, right?

[2022] We can be so resilient, compassionate beings, or we can be complete, like, asshole, like, not caring about anything at all, like Kim Jong -un.

[2023] And we have to learn why people think differently than us.

[2024] And the only way you can do that is by talking to that.

[2025] Exactly.

[2026] And there's a lot of those people that think in a way that you find problematic, they can be converted.

[2027] They can be talked to.

[2028] But not if you treat them like they're the enemy and cast them aside and block them from communicating.

[2029] Yeah.

[2030] It's like there's a thing.

[2031] Like, I would you rather, like, I would rather know if there's a hit or exist.

[2032] When you do the genocide, I wouldn't know about it.

[2033] Would you not want to know about it?

[2034] I wouldn't know if somebody planning that.

[2035] Right.

[2036] They were like people in the past were on Facebook.

[2037] posting i'm gonna commit a like murder in the sun's church they post on facebook isn't it much better for fbi to know that than not giving them the platform so we don't know who's like planning the mass murder right now right right when did you when do you feel like because you had this time in your life where you could see that boy with his intestines hanging out of his back and it didn't bother you you didn't feel anything when do you think you started to feel things with my son the hardest thing wasn't like learning about the system or none of that the even China like I was always numb like even when I was raped I was like looking at myself some of the roof like someone in the corners and like oh that's not me how can it be happening to me right I was completely ignoring that and in North Korea you don't like you're so numb in your brain when I had my son in America in 2018 that's when I was feeling things and I was so grateful that I felt even sadness you were worried that you wouldn't feel it I was very worried like it's yeah feeling something was very challenging and giving birth to my son brought a lot of new feelings to me and of course the compassion is one of them right like I worry about the I won the world to be a beautiful place for him, right?

[2038] I actually care about the humans.

[2039] And I don't know, this part is like, this is edited the first time that I knew what love was and unconditional love was, did you, I saw that you had a Rick Dublin here.

[2040] Yes.

[2041] I had one of those experiences, like unplanned.

[2042] Nobody knew.

[2043] The MDMA, which was that what it was?

[2044] In California.

[2045] And that's, but until then, people told him, oh, I love you.

[2046] I was like, if you don't sleep between me, wait me, want something, why would you love me, right?

[2047] I never understood that unconditioned love between humans.

[2048] Never felt like safe, so.

[2049] You never felt love with friends?

[2050] No, it was so, I mean, I learned love later, really better in life, so I didn't, I knew the word, but I didn't actually ever felt it.

[2051] So when I owned that, for the first time, I was like, all I felt was love and zero, zero fear.

[2052] And that sounds like, I know that when these people say they love me, actually, this is how they fear, actually.

[2053] It's possible to love somebody unconditionally.

[2054] And after that, I became pregnant because I wasn't able to get pregnant from all my trauma I had.

[2055] I had three IVF cycles at 22.

[2056] And after that medicine, something on the relaxing my body, I was able to conceive.

[2057] And I had my son.

[2058] I think a lot of people could benefit from one of those experiences.

[2059] Yeah.

[2060] I think it would change a lot about the way we look at life, the way we look at each other, and would just eliminate a lot of the anger that people have.

[2061] A lot of the misplaced anger, unproductive, unhelpful, corrosive, dangerous anger for no reason.

[2062] There's so much of it.

[2063] So much of it is so confusing.

[2064] And so much of it is based on our own insecurities and our own insecurities and our, fear that other people won't love us back.

[2065] Yeah.

[2066] And you, if you do one of those experiences with other people and you're all in it together, you realize, wow.

[2067] So the world could be like this all the time.

[2068] Exactly.

[2069] World can be so different, isn't it?

[2070] Yeah.

[2071] It can be, everything can be understood.

[2072] Like, that's a thing.

[2073] Like, in the center of everything, there's love.

[2074] And I didn't know what love was in time of my life.

[2075] That's the thing.

[2076] When people ask me, if you can be on North Korean television, what would you tell them?

[2077] I think I would tell them I love you because they never heard that before they might not know even know what I'm saying what the heck she says saying she loves me right but I think that's a thing like I did not know what it was but everything that we do for love we have children for love right why do we even live everything the point of life is like love and I did not know that until I had a point so I mean that's why I cannot be bitter I love man like my son is a man my father was a man even though a lot of experiences I had to be, the man was negative, that I was able to overcome it, right?

[2078] But I think a lot of people cannot overcome that trauma because they're just not able to make that connection.

[2079] It's one of the terrifying lessons of being a human beings that there can be wonderful, loving experiences at the same time where horrific things are happening somewhere else.

[2080] And you know better than anybody alive because of your, the country where you were, born.

[2081] That's happening right now that there's a place where there is no love and everyone's afraid.

[2082] Yeah.

[2083] And there's just this horrific regime that's running this country and keeping people starving.

[2084] Yeah.

[2085] And it's happening at the same time as iPhones and the internet and electric cars and all the wonderful things that we're experiencing here in America.

[2086] It's the worst example of human life and it exists simultaneously.

[2087] I know it's a thing.

[2088] I thought if I can show them, tell them what's happening.

[2089] I thought something going to change, right?

[2090] But of course not.

[2091] It's not.

[2092] And there's a reason why these problems keep existing.

[2093] But the thing is, I saw that one of the interview we did with Elon Musk, right?

[2094] I have to be hopeful because what's the alternative?

[2095] Yes.

[2096] What is the alternative to be hopeful?

[2097] Nothing else.

[2098] That's a thing.

[2099] That's why even though I don't know people are going to now listen to me and help me to raise awareness and condemn Chinese regime to stop.

[2100] I don't know that's going to happen, but I got to be hopeful.

[2101] That's the only thing we have as a humanity.

[2102] We got to be hopeful, and we can do so much when we keep that hope alive.

[2103] It's just terrifying that it's ignored by the powers of be in not just this country, but many countries, that they're not all just standing up and saying that this is an atrocity that's happening inside of our lifetime.

[2104] We're doing nothing about it.

[2105] It's a thing like, I have no problem when people are going like at the Canada a good store, putting the, like, bloods on them, like in New York, Soho, right?

[2106] I remember when I'm in South Korea, this is, like, on TV, there's a national concert with the celebrities and singing and crying.

[2107] I thought, like, okay, big disaster happened, right?

[2108] While these people all emotion and crying, and it was a fundraising for the dogs and puppies and animals.

[2109] People eating animals?

[2110] No, no, it was just, like, their environment, how shelter, like, environment is hard for these animals, how it's not clean.

[2111] how they don't know.

[2112] Okay, animal shelters, right.

[2113] So they were crying, and I was initially shocked.

[2114] Like, what do you mean animals have rights, right?

[2115] As a human being, I did not know I had the rights as a human.

[2116] Right, right, right.

[2117] And what the F really?

[2118] Like, animals, puppies have rights here?

[2119] And then, on top of that, I go meet so many people, the philanthropists, and they are willing to give millions of dollars to save animals and dolphins and little ducks that don't die from Canada goose, but they do not want to rescue this girl or are raped every single day.

[2120] And somehow, I think, this anti -human sentiment, I don't know even what that is.

[2121] Like, the fact that we care about animals, right, it's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

[2122] Yeah.

[2123] You care that something cannot speak for themselves.

[2124] They are vulnerable.

[2125] And there are people, a lot of people cannot speak for themselves right now.

[2126] As you said, being free is exception.

[2127] This is a very unusual thing, even till this age, like 4 billion people living under some authoritarian dictatorship countries.

[2128] So what we got is really unique.

[2129] And people somehow refuse to speak for another human being.

[2130] They would rather speak for a little puppy.

[2131] And it's very that hypocrisy that doesn't make sense.

[2132] Like if someone's suffering that bothers you, why the human suffering doesn't bother you?

[2133] I think it's so big and so insurmountable that they don't feel like they can do anything about it.

[2134] so they're scared and so they don't speak about it because to actually do something would require an enormous effort to do something to change the regime of North Korea like what does a person who lives in Berkeley who loves to support you know social justice causes how is that person going to affect the the dictatorship that's happening right now in North Korea it feels like they can't do anything about it they can tweet about what's happening that China does to North Koreans yeah they're scared to even tweet about China They did rather tweet calling, you know, some white guy racist inherently or some, you know, this person or that or that person or this and come up with some sort of, you know, insults for people that don't agree with what they agree with.

[2135] It's, it seems too big.

[2136] It's a, it seems like they can't put a dent in it.

[2137] But that's a lie, though, they are telling themselves.

[2138] Little thing that even later tweet would help.

[2139] I think a lot of people don't even know about it.

[2140] Exactly.

[2141] That's the thing.

[2142] Like the mainstream doesn't give a platform to the people who want to challenge the CCP.

[2143] So, I mean, I mean, these girls who were captured by Taliban, ISIS, a few hundred thousand people who are oppressed gets a Nobel Peace Prize, right?

[2144] Yeah.

[2145] They're like 25 million people oppressed.

[2146] When did you hear anybody world recognizes from North Korea or anything for this cause?

[2147] What did you think when Trump met with Kim Jong -un?

[2148] Well, we did Trump, right?

[2149] That's a thing.

[2150] it seems like it seems like Trump got everything do wrong or everything got to be right right I mean everybody nobody's perfect I do think Trump was really right on calling out China he was the first president actually talked about to Xi Jinping that you gotta fix North Korea because you enable it that was the first president ever mentioned China with North Korea he was that was great but sitting down with Kim Jong -un without any pre -concession because think about it inside North Korea there are military, powerful men.

[2151] And they think if Kim Jong -un is backed by American president, they're not going to start a coup or do anything about it.

[2152] So for Kim Jong -un was a very good opportunity to legitimize his power within a country inside North Korea to consolidate that power.

[2153] Because until that point, even Xi Jinping didn't invite Kim Jong -un to China over, even once.

[2154] So Kim Jong was more like this young man, nobody accepted.

[2155] But Trump wanted me with Kim Jong -un, Xi Jinping invited Kim Jong -un to over first before Trump meeting.

[2156] So that's how he went to China for the first time, meeting Xi Jinping.

[2157] Because he knew that Trump was going to meet him.

[2158] So, I mean, of course, China won't have influence beforehand.

[2159] That's right before the meeting he went to China first.

[2160] And until that point, China didn't even invite Kim Jong.

[2161] It was too lower for them.

[2162] Really?

[2163] They would not even recommend.

[2164] Yeah, they were like a little brother's puppet state.

[2165] So they would not treat, like, Kim Jong like a leader.

[2166] He didn't even get the invitation to visit China.

[2167] Is there a real possibility that someone could overthrow him from within the country?

[2168] It's impossible because China is behind it.

[2169] China is fully behind of a, you know, China lend this land for 200 years, 50 years on this mine towns, mining, blah, blah, everything is lent to China.

[2170] So North Korea is not Chinese, and the labor is free for the Chinese to use.

[2171] so everything is now Chinese in North Korea it's China basically nothing is North Korea's anymore wow I mean it's minds everything is like land like 20 years that's the least they have I mean how many generations that change in 200 years time right so it's China's North Korea is China there is really no distinction at this point and China is very clever in the way they've they have all these interests and all different parts of the world in Africa and all these different minds and it's like all through economic power that's how they disable them and enslaved to their ideology and then they cannot speak up and that's happening to American even Ivy League schools get funding from China so all these researches like papers they don't do things that challenge their narrative right and the media Hollywood right they need the money from China so they are not going to do anything about it so that's how slowly the infiltrate every sector that we have right now you know part of me is um very upset that more people have not talked to you well because i'm a liar because i'm a liar i'm the propaganda puppet of the west CIA trained me that's what they say oh yeah so when i was starting giving interviews in the beginning that like 15 and 13 the age difference that I did not know right and then like the mountain that I climbed they went to Google map somewhere and checked the altitude so basically silented altitude I shouldn't have said it was a mountain it was a high hill but as a child like I don't know what attitude is a hill I still don't know the difference so I said the mountain that she's alive because she while she climbed was a hill so they try to get you on a technicality yeah with that with the altitude to the hill, and then also on the tacticality with the age, which you explained.

[2172] So she's, like, trying to change her now.

[2173] But one thing I did hide was that I trafficked in China.

[2174] Because in South Korea, still girls, virginities, everything.

[2175] And I wasn't planning to come to America, right?

[2176] I didn't even have a right to come here.

[2177] I was South Korea, and I wanted to have a child.

[2178] I wanted a family.

[2179] And if I say I was raped two years by a human trafficker, who's going to any normal same family going to take me?

[2180] So I had to lie that I said I was okay.

[2181] My mom only raped and she covered me. And when I was writing my book, I knew, I mean, of course, Penguin is not stupid.

[2182] They took a legal team with the people with me and then got the live recording of people who cross desert with me, who grew up with me, everybody.

[2183] So they got the live recording in the legal team.

[2184] So that's why after the book, there's not even one single accusation because they were going to sue afterwards.

[2185] Like we have entire evidence.

[2186] So it was all everything before the book.

[2187] And also that is the thing is, I mean, a lot of Maoist, Leninists, they sympathize North Korean regime, right?

[2188] So many people hate America.

[2189] And I'm here saying America is the best country in human history.

[2190] Of course, I now became the symbol of this bigotry.

[2191] But I'm just shocked that more people in America are not talking to.

[2192] that more of these mainstream outlets don't want to hear your story.

[2193] Because of China peace, my story is very inconvenient.

[2194] Because I'm a slave.

[2195] Actually, I was a slave.

[2196] And I was bought by Chinese and exploited by them.

[2197] So how do they cover my story without including China peace?

[2198] It's impossibility.

[2199] I can't believe that that's keeping people like the Washington Post or the New York Times.

[2200] I know, but it's hard to believe that this isn't just, a human story, a staggering human story, an amazing human story in terms of like the education that you've had, the experiences that you've had, the way you've changed and evolved, and having escaped from North Korea, into China, and then to South Korea, and then eventually to America, and experienced all these things from this very unique perspective.

[2201] I mean, it's an incredible story.

[2202] But no, because they expect me to become now victim, right?

[2203] because they expect me to hate all the men and the system and not but like I do not tell like I'm not a victim I'm very grateful like my book starts that there are two things I'm grateful for that I was born in North Korea and that I escaped so it's like I don't fit the narrative they're trying to portray in any way wow just that's very disappointing to me that there is a narrative that they want you to portray it because your actual story is a very human story and it's a it's a contemporary story that's very important when you look at the way the world is is being run certain parts of it like north korea or like china it's this is this is from a person like yourself no one else is going to be able to tell that story your story is it's impossible for anyone that hasn't experienced it to tell it has to be you yeah but that's why i'm grateful despite all that, you know, like there's, I mean, North Korea did everything they could to character assassinate me because I mean, that's what they have the biggest hacker, hackers, and they have the armies of hackings and go harass people and hack the Sony studio, remember when they were made a movie, so they're exactly the same thing, they were reaching out to Penguin.

[2204] My editors, like, we're going to blow a penguin if you write this book.

[2205] And there's so much harassment.

[2206] and internally we were so scared like penguin people are like we don't want to lose our job we don't want to blow up so they don't even talk about in the public that you get attacked from North Korean regime like North Koreans' diplomat in London was reaching out to my editor to sit down meet them in person wow to stop the book so and of course like everything is written on media that's all believable right everything's written then people just believe whatever it was so it's now that's what North Korea is so that like creating this narrative and character assassin people and eventually doesn't work they're going to kill you directly and that's what they did initially they were like threatening me and stop talking about it and then I still did so they put entire three generations of my family on that North Korean propaganda channel and they made them to denounce me and they were gone so they're gone yeah after because I still have agents in North Korea and They all disappeared.

[2207] So they were all killed.

[2208] Yeah.

[2209] I mean, concentration again means death.

[2210] So even including my neighbors, and that was so unbelievable is that, I mean, what's the crime of being a neighbor?

[2211] They were not even that close to me. But these neighbors, the fact that they knew me, that was their crime.

[2212] And this video is on YouTube.

[2213] And they, so they went after everyone you knew.

[2214] Yeah, everybody.

[2215] Everybody.

[2216] Everybody.

[2217] in my entire town and entire my father's side and mother's side entire generation and my cousin that I raised and yeah that's the thing like this is I knew this is an evil regime but I somehow thought like how can they be threatened by 13 years old I'm not even sharing how North Korea develops their missile program right all I'm saying is what the UN says like there is a public execution you see from satellite photos, you see.

[2218] And there's like 33 ,000 North Kentucky factors made to South Korea.

[2219] They talk about starvation.

[2220] And then that we get captured in China and being sold, and there's documentaries about it.

[2221] So I'm not even sharing the first class information.

[2222] I just didn't think they were going to be threatened.

[2223] I just really didn't think that I was going to be a threatening to them at all.

[2224] And well, they don't like allow any dissent.

[2225] what do you think is going to happen with that country like china they can last a lot longer they might last longer than us they might beat us because that's a thing like it's um as you said people become softened and they do not know how to be resilient right and also as you said people here be surrounding such a goodness of the world they don't recognize they don't even know how evil can be a man be like a regime can be like they don't know how cruel these regimes are they don't even recognize the darkness they see so I think because our inability to recognize this crime and darkness I think they might outlast us so that is my biggest fear so you have a genuine concern that this country could collapse yeah I mean every civilian civilization collapsed.

[2226] Persians, I mean, how many civilization before us came.

[2227] Right, the Greeks, the Romans.

[2228] Exactly, so there shouldn't be any exception to Western civilization.

[2229] If we do not appreciate this civilization, the alignment that we got.

[2230] Especially if you pay attention to what's going on right now.

[2231] Of course.

[2232] And especially the way it's emanating from the universities, which is what's teaching and, you know, putting ideas in the minds of young people who will then go on to run things.

[2233] This foundation is corrupt.

[2234] The only way that is to us to change is getting rid of the Western civilization, getting rid of American constitution.

[2235] Right, it's not, I'm not saying, like every class you set up at Columbia, that's how they end the class, right?

[2236] Every problem goes and going back to root, getting rid of white men, they are the problem.

[2237] They are the source of every single problem that we have.

[2238] They mess of Africa, they miss of Asia, they miss of every single thing.

[2239] and like one class I remember at the end of senior year taking the music class right it should be the least political Western music is a core one of the core curriculum and the professor asking who has a problem studying Western music and of course everybody raised their hands because because of the spigots like Mozart and Beethoven they silence all the minority groups we have to listen to the speakers right now and it's the fact that Columbia having this call is like a shame and so I'm like I'm sick in the West.

[2240] What's the problem studying Western music in the West?

[2241] Right.

[2242] Well, not only that, you're studying musical history.

[2243] You can't deny the history.

[2244] You can't deny that these people made this music.

[2245] It doesn't absolve anyone of any crimes that they committed, if they committed crimes.

[2246] But to deny it all.

[2247] Yeah.

[2248] And they say, like, reading Jay in Austin is like a hidden oppression that we don't see because she was living in a time of white colonialism and white supremac.

[2249] So the fact that you read Jane Austen is you get subconscious brainwashed.

[2250] This is how you need to look for hidden oppression.

[2251] Oh, my God.

[2252] It's so disturbing.

[2253] It's so real, though.

[2254] I mean, that's really what's happening right now, and people are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to have your children indoctrinated into these ideas.

[2255] Yeah.

[2256] I don't know where we're going to end up in 10 years.

[2257] I don't know.

[2258] I don't know I don't know either but I really enjoy talking to you thank you very much you're a very very brave person and I think that your message is it's very important and it's also there's no one else who can tell it it has to be someone like you who's gone through what you've gone through and I think it's huge for the world to hear it's it's incredibly significant and I hope more people want to talk to you.

[2259] No, I think I'm so grateful that in the desert, when I was crossing the desert, my father died a few months from a cancer he had in the concentration camp.

[2260] And he died, and I had nobody to call, right?

[2261] He died in the morning, 7 a .m., waiting till night, so I can, like, bury him in the middle of a mountain.

[2262] And I couldn't even cry, because if you cry, people are going to neighbor's going to hear.

[2263] So I'm numb, sitting his next to dead body, and I was thinking, wow, like being a human means nothing.

[2264] Like, even dog dies, you go to your neighbor and ask them, like, your dog died.

[2265] And in that desert, like, that's a thing, like, I wasn't afraid of dying.

[2266] I was just, like, thinking, nobody knew that I existed.

[2267] Nobody knew that I came to this earth and left in this middle of desert.

[2268] And that's the thing, like, nobody knows that North Koreans exist.

[2269] Nobody knows our stories.

[2270] So I think the fact that people knows my father and my people itself, it's the biggest comfort for me. You know, I think that's not even given to us.

[2271] They don't know we exist.

[2272] So I'm so grateful that you gave me this opportunity.

[2273] Well, I'm very grateful you came here just to talk about it and to tell people.

[2274] And I'm glad a lot of people are going to hear this.

[2275] Thank you.

[2276] Thank you.

[2277] All right.

[2278] Goodbye, good.