"I literally crossed through the middle of the Gobi Desert to be free. They don't know how hard it is to be free," she continued. "These kids keep saying how they’re oppressed, how much injustice they've experienced. "Because I have seen oppression, I know what it looks like," Park said, noting she had seen 13 people die of starvation. Park took aim at students who told stories of being oppressed, arguing they did not know what real oppression looks like. She noted that as she was growing up in North Korea, she had no concept of love and liberty. Park said she used to engage professors and fellow students in debates and arguments but learned quickly “how to just shut up" so she could maintain her grades and GPA. "It felt like the regression in civilization."
I sometimes say 'he' or 'she' by mistake, and now they are going to ask me to call them 'they'? How the heck do I incorporate that in my sentences?" Park asked. The North Korean defector was also confused about issues related to gender and language, recalling how every class would require students to tell the class their preferred pronouns. "The math problems would say, 'There are four American bastards, you kill two of them, how many American bastards are left to kill?'"
"’American bastard' was one word for North Koreans,” Park said she was taught growing up. Park noted that such incidents were not isolated, as every class she took at the school contained the kind of anti-American propaganda she had grown up with as a young student in North Korea. "Then, she was like, 'Did you know that those writers, who had a colonial mindset, were racists and bigots who wrote those books? So they are subconsciously brainwashing you.'" "I said, ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing," Park said. In one instance, Park said she was “scolded” by a staff member for saying she enjoyed classic literature such as Jane Austen. One such similarity Park noticed was an anti-Western sentiment, but she also noted that other red flags, such as collective guilt and extreme political correctness, were also pervasive at the school. STUDENT GOVERNMENT RECUSES PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH COMMITTEE MEMBER BECAUSE OF HIS CONSERVATIVE VIEWS I thought America was different, but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying." But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think," Park said.
NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR SHOT 5 TIMES HOW TO
"I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. The 27-year-old Park said she transferred to Columbia from a South Korean university in 2016, but her experience at the school left her disturbed. "North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy." "Even North Korea is not this nuts," North Korean defector Yeonmi Park said of her experience at Columbia University. After a surge in the number of people defecting in 2016, the number of defections in the January to August period this year has dropped compared to the same time last year, which the South Korean unification ministry attributed to tighter border controls between China and North Korea.A North Korean defector is claiming that the United States’s future "is as bleak as North Korea" after she attended an Ivy League university. Hundreds of North Koreans defect each year, but doing so by crossing over the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea is extremely rare-the last time it happened was in 2007, and prior to that in 1998. At a briefing before the soldier woke up, his doctor said at a press conference that large parasitic worms were found in the soldier’s body, pointing to the dire state of nutrition and hygiene in North Korea. Yonhap reported that the soldier’s identity has yet to be verified. According to South Korean news agency Yonhap, doctors hung a South Korean flag in his room to help stabilize his mental condition. Upon regaining consciousness yesterday, the soldier requested to watch television, as proof that he was in South Korea.
EPA-EFE/Yonhap The North Korean defector being rushed to hospital in Suwon, South Korea.