North Korean defector Yeonmi Park shared her firsthand experiences of escaping from both Communist North Korea and China at the University of California, Berkeley last Thursday evening. She described her time in China as filled with darkness and hardship, at points feeling like there was no reason to go on.
For decades, China implemented a one-child policy which led to severe gender imbalances and the trafficking of millions of women as a result of more than thirty million surplus men created by the policy.
Park expressed that this policy was extremely absurd, enforcing that each family could only have one child. This led to families choosing to have boys in order to continue their family line. The severe gender imbalance resulted in a large number of single men filled with anger, potentially leading to social unrest. She stated that the demand for marriage is one of the most basic human needs, and in response to this crisis, the Chinese Communist Party tacitly allowed the existence of “human trafficking” at a national level.
Reflecting back, in 2007, as soon as they arrived in China, her mother was sold by human traffickers for $65, while she herself was sold for over $200. “At that time, I was only 13 years old, half the size I am now.”
Park described the harsh life for North Korean defectors in China, where the Chinese authorities intensified their efforts to capture them. Once caught, North Koreans would be sent back to their country, an act almost equivalent to a death sentence. She likened this cruelty to the Nazi capture of Jewish people during World War II and sending them to gas chambers.
She mentioned that the fate of North Korean defectors who stayed in China usually fell into four categories: being subjected to organ harvesting; being sold to specialized places where girls would be kept in windowless rooms, losing their freedom and often being raped to death within six months; forced into sham marriages where poor and mentally unstable rural Chinese men pool money to buy girls, exploiting and controlling them; or being sold to “chat rooms” where they were locked up during the day with a little rice as payment for providing nude chat services.
Two years later, the man who bought her chose to set her free to evade authorities. To survive, she and her mother had to work in “chat rooms.” Eventually, with the help of South Korean missionaries in China, they crossed the Gobi Desert and Mongolia to reach South Korea. After living in South Korea for five years, she enrolled at Columbia University in 2016 and moved to New York.
She emphasized that many institutions in the United States, including Ivy League schools, major corporations, and even companies in Washington, D.C., have been infiltrated by the Chinese Communist Party, losing their commitment to American values.
Park stressed that there are still countless people suffering in the world today. In China alone, 1.4 billion people live under the control of the Communist Party, completely deprived of their right to speak out. She hoped that those of us who are free would speak up for these people and that one day, if we were to lose our freedom, they would also stand up for us and help us regain our freedom.
She pointed out that as a member of the United Nations, China not only participates in deciding the direction of human rights issues but also supports the North Korean regime and indirectly funds one of the world’s largest concentration camps. She bluntly stated, “This is simply a joke, a huge irony.” The United Nations claims to be committed to human rights, yet finds itself entangled in such double standards, causing people to question its true position and effectiveness.
She highlighted that the survival of the North Korean regime entirely depends on the support from the Chinese Communist Party, especially in terms of energy supply. While many discuss sanctioning North Korea, the solution is not complex. If China were to stop supplying oil to North Korea, Kim Jong-un would be unable to conduct any nuclear tests and could even lead to the complete collapse of the regime. Regrettably, the U.S. government does not focus on human rights issues; their priority lies in North Korea’s nuclear weapons and their threat to national security. She stated that currently, no political party genuinely fights for human rights, a very unfortunate reality.
Park mentioned that many people ask why North Koreans do not resist the oppressive regime. She explained that if a person does not even realize they are a slave, how can they fight for freedom? This is the crucial warning that the North Korean dictatorship brings—people might find themselves in situations like North Koreans, unable to recognize oppression, not even having the concept of “oppression” in their vocabulary, unaware that they have become slaves of the government.
Based on her life experiences, Park stressed that people might reach a point where they do not even know what freedom is. Therefore, she emphasized that regardless of who holds power, governments must always be scrutinized and supervised since the government remains one of the most fearsome forces in human life. We must never fully trust the government but rather work to limit its power and return more autonomy to the people.
In conclusion, she quoted a thought-provoking saying by former President Roosevelt: “The extinction of freedom requires only one generation at most.” Park expressed that while we still have freedom, we should strive wholeheartedly to defend it. She looks forward to the day when North Korea can regain its freedom and truly integrate into the global family. ◇