Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector, human rights activist,
00:00:06 and author of the book, In Order to Live. Quick mention of our sponsors, Belcampo, Gala Games,
00:00:14 Batter Help, and Aid Sleep. Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
00:00:19 Let me say a few words about North Korea. From 1994 to 1998, North Korea went through a famine.
00:00:27 Mass starvation, caused primarily by King Jong Il, who at the time was the new leader of North
00:00:34 Korea after his father’s death in 1994. Somewhere between 600,000 and 3 million people died due to
00:00:43 starvation. From all the stories of famine in history, including my own family history, I’ve
00:00:50 come to understand that hunger tortures the human mind in a way that can break everything we stand
00:00:56 for. In North Korea, during the 90s famine, many were driven to cannibalism. Imagine more than 10
00:01:04 million people suffering starvation for months and years, always on the brink of death. We don’t know
00:01:12 the exact numbers of people who died because the suffering was done in silence, in darkness. Very
00:01:18 little information in or out. Most people had to survive without electricity, without clean water,
00:01:25 medical supplies, sanitation, and food. The North Korean propaganda machine called this
00:01:31 the Arduous March, or the March of Suffering, and words such as famine and hunger were banned
00:01:37 because they implied government failure. And once again, now, in 2021, King Jong Un,
00:01:44 the current leader of North Korea, is calling for his country to prepare for another Arduous March,
00:01:50 or March of Suffering. Another period of mass starvation as the country closes its borders.
00:01:57 Looking at atrocities of the past decades and the encroaching atrocity there now, I think about the
00:02:03 quiet suffering of millions of North Koreans. I think about the torture of the human spirit.
00:02:08 I think about a North Korean child who could be a scientist, an artist, a writer, but who instead
00:02:15 grows impossibly thin without food, their bodies slowly rotting away as their parents watch
00:02:21 helplessly. I got emotional in this conversation with you and me, in part because I remembered my
00:02:28 grandmother, who survived Khaldamur, the famine in Ukraine, intentionally created by Stalin,
00:02:35 where 4 to 10 million people died and many, many more suffered. Imagine knowing that if you don’t
00:02:42 engage in cannibalism, you will die before your children did, and then they will be eaten.
00:02:48 Imagine, because of this, deciding to murder and eat your own children,
00:02:52 as many people did. Imagine the kind of desperation, torture, that leads up to a decision
00:02:59 like that. I’m not smart enough to know what evil is, nor where to draw the line between good and
00:03:05 evil. But Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, are men who in the name of power are willing to make
00:03:14 millions of people, of children, suffer and die from starvation. I rarely have hate in my heart,
00:03:22 but I hate these men. I hate that such men exist in this world. I hate that the beauty I love about
00:03:28 this life exists amidst such unimaginable cruelty. I have been haunted by this conversation,
00:03:36 by memories of my grandmother’s pain. But I’ve also been warmed by memories of her love.
00:03:43 Love gives me hope. Hope for the perseverance of the human spirit, even in the face of evil.
00:03:51 This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here is my conversation with you and me, Park.
00:03:57 Park. Can you tell your story from North Korea to today as you describe in your 2015 book,
00:04:03 and with the extra perspective on life, love and freedom you’ve gained since then?
00:04:08 Wow, that’s a long story. So I was born in the northern part of North Korea initially.
00:04:14 And my father was a party member. And my mom was housewife. I had one older sister.
00:04:22 And I remember born in that country. I never thought I was in an unusual country. Now I’m
00:04:28 thinking of what is literally called the Hermit Kingdom. But I thought I believed that I was
00:04:34 living in the best country on earth. It was a socialist paradise. And everybody in the rest
00:04:41 of the world worshiped my ideal leader. And there was nothing to envy for me. So I had this
00:04:48 enormous pride in my heart. And grateful to be in that country.
00:04:54 So it was love for the leader, not fear?
00:04:57 For me at least, it was love. Yeah, it was all the moderation and gratitude.
00:05:03 It changed lately, but for me was pure, pure like love.
00:05:08 Was there any, like looking back with the perspective you have now,
00:05:12 would you describe some of those moments growing up as full of happiness? Or was that
00:05:20 delusion at the time? So not knowing the alternative, will you still be able to be happy?
00:05:26 The fact that I did not know, like in North Korea, this is the only country in this 21st century
00:05:32 has no internet. And they don’t even know the existence of internet. Not only that,
00:05:39 we don’t even have this 24 hour electricity. So not knowing definitely helped, I think,
00:05:47 to be sane. So as a human being, you’re still able to find moments of happiness?
00:05:53 I think my happiness was from family, nothing else. Even though those days keep telling me
00:05:59 that they were our source of meaning and happiness, I don’t think I ever got happy by that.
00:06:06 Maybe they’re here and they’re in schools. And like when I was learning propaganda,
00:06:10 like, you know, the proud feeling, right? I mean, the greatest nation here and there,
00:06:15 but like actually true happiness came from laughing with my family, my friends.
00:06:20 Are there any childhood memories, pleasant or painful ones that stand out to you now?
00:06:28 I mean, like, you know, whenever I think about my North Korea, the interesting is
00:06:34 there’s no color. I mean, one is because North Korean country has no color, right? Most of
00:06:40 things are unpaved and trees all cut down. We have no fear. So people cut down trees to
00:06:46 make food. So but only that, like, even what we are wearing was like no color. So it’s an
00:06:55 interesting memory to look back.
00:06:57 What about fashion? I’ve noticed from sort of you now, you have quite an incredible sense of
00:07:04 fashion. So contrast that with your time in North Korea. How do you remember fashion? Just
00:07:10 ways that people could express themselves visually. Was it all bland?
00:07:15 There was no word for fashion in North Korea. We didn’t even know. It was not even in our
00:07:20 dictionary. So of course, I did not know what Victoria’s Secret models were. I didn’t even
00:07:25 know what models were. So when I came out, I learned the model was a job. And like, what
00:07:32 is that? And I’m still confused. So there’s so many jobs that we have here doesn’t exist
00:07:38 in North Korea.
00:07:39 What was life like in North Korea as compared to the rest of the world? So maybe you said
00:07:44 there’s no internet. 24 hour electricity is a luxury you do not have. What about food?
00:07:52 What about water? What about basic human rights?
00:07:56 I think that’s a thing like when people were asking me, can you tell me about like life
00:08:01 in North Korea? And in the past, I was like, I cannot describe it to you. And initially
00:08:06 I thought, oh, because of my English that I cannot find the words. It’s not that it’s
00:08:10 a different planet. The common sense that we have doesn’t exist there. Like people literally
00:08:16 do not know the concept of romantic love, or human rights or liberty. So when I’m thinking
00:08:24 back to my country, it’s, you know, like, as you cannot imagine your life on Mars right
00:08:31 now. It’s like that kind of difference. I grew up never seen the map of the world. I
00:08:37 never knew that I was Asian. Like the regime told me that I was Kim Il Sung, the first
00:08:42 Kim race. And then our calendar doesn’t begin when Jesus Christ was born. Our calendar begins
00:08:49 where Kim was born. So we, and history was forgotten to us. They didn’t teach us about
00:08:55 of course, Christianity or like the Big Bang. Like our history began when Kim was born.
00:09:02 So everything was forgotten to us. And it was a different meaning. I mean, feeling of
00:09:08 existence, you know, it’s not even like same life. I literally think that was almost like
00:09:14 my past life. And this is like a new life that I began.
00:09:18 You’re almost like a different human being now.
00:09:20 Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
00:09:22 So you’ve, I have to say, I often say that my favorite book is Animal Farm by George
00:09:30 Orwell. I’ve read it, I don’t know how many times. And so I was really happy to hear that
00:09:36 that was of the many books, excellent books that we’ll hopefully talk about. You’ve mentioned
00:09:42 that Animal Farm had a big impact on you. It was the book that kind of led to a kind
00:09:50 of awakening for you. Maybe can you describe what impact it had?
00:09:54 So after going through what I went through, and I arrived in South Korea after many years
00:09:59 of journey, they were saying, so Kims were dictators, and South Korea is not colonized
00:10:06 by American bastards. And Americans, first of all, not bastards, they’re good people.
00:10:11 And then they say everything that you believe in North Korea was a lie. It was a propaganda.
00:10:16 Then at 15, I was thinking, so if everything that I believe was a lie, how do I know what
00:10:22 I believe is not a lie? That was so hard. How do I trust ever again? And I just, it
00:10:29 was chaos in belief. I did not know what was true anymore. And that’s the moment, a few
00:10:35 years later, I read this book, like Animal Farm, just by mistake. It was a very short
00:10:40 book in the library. I was like, okay, I can finish that quickly. And when they’re ending
00:10:46 that, like last chapter, they could not see between the pigs and humans anymore. That
00:10:52 sentence, I just understood everything that happened. It made every sense to me, what
00:10:59 happened to me, my people, and to my country.
00:11:03 Yeah, there’s so many things I could say about that book. Yeah, there’s a haunting nature
00:11:09 to the end. And I guess spoiler alert, but you should have read this already. If you’re
00:11:16 listening to this. At the end, the animals were looking to the humans and to the pigs
00:11:22 and they couldn’t see the difference. And then there’s this kind of gradual transition
00:11:28 from the initial revolutionary steps of animals fighting for their freedom to slowly the pigs
00:11:37 gaining control, went from four legs good, two legs bad, to four legs good, two legs
00:11:46 better, I believe. Two legs even better, I think, something like that. So like gradually
00:11:51 transitioning the ideology under which the farm operates. And I think the gradual nature
00:11:58 of that, where basically you have generations born not knowing how things were in the past.
00:12:06 And that’s what makes the most kind of, for me, haunting transition from freedom to slavery
00:12:16 to suffering to injustice, all those things. And the animals don’t know they’re part of
00:12:22 that. And also for me personally, I always kind of found a kinship with Boxer the horse
00:12:31 because I just, I’m kind of an idiot, I just work really hard. And I just love the idea
00:12:37 of working hard for an ideal. And the tragic nature of, to the end, that horse, Boxer,
00:12:47 working his ass off for the pride for others. But yeah, for the pride of the farm, you know.
00:12:56 And then the pigs giving him, sort of using that, but then just sending him to the slaughterhouse
00:13:03 anyway, when he was no longer useful. I mean, there’s so many tragic elements that echo
00:13:09 everything I’ve seen in the Soviet Union. And many of the elements that you see in even
00:13:14 harsher, more drastic way in North Korea. If there’s something hopeful you pull from
00:13:19 that book, like within the suffering, within the gradual decline, the taking away the freedom,
00:13:26 there were still moments of beauty, it seemed like.
00:13:29 It can be. But I think for me was when I was ending the last page of the book. Until that
00:13:36 point, I was angry towards the dictator. Why do you do this as a human being? I was so
00:13:42 angry, dreaming of killing him, right? Revenge on my father, the people that he killed.
00:13:47 But when I was ending the last chapter, actually everybody was responsible to create this dystopia
00:13:54 in my country. The initial animals, when they’re scared, when they see the first execution,
00:14:02 and then they were not doing their job, speaking out and keep questioning. They had a question
00:14:07 and then as soon as they see a fear, they silence. Because of that, that’s when I was
00:14:13 like, my grandma knew life could be different. I think the one thing about North Koreans
00:14:19 are unique is that they don’t know they’re oppressed. They don’t know that they are slaves
00:14:24 to the dictator. And the fact that other people know they’re oppressed, like in America, a
00:14:29 lot of people think they are oppressed, like you are not oppressed. You don’t even know
00:14:33 the definition of oppression. And that’s like when the new animals came, the new animals
00:14:39 didn’t even know what the life could be like. There’s no alternative for them to compare
00:14:44 even. And I was like, my grandmother knew. Why didn’t they not do anything about it?
00:14:49 And they were just scared. They kept silent. And everybody was responsible.
00:14:54 So the people who knew were too afraid to say. And then there’s people that just didn’t
00:15:01 even know. And I don’t know what’s more terrifying about human nature, looking at this group
00:15:07 of people who are afraid to say that things could be otherwise, and then the group of
00:15:12 people that don’t even know it could be better.
00:15:17 No.
00:15:18 It’s, I don’t know, that’s the reason I return to that book often, because it’s such, maybe
00:15:23 because it’s interesting using animals to represent ideas that were very human. It almost
00:15:29 allows you to explore the darkness of human nature without sort of being broken by it.
00:15:37 So you mentioned anger. When I watch your interviews, you’re really calm and collected.
00:15:44 Not just your interviews, you know, Instagram, the way you present yourself. You, I don’t
00:15:52 know, it seems like you’re almost at peace with the world. Is there in private times
00:15:58 when you’re just angry? Do you feel fear? Do you go to dark places, depression, all
00:16:04 those kinds of things? Are you, are you able to put that world that you were in behind
00:16:09 you?
00:16:10 It’s a joke because I talk about North Korea every single day and I still rescue people
00:16:17 like from China and Russia and other countries, right? And sometimes I’ll rescue mission
00:16:23 figures and they get captured and sent back. I still have people in North Korea report
00:16:28 to me. So like when I talked to my sister who chose to not be in this life, activist
00:16:35 life, she forgot most of things. And like for the other hand, I like to remember everything.
00:16:41 So sometimes it’s a blessing to keep reminded of how, because it’s, you know, they say happiness
00:16:50 is a relative thing. It is sometimes. I mean, I think it’s also people say because nobody
00:16:56 was foreign when you’re growing up, everybody was suffering. You should have been okay,
00:17:01 right? But no, like if you are suffering in that degree, no matter, even if there’s no
00:17:07 comparison, like if you’re in Nazi Germany, in the Holocaust, right? In the concentration
00:17:11 camp, I’m sure nobody was better than them. I’m sure they were suffering. It’s the same
00:17:16 thing. I suffered. But now because I’m in this place, I can compare easily, right? Getting
00:17:22 that perspective. But it is true, like I still have days that I cannot get out of bed. And
00:17:27 I really hoping like that when it was Elon Musk talking about downloading your brain,
00:17:33 blah, blah, blah. Maybe technology develops that I can download some part of my memory
00:17:39 and then I can erase it or delete it. And that’d be so much better.
00:17:44 What I, this is a, sorry for the tough question, but if I came to you, if Elon came to you
00:17:51 and said, we can erase that part of your memory, would you do it?
00:17:56 Some days I would do it for sure. And my mom would do 100%. My sister would do it. All
00:18:02 other defectors know they do 100%. For me, I hesitated because I’m a witness. So if I
00:18:10 delete that part, I don’t know how real that can be. But it is painful. After I talk, give
00:18:17 a speech, right? I mean, I’m fine. But somehow I’m depressed. Sometimes if the talk was very
00:18:23 intense, I’m like depressed for three weeks. It takes a while for me to be recharged. But
00:18:28 I don’t know why it is. I just don’t know.
00:18:32 Well, there’s also the, and there’s a guy named Victor Franco who wrote the book, Man
00:18:38 Search for Meaning. And there’s some aspect where, so he talks about the Holocaust and
00:18:44 that you can, in those moments of suffering, still discover meaning, still discover happiness
00:18:49 in the simplest of joys. Like while starving, a little piece of bread could be a source
00:18:55 of incredible joy. And there’s some aspect in which that experience gives you a clarity
00:19:04 about the world. Like somehow experiencing suffering allows you to deeply experience
00:19:11 joy and love, and also empathize with the suffering of others. And it’s almost like
00:19:19 brings you closer to other humans. This double edged sword that the highest of joys sometimes
00:19:31 are catalyzed by suffering. And it’s hard to know what to do with that. You see that
00:19:36 with World War II, the stories of soldiers that have suffered, but some of the closest
00:19:41 bonds of brotherhood, of just pure love was experienced by them. And it sucks that our
00:19:49 brains are like this. Love requires hardship. I don’t know why that is.
00:19:55 Yeah, that’s like that thing. Of course, in my journey, I learned how to survive, right?
00:20:01 When to not trust and when to run. But I think most of us keep learning what it means to
00:20:08 be a human being. I think that was like the ultimate thing I was keep learning. And I
00:20:13 still don’t know fully what it means. But I do think it seems like suffering is necessary
00:20:19 for people to be grateful and even be joyful too sometimes.
00:20:25 So I talk about love quite a bit. And you mentioned that romantic love. I’m fascinated
00:20:31 about love in many aspects. But you mentioned romantic love was forbidden in North Korea.
00:20:41 What do you think about love now that you’ve kind of discovered it? What’s the role of
00:20:47 love in life? So why do you think it was forbidden in North Korea?
00:20:53 So the tragic thing about North Korea is not only just banning Shakespeare, like we don’t
00:20:58 even know what Romeo and Juliet is, right? Our movies is never about love stories. But
00:21:03 then also they banned the love between mother and daughter, wife and husband, and between
00:21:11 your friends. They deny you being a human. So only love that I knew was when I described
00:21:17 my feeling towards the leader and in a written form. That was the only love that people know
00:21:23 in North Korea. And now I’m like, there are many loves you can experience. I think you
00:21:29 definitely love science, right? But imagine that if you’re being denied that. So there
00:21:35 are so many loves in life. But in North Korea, all of those things are denied. And I think
00:21:41 for me, love is what makes you tick. Like, you know, love for your child, love for your
00:21:48 parents, love for your friends, love for even yourself. That is denied. So I mean, many
00:21:55 people say like, love is an option. But like, then why do you live? I think we live to love.
00:22:00 And it doesn’t have to be romantic love. It can be anything. But finding love in any person
00:22:06 or in any subject, I think that’s a goal. I think that’s when people find meaning in
00:22:11 something.
00:22:12 Yeah, I think romantic love is just one sort of, one echo of some core thing. Yeah, science,
00:22:19 I love science, I love robots, all of those things. And it sounds like deliberately or
00:22:25 not, the North Korean regime wants to channel that very deep aspect of the human spirit
00:22:33 all towards the leader.
00:22:35 Yeah, that’s it. That’s the only thing they allow us to fear and know about. So I remember,
00:22:42 I mean, you read 1984 by George Orwell, it talks about double think and double speak,
00:22:48 who controls the language, who controls thoughts. And why he does talk about as they go, they
00:22:54 eliminate a lot of words, right? Now, later one word can represent 10 different things.
00:23:00 And what fascinates me is how many vocabulary meaning people can have. And when I literally
00:23:08 came out, I remember I went to San Francisco, and someone came to me and hugged me. And
00:23:14 then he was a guy like, oh, baby, don’t worry, I’m gay. I was like, what the heck is gay?
00:23:19 And then I literally had to go to a hotel room and Google the gay. And it’s like, oh,
00:23:24 that’s what you meant. And like that, like, they deny what that is. I’m sure there are
00:23:30 gays in North Korea. I’m sure there is. But you don’t know what it is. And like that,
00:23:36 they eliminate words. So the fact that you know the concept, that stays much better than
00:23:42 and that’s the thing a lot of people like when you’re born, you somehow know what justice
00:23:46 is, what liberty is. And it’s all somebody taught you that. And like, that’s the thing
00:23:52 why people say, oh, humans are inherently know what is right, what is wrong, what is
00:23:57 oppression. And like, no, that’s like BS. You got to learn.
00:24:02 That’s fascinating that words give rise to ideas. So like, as a child, one of the ways
00:24:10 to learn about justice and freedom is to first learn the word, and then to ask, well, what
00:24:15 is it? Yeah, the concept. Yeah. And if you don’t have the word for it, then you never
00:24:20 have the kind of first spark that leads to you trying to be curious about it. That’s
00:24:25 interesting and controlling the words. And then, yeah, I mean, your thoughts, you control
00:24:30 the thoughts. There’s so many echoes. I mean, I have, it’s a very different, but perhaps
00:24:37 a very similar experience, which is the journey of my family through the Soviet Union. Because
00:24:44 there is a love of country. There is a pride of the people. Like you are proud of your
00:24:49 family in general. But I wonder how much of that is polluted by the propaganda.
00:24:57 I think a lot. For sure. Yeah. It is to this day, I’m like, my father who died in China
00:25:06 and he was tortured and then he died. He wanted to go back before his death, right? And then
00:25:13 it’s like, dad, if you go back, you’re going to be executed. And it’s like, I want to be
00:25:18 executed. He wanted to go back to North Korea. To be executed. So he can be buried in his
00:25:24 own land. And then his last wish was, if I die, criminate me and then bring my ashes
00:25:32 back to my country. When I’m dead, I still want to be in my country. And this is nationalism.
00:25:38 This is a propaganda, right? But now it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing. If I
00:25:45 die, I somehow buried in my land and I still feel like I’m the outsider. I’m always longing
00:25:52 for my home. It’s a horrible home. People say, what’s your dream? Do you want to be
00:25:57 a president? Do you want to run for office? I just want to go home. That’s my dream.
00:26:02 And people here don’t get it ever. I don’t know what to do with that. I love my country.
00:26:10 And I think for me, my country is the United States. And perhaps it will be for you too
00:26:16 one day. It is. I think it’s becoming. US has been a very special place in my heart.
00:26:21 I think this is the first place I felt like I feel like home. And I mean, I was in South
00:26:28 Korea longer and I didn’t feel that way. So I think we have very different life stories,
00:26:33 but I think it’s almost two different people. For me, it’s the person that was in the Soviet
00:26:38 Union and the person that’s here. Those are two different people. That previous person’s
00:26:44 home in the Soviet Union and he’s part of me. And I suppose in that same way, your first
00:26:53 maybe two decades of life are somehow longing for the home that is North Korea. And your
00:27:00 next two decades of life might be finding a home in the United States. Your dad, can
00:27:08 you tell the story of his struggle, of his death? I mean, first, do you miss him? Do
00:27:19 you think about it? Oh man, all the time. I had a son when I was 22 and I had IVF three
00:27:27 times. And as you see, I’m like 80 pounds, but back then I was like 75 pounds. And because
00:27:33 of my severe malnutrition, somehow my body’s very different. And so after three times of
00:27:42 IVF after 23, I was still wanting family. And the reason I wanted him is because I felt
00:27:49 so guilty for my father that he never seen this world. I somehow, when you’re so desperate,
00:27:56 you become illogical. Like I want to believe in the, like Buddhist idea, right? You come
00:28:02 back to life. And I prayed, please come to me, like as my son, so I will take care of
00:28:08 you. Like come back. And when I was pregnant with my son, even though I planned to get
00:28:14 pregnant with a girl, doctor made a mistake. It became a boy. So I made his middle name,
00:28:21 like my father’s name Jin Sik. I think he’s the only American got North Korean name. It
00:28:29 is. So he’s a part of your father’s and your son. Yeah. That’s how I, that’s how I make
00:28:37 a sense of it. And that’s how I move forward. Like if I, like as a logical human being,
00:28:44 you, you know, when you’re dead, you’re done. Maybe that’s what I at least used to think,
00:28:48 but then life’s become too unbearable. And somehow that’s the thing, like we tell ourselves
00:28:54 stories in order to live. And that’s how I came with my title of the book in order to
00:28:58 live. I had to tell myself a lot of stories to overcome a lot of things. I think I was
00:29:04 a part of it. Can you tell the story of you escaping North Korea to China? Yeah, I think
00:29:15 it’s, it’s a thing. It’s amazing. Even though I was like 13, my like life outside of North
00:29:26 Korea is almost like went by like one second and my life till that point was like eternity.
00:29:32 I remember being in China. I arrived there at the end of March at 13. And by October,
00:29:40 it was six months past. And I literally felt like I lived eternity. And one day living
00:29:49 in China felt like living one year. One day was a war like surviving through one day was
00:29:56 so hard. Every night I was like, I cannot believe I got done one day today. That was
00:30:02 a thing I was grateful for before I went to bed. Okay, I survived. I didn’t get captured.
00:30:08 And I made it another day on earth. So the experience of the minutes is what fear, fear
00:30:16 of being captured, fear, loss, everything. Because I mean, I saw my own mom in China
00:30:26 to survive to. So it was more than that. And it’s not feeling I think that’s a thing in
00:30:35 China. I learned not to fear. And after my escape was a challenging, I didn’t feel anything.
00:30:44 And it was hard. Not feeling anything is a torture. It’s the biggest torture you can
00:30:50 ever feel like even you fear sadness. That’s better than not feeling anything. And I felt
00:30:57 something when I had my son. That’s when I started healing. So he was a miracle to save
00:31:03 me. But yeah, in China, it wasn’t even fear like it was numb.
00:31:08 You were numb. It was like paralysis. Yeah. Just overwhelming on the uncertainty of your
00:31:15 future. Did you have a sense what your future held at the time?
00:31:19 Like what do you even even feature? I don’t even know that word. Right? Like, a lot of
00:31:24 times I was looking at myself like I left my body and like just looking at me. And just
00:31:29 not feeling it. It’s not like I’m scared for her. I’m like sad for her just looking at
00:31:34 me like, huh, that’s interesting. Wow. Not feeling anything. And me like being raped,
00:31:42 going through every emotion of life to survive, right? But like, somehow, I don’t know if
00:31:49 you say so or something like looking at it just like, you feel nothing. You don’t feel
00:31:55 anything for that person. So even with your mom, like what was, was there some, I don’t
00:32:03 know, some warmth that you were able to extract from the connection with your mom? Yeah, of
00:32:10 course. I think that made me survive. I had a very strong connection with my family. And
00:32:17 I think that’s what kept me going to do all of that. I think, as you said, I escaped at
00:32:23 13. My sister at the age of 16 escaped with her friend first. And I was going to escape
00:32:31 with her. But one day I got like really bad stomach ache. And my parents took me to hospital.
00:32:37 And in North Korean hospital, they don’t have like X ray machines. They don’t even have
00:32:41 electricity. They literally using one needle to inject everybody. And people don’t die
00:32:47 from cancer in North Korea. You die from infection and fever and hunger, right? So most likely
00:32:53 you’re going to die more by being treated by doctor than not being treated. I think
00:32:57 I was lucky. Even though they thought I had appendix, they operated on me without any
00:33:02 painkiller. And I didn’t get infection. I survived. So that’s how I got delayed to escape
00:33:09 with my sister. And she left me a note in my bedside saying like, follow this lady.
00:33:16 And this is like another trick about human trafficking, right? She sold me to China as
00:33:21 a sexual slave. And she executed for it later. She was executed for that later. She had five
00:33:29 daughters and she sold all her children to China. And we can now sitting here judging
00:33:35 on like how heartless you are selling your own children to China. And as a sexual slave,
00:33:41 they were like her children were seven, 10 years old. But that was the only way for her
00:33:46 to save her children. And if she didn’t sell me that day, I would be dead right now. So
00:33:53 I’m grateful that she sold me. And I think that’s the thing is like, life is so crazy.
00:33:59 You cannot judge. It is so complex. And yeah, that’s how she changed my life by selling
00:34:06 me. She sold my mom and myself in 2007 to China.
00:34:10 So you’re grateful for that. You’re grateful for that suffering.
00:34:14 Of course I am grateful.
00:34:16 Because the alternative is worse.
00:34:18 I would not be here with you. You would never knew I existed.
00:34:24 What do you make of the others suffering in the world today? The people there in North
00:34:29 Korea. So that is part of your life’s work is helping those people. What do you think
00:34:39 about them? What should people know about them?
00:34:42 I think that’s when I get angry. Whenever I think about them.
00:34:46 Who’s your anger directed at?
00:34:48 At the heartlessness of people, the ignorance of people. So when I got out of North Korea,
00:35:00 I went through all of that. And I went to South Korea one day. I was watching television
00:35:07 and there’s like famous Korean Kpop stars crying and doing some fundraising concert.
00:35:15 And I literally thought, oh my God, something is horribly going wrong in this country. Why
00:35:19 are these people crying? It was a cheery campaign. And then later it was showing that it was
00:35:26 an animal rights campaign to helping out cats and puppies in the shelters.
00:35:33 Do you know anybody sheds their tears like that to another human being right now? No,
00:35:39 right? People rather give millions of dollars to save some dolphins than saving these children
00:35:44 right now being raped in China. And I think I love Elon Musk. I love his voice. I love
00:35:52 these people want to go to the moon, Mars. And then people told him like, yeah, we went
00:35:57 to the moon like I did not know in North Korea.
00:36:01 But I think that’s what upsets me. Why there is not even one single human with that kind
00:36:06 of brilliance in their brain. They can save so much suffering, but nobody does anything.
00:36:13 I think that’s when I feel like hard to find hope in humanity. And that’s when I get so
00:36:20 upset. Because think about like even Biden or Trump or Obama. They know what’s happening
00:36:26 in North Korea exactly, right? I mean, we see satellite photos. There’s public executions.
00:36:31 I mean, the UN says this is a Holocaust happening again. And it’s happening. If the Holocaust
00:36:37 is happening again, how, why, how are you okay doing nothing about it? But somehow humans
00:36:43 are able to okay nothing, anything. And this is like, this is hard. Like when people say
00:36:51 I’m going to change the world. I want to make a difference. Like it’s hard to believe it,
00:36:56 you know?
00:36:57 Yeah, that we can turn our back to human suffering at scale when it’s right in front of us. I
00:37:02 mean, that makes you think about the Holocaust. This is just, everybody was looking the other
00:37:08 way because it was almost too hard to look at it.
00:37:12 No, it’s not. It’s an easier thing. Like that’s the thing. I was like here to speak at the
00:37:17 South by Southwest a few years ago. And like they’re, everybody’s talking about like Elon
00:37:21 Musk project going to the moon, right? We’re going to be multi, like species. I was like
00:37:26 back then I didn’t even know who he was. So if you guys are trying to go out to this earth,
00:37:32 you haven’t even explored our earth yet. You cannot go to North Korea right now. You haven’t
00:37:37 explored that part of our, our like planet. Can we do that first and then move on?
00:37:43 Explore the landscape of human suffering, like alleviate suffering in the world. There’s
00:37:49 a lot of suffering happening in Africa that has to do with disease. And for some reason
00:37:55 it’s, even though we turn our back to that kind of suffering too, we still can try to
00:38:01 do something about it. And there’s still efforts in terms of healthcare, in terms of medicine,
00:38:08 in terms of bioengineering, in terms of like all these efforts to help people from disease.
00:38:13 But like, that’s almost like converting it into an engineering problem and trying to
00:38:17 solve it. That somehow is easier for us humans. But when there’s obvious sort of non disease
00:38:24 related torture of humans, we look the other way. Whether it’s China or it’s North Korea.
00:38:34 Yeah. I mean, that has to be changed somehow. We have to change that somehow.
00:38:40 It’s the thing right now, like the China, like they bring the Xinjiang riggers, right?
00:38:45 They say, oh, this is a vitamin, take it. And then it kills their sperm and make them
00:38:51 not reproduce. Their birth rate gone down something 47 to something 50% in the one year
00:38:56 time. It’s a genocide in 21st century. And they get those people and get their like organs
00:39:02 out. Imagine if there’s some people who do that with the cutie puppies and cats. There’s
00:39:08 going to be insane amount of product. They’re going to destroy everything. And this is like
00:39:14 a human nature that I don’t get. Why there’s so much anti human sentiment in this modern
00:39:20 world? We don’t have to. The fact that I was saying like, the fact that you care about
00:39:26 animals rights is beautiful because you care about something who cannot speak for themselves.
00:39:31 The fact that we care about animals is because they cannot speak for themselves, right? They
00:39:35 don’t have that ability. And there are many people who cannot speak for themselves right
00:39:40 now. And why do you refuse to be the voice for them? Because they are simply being a
00:39:45 human. And maybe it connects to us not being proud of who we are. Like, I don’t know what
00:39:53 it is. Why do they deny humans this way? Maybe they don’t like themselves.
00:39:59 Yeah, it’s almost, we would have to acknowledge some dark things about ourselves in order
00:40:05 to start helping. What’s the solution? So, you know, I see two solutions. One is in the
00:40:16 military side. It’s assassination or the full on invasion. And then on the activism side,
00:40:28 which is figuring out ways to, like you said, sort of let people in North Korea understand
00:40:38 their situation, sort of from within try to reform. Or maybe there’s others, obviously,
00:40:44 there could be activism from the outside to build up momentum for the entirety of the
00:40:50 world, especially the world that is not just the United States or Europe, but also is Russia
00:40:56 and China and so on. What are your ideas here? What we can do as individuals and as countries?
00:41:05 I think the first thing that we can do is speak about Chinese role in this sponsoring
00:41:10 dictatorship in North Korea. Like, I happen to have so much struggle talking about North
00:41:16 Korea, right? They say, how North Korea is possible? Why is it like the way like this
00:41:21 is 99% accountability going to CCP? Kim Jong Un cannot last without Chinese help even one
00:41:30 week. This is completely funded. This Holocaust is funded by CCP. But if you talk about in
00:41:36 the mainstream, of course, they don’t buy it. And I think it’s in a way North Korea
00:41:42 is a lot easier to solve than even in the Middle East. There’s nothing conflict like
00:41:47 between people. There’s no ideology, no religion, nothing. People are peaceful, right? There’s
00:41:52 not even one civil, like any discontent among the people. Our problem is there’s a dictator
00:41:59 funded by the second economic power in the world. And even any military, they know if
00:42:05 they kill Kim Jong Un, they’re going to get killed by Chinese. Nobody can dare to stand
00:42:09 up against Kim Jong Un because China is backing it. So somehow here in the West, we collectively
00:42:16 acknowledging that China is the responsible person for these crimes against humanity in
00:42:21 North Korea. Then we can somehow, I don’t know, talk to them.
00:42:26 Stand up to China.
00:42:27 Exactly.
00:42:28 We’re failing to do that in a way, in all kinds of avenues of life, of public life,
00:42:35 because for many reasons, they’re probably primarily financial. But it also, I’m against,
00:42:46 I don’t know, maybe you can correct me. I’m against sort of making China this evil enemy
00:42:54 because I’ve seen this with Russia as well. And I don’t think that leads to progress.
00:43:02 I think you want to highlight, you basically want to help the Chinese people become the
00:43:10 best version of themselves. So speak to the Chinese people and not making the leaders
00:43:17 of China into these caricatures of devils. I feel like the Cold War, the way it was done
00:43:24 in Russia, both sides, they were caricaturing each other through propaganda and the result
00:43:30 was not productive at all. It did not help Russia become the best country it could be.
00:43:34 It did not help America become the best country it could be. And the same thing with China.
00:43:38 I feel like making them into this enemy, like being afraid of China, making them into the
00:43:45 thing that’s going to spy on us, that’s going to destroy the rest of the world, that’s not
00:43:49 going to help China reform themselves. They’re going to plant their feet. The dictators,
00:43:55 the evil people will become more evil. The power hungry will become more, like they will
00:44:01 centralize the power more. It feels like, maybe naive, but it feels like it should be
00:44:08 like, again, love, not violence that solves this thing. Now, of course, in North Korea,
00:44:15 it’s like long gone. 80 years, almost 80 years. Love is not going to solve that problem.
00:44:23 I mean, I don’t, it’s very difficult.
00:44:26 They have tried that because of the sunshine policy, which is there’s two people walking
00:44:32 down the street and the sun and the wind made a battle. So who can take off that man, take
00:44:37 off jacket? So wind tried to blow as much air as he could. And then that man was like
00:44:43 putting more like his jacket on, right? Not taking off, but sunshine came. Okay, I’m going
00:44:47 to give him a lot of warmth. And then he took his jacket out and came out. So that was the
00:44:51 theory. Let’s give North Korea as much love as they want. Let’s give them a lot of money,
00:44:56 whatever they want, let’s give to them so they know that we are not here to attack them.
00:45:00 And North Korea, what they did was the guy who did the sunshine policy in South Korea
00:45:05 named Kim Dae Sung won the Nobel Peace Prize for that. And Kim Jong Il used the money to
00:45:11 build nuclear weapons. So that’s how they came with the nukes. So I think that’s the
00:45:17 thing. I hope that love solves problems.
00:45:20 But there’s got to be a way and the hope is with the 21st century is you can directly
00:45:25 speak to the people somehow. When there’s no internet, when there’s nothing like that,
00:45:29 it’s hopeless. I think China, there’s a hope that China is still connected to the internet.
00:45:34 I love your optimism. I have seen the actual dark side of China on the underground. I hope,
00:45:43 I think that’s the thing. People in the West, right? They say, oh, how can it be that bad?
00:45:48 They ask me like, I walking passing this young teenager man and later the war with my sister.
00:45:56 He’s like intestine coming out through his back, right? And even in that moment, what
00:46:03 he wanted was, please give me food. He was hungry.
00:46:06 His intestine is hanging out of his body and he’s asking for food.
00:46:11 Do you know what humans demand when they die in North Korea? All they want is eating, right?
00:46:17 Yeah.
00:46:18 And people say, oh, nothing can be that bad. But people just here haven’t seen an actual
00:46:24 true evil.
00:46:26 Would you say that the evil comes from a tiny minority of people or is it permeate much
00:46:31 larger parts of the population? Like if we look at sex trafficking, how many people,
00:46:40 like is it 99.9% of the people are longing to do good in the world? Or is there, is it,
00:46:54 or do we all have the capacity for evil in certain kinds of environments, certain kinds
00:46:58 of governmental structures inspire a large percent of the population to do bad things?
00:47:05 I think humans are capable of anything. There’s no exception. I don’t think there’s any saint
00:47:11 who born with that morality. I think in North Korea, you can say initially that there’s
00:47:17 few guys in the top wanted the power and then doing this, but eventually made a society
00:47:24 where people don’t even know what compassion is. We don’t know the concept of, we don’t
00:47:29 know that you need to feel bad for another human being when they’re suffering. The fact
00:47:33 that you know compassion is in your knowledge. That’s why you do that. Humans need to learn.
00:47:39 It’s not anything bad about human nature. It’s just saying humans are capable of everything.
00:47:44 We are the most adaptable species on the planet. That’s why we created the internet, like
00:47:50 talking this way, right? No other animals have done it because we are so adaptable.
00:47:55 That is a good thing and that’s a bad thing. So in the adaptive situation, they all can
00:48:01 be, I mean during the Holocaust, right? Those people, they could have been capable of good
00:48:06 too if they were exposed to different system. That’s why when people underestimate evil,
00:48:12 that’s what scares me. Evil is evil. It’s a different thing. It’s a completely different
00:48:19 thing. Of course, I get your idea. We don’t want to isolate 1.3 billion human beings on
00:48:26 Earth by Chinese, but the thing is we are talking about this regime, not the people.
00:48:32 I love Chinese people. I speak Chinese. I love all about the country, but this system
00:48:37 does promote evil. Well, that’s an optimistic view actually because we can fix systems.
00:48:43 Yeah. It’s harder to fix people. So if we fix systems, then the people are adaptable,
00:48:48 as you said. Absolutely. I mean that, and then the question is, first of all, you have
00:48:53 to talk about it just as you’re doing. You’re right now like this little flame that burns
00:48:58 bright, and it’s really important for North Korea, but just keep talking about it until
00:49:07 hopefully it leads to at the highest levels of power, revolutionizing the systems in the
00:49:13 world. And then in China and in North Korea, do you see North Korea being a potential instigator
00:49:21 in nuclear war? They will not start a nuclear war as long as they can do whatever they want
00:49:28 right now, right? North Korea’s army is not designed to fight the enemy. They’re designed
00:49:35 to prevent their own people, the coup d’tetre and the revolution with their own citizens.
00:49:40 That is 1.6 million North Korea with a tiny country, the fourth largest armies in the
00:49:46 world. So this country is designed to fight with their own citizens. And the army, the
00:49:54 fourth largest in the world, is designed to basically fight its own people. Oppress their
00:50:00 own people. That’s what North Korean military is about. Okay. Let me ask you some aspects
00:50:10 about North Korean life. Can you describe the songbun system of ascribed status used
00:50:16 in North Korea? Yeah. So that’s a very interesting thing, right? Right now there are a lot of
00:50:21 people playing with this ideology of like democratic socialism, socialism, communism,
00:50:26 whatever you call it, Marxism, Leninism, right? They have all like these similar features
00:50:31 where we give collective power to a certain entity and they will make the decision for
00:50:38 bigger good, right? And North Korea came up with the idea, the Kim Il Sung. He was the
00:50:44 Leninist. He was a Marxist saying, I’m going to create the most equal society on human
00:50:49 face. So it was communist North Korea. And then they came up with this songbun system.
00:50:56 It’s like family caste system. Three big categories, warrior, wavering, and hostile. And that in
00:51:04 between three classes, they divide into 50 different classes. So a lot of people don’t
00:51:09 even know which exact class you belong to. That’s a secret government document. And that’s
00:51:14 how they decide your future. So in a way, North Korea, before you’re born, your life
00:51:20 is determined for you. And this is a joke, right? They dreamed of creating the most equal
00:51:25 society. They ended up with became most unequal society in the face of humanity. So there
00:51:31 are 50 different classes and where the one guy on the top became a god. So when this
00:51:38 animal farm, as we keep saying, like there’s so many, all the animals are equal and some
00:51:42 of the animals are more equal than others. Exactly. But it’s not only, it’s just more
00:51:46 equal. One guy in North Korea became a god. So North Korea was born out of a Marxist ideals.
00:51:54 Yeah. From Stalin. Can you comment on Juche ideology, which seems to be its own kind of
00:52:06 socialism, but with unique aspects here, it really does ideologically says the importance
00:52:15 of having a great leader. Is there some interesting similarities or differences that you can comment
00:52:21 on between other implementations of communism throughout history, the Soviet Union, China,
00:52:27 elsewhere? So Juche is very unique. It came on around the 90s after Soviet Union collapsed.
00:52:33 So before that, North Korea was very still loyal to the Marxism and Leninism, which is
00:52:39 state takes care of you. We are going to give you the right education, healthcare, your
00:52:45 livelihood, everybody is going to be equal. You’re going to have in the working collective
00:52:49 farm, collective worker place. Everybody collectively do things together and let’s work for the
00:52:55 paradise. But 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. And until then, North Korea was heavily subsidized
00:53:02 by Soviet Union’s aid. And then Soviet Union didn’t give them anything. So not 3 million
00:53:07 people dying on the streets. The regime then came up with the idea, okay, our goal is what
00:53:13 is successful ruling for us is keeping the 10% of population alive, which is in the capital
00:53:19 Pyongyang. So they designed the hunger games. There is a capital, 13 other districts, everybody
00:53:26 on the countryside on purpose being starved. So those people who are starving cannot thinking
00:53:32 about meaning of life, cannot thinking about shooting to the moon, right? They’re not going
00:53:36 to think about anything or they’re going to think it’s like finding next meal. All on
00:53:40 purpose. All on purpose is manmade famine. International community was begging to give
00:53:45 North Korea food. Why not? Still at the UN, they beg to give North Korea formula, medicine
00:53:52 and food. They are begging, can you please feed your people? And Kim Jong Un said, no,
00:53:56 thank you. Last year, like when North Korea had a horrible, horrible flooding, South Korean
00:54:01 president begging, can you get, can I give you please some medicines? Like, no, because
00:54:06 he wants to be the one provider. He doesn’t want people to think other people giving him
00:54:10 the thing. So on purpose, other people are starving. And that Juche idea is that’s when
00:54:15 it’s coming from. So until that communism was about like state is being a father figure,
00:54:20 takes care of all your needs, right? Give the power to us and you’re all good. But North
00:54:25 Korea regime says, okay, now we cannot give people’s ration. So which means Juche means
00:54:30 self reliance. You need to take care of yourself while you’re giving every right to us. So
00:54:37 now in the 90s, the regime told us, okay, we are not going to give you ration. You cannot
00:54:43 trade. That’s illegal, but you find your own way to survive. So be self reliant. That’s
00:54:49 what Juche is. But when you’re a guy, you can do whatever you want. You don’t need to
00:54:54 make a sense. That’s the difference being a God and being a leader. When it is religion,
00:55:00 it’s not for survival. You cannot challenge it. God’s way is suspicious. God works in
00:55:06 a mysterious way. So when you’re a God, people are not going to say, oh, this doesn’t make
00:55:11 sense, right? You’re going to, okay, whatever God says, as a human being, we can never change
00:55:16 his thought. It’s unbelievable what regimes can do.
00:55:20 There’s something about famine that is another level of evil to me. What Stalin did in Ukraine
00:55:39 in the thirties, fuck them. This is what torture is. Cannibalism.
00:55:51 North Korea too, they eat humans right now in 21st century. 7 billion people on this
00:55:58 earth right now. You make enough food for 10 billion people. Nobody should be starving
00:56:04 right now. It’s worrisome to me. The humanity is moving forward with the technological advance,
00:56:10 blah, blah, blah. We are going so fast in advancement. And we are leaving this like
00:56:15 25 million human beings in the cage, completely leaving them behind. And North Korea is living
00:56:21 like 16 centuries. This morning I was taking shower, beautiful shower. One never knew what
00:56:28 shower was. I was bathing a few times a year, going to the river. How do they even know
00:56:34 what shampoo is? And this is how human beings in 21st century are living. And it doesn’t
00:56:40 bother us. And rather, most people are obsessed being a vegan. How do you reconcile this?
00:56:48 I think we get used to stuff very quickly. We get used to comforts. That’s just the way
00:56:52 of human life. You take the beautiful things for granted. So I try to appreciate everything
00:56:58 I have. So whether it’s like the food I have now or like the luxury to have a diet and
00:57:05 be struggling with that. Or just the basic simple moments of being alive with the people
00:57:09 I love. Or actually I get like, I think I’m on drugs all the time because I feel like
00:57:14 just even like this mug, everything on this table just brings me joy. But it’s like filling
00:57:22 your life with joy in the full capitalistic American way, you can still at the same time
00:57:29 not feel too bad about yourself and still focus on the suffering in the world. And I
00:57:35 think there’s some way that in trying to build a better world in America, it has ripple effects
00:57:46 elsewhere. Sort of like, so I’m a fan of rockets in space. It sounds perhaps counterintuitive
00:57:55 but sending rockets to space will help solve the North Korea problem because it lets people
00:58:04 dream and build cool stuff. So it’s not the rocket, it’s the other people that are inspired
00:58:12 by the rocket and then look to other problems in the world. I mean, that’s what Elon did
00:58:17 is like he saw problems in the world and thought like, what can I do to help it? And I think
00:58:23 the North Korea one is a tough one though, because that ultimately has to do with revolutionizing
00:58:30 government. We got to change China. That’s what it takes. Changing China’s Communist
00:58:37 Party is impossible. That’s why we couldn’t solve North Korea for that many decades. For
00:58:43 now it’s China, but it’s China, it’s Russia, it’s certain aspects of the United States
00:58:52 and struggling with that. There’s a bunch of technologies that are striving at this.
00:58:59 For example, I don’t know what your thoughts about cryptocurrencies. I love it. So like
00:59:04 there’s a idea that money could be a way to destroy or to challenge the power centers
00:59:12 of the world. Yeah. So if you take away the power from fiat currency and give it to this
00:59:18 thing that can’t be controlled by government, this cryptocurrency, whether it’s Bitcoin,
00:59:21 Ethereum, all those kinds of things, that’s a way to get money into the hands of people
00:59:26 to where the government can’t take that money away. But North Koreans don’t have electricity,
00:59:32 no internet. So we can do that with China. We can do it with a lot of African dictatorship
00:59:38 countries, right? I do think big cryptocurrency is such a fascinating technology, right? I
00:59:44 think this is an amazing experiment when that power is in our hands. I’m a huge out of
00:59:50 game believer, but I think North Korea is too behind. I think that’s what is unique
00:59:56 about North Korea is that most of the things that we talk about, it’s a different planet
01:00:01 literally. The common law that we have is not applicable. What about Kim Jong Un?
01:00:10 Kim Jong Un, yeah. Is he intentionally evil or is he mindlessly propagating an evil system
01:00:18 created by his ancestors? What’s your sense of the man?
01:00:22 So with Kim Il Sung, I can give him more benefit of that. He was a initial true believer of
01:00:29 communism. But then as later he gained the power, he realizing, I guess back then he
01:00:36 thought most of people are dumb, right? Individuals dumb. So therefore I need to make a decision
01:00:41 for all of you. That pure arrogance came from out of him. Even that I can tolerate. Okay,
01:00:47 fine. And Kim Jong Il, who never like, yeah, fine. He grew up in that system too. But Kim
01:00:53 Jong Un is very unique. This guy was educated in Switzerland in the heart of democracy.
01:01:02 He knew how human beings should be treated. As a child, he went, when you’re a child,
01:01:09 your brain is very susceptible, right? It will change anybody. Like why the mall was
01:01:14 off, that’s like changing young people’s minds. Like that’s every revolutionary they do, right?
01:01:19 They go change young people’s minds first. This guy was so obsessed with power, him being
01:01:25 a God. Even starting in Switzerland didn’t change him. And that’s why I think that’s
01:01:31 a pure evil. I can give him more benefit of that to his grandfather and father. But when
01:01:37 it comes to Kim Jong Un, this is like what pure evil looks like. Pure selfish being.
01:01:43 That’s what it looks like.
01:01:46 Is there some sense where he’s justifying everything he’s doing to himself? Or do you
01:01:51 think there’s a psychopathic aspect to where he enjoys the suffering?
01:01:56 I think in his life, right, I read a lot about like North Korea, a lot of CIA documents,
01:02:02 a lot of intelligence people worked there. And even like worked in North Korean type
01:02:07 elites and escaped. I could hear about them. So Kim Jong Un, when they are born, they treat
01:02:13 like gods. So they never have a sense of them being a human. They’re like equal with the
01:02:20 others. For them, like we are just any kind of tool. Like that what Napoleon like thing
01:02:26 does, right? Anybody is a tool. Like once boxer dies, get him slaughtered for my cause.
01:02:32 And they do not even feel guilty about it because they don’t view us that you deserve
01:02:36 your worthy of it. Yeah, that’s right. So it’s not like he even feels, he doesn’t even
01:02:41 recognize that’s a suffering. Like of course this is what you do serving me. Because I
01:02:48 am, I am this. So I think that’s like beyond that. It’s not like suffering enters his
01:02:54 mind. He doesn’t even think what we go through. So he thinks of himself as a god. And then
01:03:00 everybody else is just tools that they’re disposable. Right. There was rumors several
01:03:06 times of him dying. Yeah. Do you think he is, obviously his health is not good. Do you
01:03:14 think he will die soon? What happens if Kim Jong Un dies? Well, when it comes to North
01:03:21 Korea, anybody knows what they’re going, what Kim Jong Un does is lie, right? Nobody knows.
01:03:26 I’m sure CIA knows, but they may never reveal that. CIA has enough intelligence to can tell
01:03:32 where Kim Jong Un is, what he’s doing. They just don’t assassinate him because they don’t
01:03:37 see the means of it right now. Do you think they can assassinate him? They can. They do
01:03:42 have ability to get assassinated. Why the hell did they not assassinate him? Because
01:03:45 they don’t care. They don’t care about the suffering of 25 million people. They got to
01:03:50 pay the price. If they assassinate Kim Jong Un, they got to pay the price afterwards.
01:03:54 There’ll be financial, there’ll be political price to pay. It’ll anger China. Absolutely.
01:04:00 That is a huge piece for them. And then they’ll have to deal, obviously there’ll be financial
01:04:04 and military consequences of having to deal with the turmoil, the uncertainty, the revolutions
01:04:10 that will spring up. Yeah. That’s the thing. That’s why they don’t want to take that risk.
01:04:15 They don’t want to do anything. The US now became very passive when they pursue these
01:04:20 moral values to the rest of the world. They did the same thing with the Holocaust in the
01:04:24 early days, actually. Yeah. They didn’t care. And that’s what their policy has been. They
01:04:30 don’t care. So if Kim Jong Un dies, it’s going to be very hard for North Korea to replace
01:04:37 anybody in his position because Kim’s is a brand. It’s not just a leader for us, right?
01:04:43 Whenever we think of Kim, who came with my mind, who’s almost a God figure. North Korea
01:04:49 is the number 10 religion in the world. They copied the Bible. So if you believe that,
01:04:56 if there are people who believe in God and Jesus Christ, how do you not believe that
01:05:01 North Koreans believe in the same thing? So Kim Il Sung’s grandfather and his parents
01:05:06 were devout Christians. So Kim Il Sung grew up this Christian like verses. So when he
01:05:14 finding his country, he said, I love my people so much that I’m giving you my son Kim Jong
01:05:20 Il. His body dies, but his spirit is with us forever. Who can know how many here I have,
01:05:26 what I think. And when we suffer, we go to paradise with him. And when you block every
01:05:31 single information going to country, of course, people are going to believe it. So who would
01:05:36 be the successor if he dies? He has a son, first son born 2009 and not not old enough
01:05:45 if he dies now. So either his sister might rule for a short amount of time as not like
01:05:51 a leader, but like we like temporary placement. And then when the son is older enough, he
01:05:58 might take it off because it’s a kingdom. That’s most likely and China will do everything
01:06:02 they can to maintain that status quo for the North Korean regime. So North Korean people
01:06:10 have no option here. We just need some leader to courageously come up and do the right thing.
01:06:17 So we can’t just wait this out. No, we can’t. It’s not something that takes its course
01:06:22 and then change. Like we not even know that economic freedom does not bring political
01:06:27 freedom. We know in China, it doesn’t. That’s the unique thing about freedom. You got to
01:06:33 fight for it. Otherwise, you don’t ever get it. Freedom is something that has to be fought.
01:06:38 And if nobody fighting for freedom, it’s not going to be there.
01:06:43 Can we talk a little bit about freedom? What does it mean to you? Having had, we talked
01:06:49 about love in that same way about freedom, having sort of discovered it later in life.
01:06:57 What does it mean to you?
01:06:59 I think every day I get a new definition of freedom. It is a never ending journey, having
01:07:07 this relationship with being free and what it means to be free, right? I think you definitely
01:07:17 can live life without being free and also happy life too. I saw a lot of North Korean
01:07:22 elites who are fat and have power, but didn’t have freedom, were very happy. In a way, happier
01:07:28 than the people that I found in New York were like investment bankers and consultants in
01:07:33 Manhattan and 70% of them go like talk therapist. I was very confused. I remember writing my
01:07:41 book in New York. My editor was saying, Yami, you know you’re traumatized. You need to go
01:07:47 talk to a therapist. I was like, what is therapy? What is trauma? Because in North Korea, they
01:07:54 don’t have word for stress or trauma because how can you be stressed in a socialist paradise?
01:07:59 They don’t let you be knowing what that is. Then they were like, yeah, hearing people
01:08:05 having problems, go talk to therapist. I was like, how much is it? $200 per hour and it’s
01:08:12 a discounted rate too. I was like, no, thank you. We know that freedom comes with responsibility
01:08:23 and in a way, it’s not that easy to be free, thinking for yourself constantly. In a way,
01:08:32 I understand. Let’s give government every power we have. Let them decide what education
01:08:37 that I get. Let them decide where I live. Let someone figure that out for me. That’s
01:08:42 how North Korea began, hoping the government is going to represent my own interests, believing
01:08:48 that they were good. With that benefit of doubt and good faith, it began the nightmare.
01:08:56 Freedom is not like a gateway to be happy at all. In a way, it can make life a lot more
01:09:01 complex, but then it’s fun, isn’t it? You start thinking for yourself. You start making
01:09:07 mistakes. It’s so fun to be free, even though you can be suffering way more than the people
01:09:13 who are not free.
01:09:14 The thing about freedom is when you have freedom, you also have the responsibility for your
01:09:19 actions. That could be a huge burden because if you succeed, it’s you, but if you fail,
01:09:28 it’s you. If you do horrible things, it’s you. If you don’t do something, for example,
01:09:34 if you don’t help people in North Korea, it’s you. That’s a huge burden. Living with that
01:09:41 burden is a kind of suffering. There’s some aspect in which freedom is suffering.
01:09:46 It is suffering.
01:09:47 Because life is suffering, and then freedom is you as an individual fully living through
01:09:54 that. See, you talked, you’re friends with Michael Malice. He believes, and so I want
01:10:01 to kind of ask you about government. He believes, he’s an anarchist, and he believes kind of
01:10:07 in freedom fully implemented in human societies, meaning that humans should all be free to
01:10:19 choose how they, you know, transact with each other, how they live together. There shouldn’t
01:10:25 be a centralized force that tells you what to do. Do you think there’s some role for
01:10:31 government in a healthy society?
01:10:35 Yeah.
01:10:36 If we look at North Korea, there’s the most horrible implementation of government, but
01:10:42 then if we look at what the United States strives to be, at least in principle, there’s
01:10:49 an ideal of a government that represents the people and helps the people. Is there a place
01:10:55 for that kind of ideal, or is government always going to get us into trouble?
01:10:59 I am not, I mean, I spoke to Michael Malice. I kept asking why he’s an anarchist, right?
01:11:05 And he doesn’t even believe in military, none of that thing. And I was like, I don’t think
01:11:11 I want to be in that world you’re describing. That’s pretty scary. I want the law enforcement.
01:11:17 I want like, I don’t, in a way that, so why equality makes no sense is that the fact that
01:11:26 when you and I were born, we were born in a very different capability of thinking, different
01:11:31 intelligence, different capability in our physics, right? So equality is nonsense. You
01:11:36 can never achieve that, right? So to me, that’s been, it’s very scary in America.
01:11:43 When the government tries to enforce.
01:11:45 To make equality on everybody, that is impossible.
01:11:48 Specifically equality of outcome. So like, so given that we all started different places,
01:11:53 enforce, like measure in some kind of way where people stand, and if they’re an equal,
01:11:58 enforce equality. And that’s what leads to the kind of things that you mentioned with
01:12:03 the class system in North Korea.
01:12:06 Yeah. So I think that’s why government can be bad. They can be very dumb. And another
01:12:12 thing is that they cannot know what you want. A lot of times people don’t even know what
01:12:17 they want as an individual. Like how the heck do you assume government is going to know
01:12:22 what is best for you? Nobody knows. We just all do our best. I do think though some governments
01:12:28 like in Switzerland, you know, have more power, give power to the different state can be good.
01:12:34 I think I’m more, you know, like giving power to the state and let individual decide where
01:12:39 they want to go in within states. Like, I mean, why did you choose Texas, right? There’s
01:12:45 no income tax, right? Like there’s a lot of things people find Texas, like, you know,
01:12:50 charming and they come here. So in a way that I don’t want to be in a one strong government
01:12:56 that makes every single thing the same way. In a way, I want to kind of experiment to
01:13:01 everything. We can have anarchy state. There’s no police, nothing going on. You can be whatever
01:13:08 you want. And you can go to a state where it’s like abortion is bad, blah, blah, this
01:13:13 is bad. All this like conservative values. And let the ideas compete and let them how
01:13:19 they’re being practiced in real life. But I think it’s very scary when the US government
01:13:25 is getting bigger and bigger and then they try to make every state under one big government.
01:13:32 And that’s like when I get really alarmed.
01:13:35 Are there things that you see in the United States in the current culture that’s kind
01:13:40 of has echoes of the same things you saw in North Korea that worry you?
01:13:47 Absolutely. It’s in America now the meritocracy doesn’t matter, right? It’s evil. The white
01:13:56 man’s idea of talking about if you’re competent enough, they say, oh, if you’re coming from
01:14:02 rich white family, you are going to be competent. So other people don’t have a chance. But look
01:14:07 at Asians who came from nothing as competent and go to Harvard Law School and medical school.
01:14:13 So it doesn’t almost is like there’s no incentive for you to work hard anymore in the system
01:14:19 right now. That is North Korea. There’s no incentive because you are born with your class
01:14:24 already. So no matter what you do, you can never. So the horrible thing about North Korean
01:14:29 system is that there’s nothing holding Mary up. So if you’re coming from other cultures
01:14:35 that like Meghan Markle joined the royal family and she became a lawyer, you go up by North
01:14:40 Korea. If someone from high class going to marry somebody down, you only go down with
01:14:45 them. That’s how they prevent class mix.
01:14:48 Right. That kind of enforces the separation because there’s a huge disincentives to go
01:14:54 to marry to integrate between classes. What do you do about this kind of, you know, especially
01:15:03 universities, but in companies, I’m thinking about starting a company. So I’m looking at
01:15:08 this very carefully. There’s these ideas of diversity and meritocracy. That’s a tension.
01:15:15 So I think there’s a big way in which diversity broadly defined is not at all in a tension
01:15:25 with meritocracy. So having a variety of people, backgrounds, way of thinking, all those kinds
01:15:33 of things is a huge benefit to any group. But the way diversity is often defined is
01:15:40 by sort of very crude classes of people, whether it’s by skin color or gender or some very
01:15:48 kind of large group way. And that actually does two things in my mind. One, it drowns
01:15:55 out real diversity or not real, but the full spectrum of diversity, which is like within
01:16:02 class diversity of like, are you somebody who is exceptionally good at mathematics?
01:16:13 Are you somebody who’s exceptionally good at psychology? Are you good with people? Are
01:16:17 you good with numbers? All that kind of stuff that I think spans or intersects in fascinating
01:16:23 ways with these kinds of groups. So that’s diversity. And then meritocracy is this thing
01:16:29 that probably the reason I wanted to move to Silicon Valley and the reason I didn’t
01:16:34 is like having a fire to change the world within you. Like meritocracy is like, I want
01:16:40 to be the best in the world at this and I will strive and work hard, not stepping on
01:16:45 others, but like purely within yourself, be the best version of yourself. That idea is
01:16:54 in some ways being not celebrated or demonized. It’s literally meritocracy is being demonized
01:17:03 right now in America. Working hard is a symbol of you coming from some established family.
01:17:10 The fact that you celebrate accomplishment, hard work is a sign of your patriarchal,
01:17:17 whatever thing they call it. And they want to abolish that. They want to like stop giving
01:17:23 kids grades. That’s what they’re already doing, right? They want to stop. They want to like
01:17:28 we should abolish like SAT in America they take to go to college, right? They won’t even
01:17:33 abolish that. Yeah, some kids have no ability to do math. So why do we have to force them
01:17:39 to learn math? And that’s what comes with humans overcome challenges. That’s what makes
01:17:44 us special. But then like, because it’s kids coming from this family, let’s find a reason
01:17:49 why they cannot, and then they don’t have to do that thing. But they still deserve the
01:17:53 same job. They need to be a lawyer and doctors. And that’s like what in North Korea was like
01:17:59 not, there was not even meritocracy beginning with, right? Did you born in the same family,
01:18:05 the family, the blood, right? Like if one person does something wrong, it’s like collective
01:18:11 guilt. Because I spoke out, three generations of my family got punished, who I left behind.
01:18:17 And then in America, I see the same thing. Like if you’re somehow great, great grandfather
01:18:23 on the slave, now you are privileged and you’re guilty because you are white and guilt. But
01:18:30 how do you change your ancestor? How did you have a saying on it? And that is where there’s
01:18:36 no way out. There’s no forgiving, there’s no moving forwards. And this current culture
01:18:41 in America now, like I remember at Columbia, like before class, everybody had to go around
01:18:47 saying, tell us what your pronoun is. And my English, my third language, I learned as
01:18:53 an adult. Even saying he and she, I’m confused. It’s a pure mistake. And they say, call me
01:19:00 they, because I’m gender fluid. Basically, I can be a girl, but next hour you talk to
01:19:04 me, I’m a boy, right? And if you don’t do it right, they like look at you, why are you
01:19:10 doing it? Right? It makes me so nervous. And this is where I come to, this is a regression
01:19:16 of civilization. We are regressing as a humanity here. Like the enlightenment, all of those
01:19:23 things made us so much brighter and looking forward. And now we are going backwards.
01:19:28 Well, I think there’s a pendulum aspect to it because it’s my hope in terms of backwards.
01:19:33 So pendulum goes backwards too, but it just goes back and forth, I think. And then in
01:19:38 the long arc of history, we’re making progress. I think all of the discussions of diversity
01:19:44 and inclusion and all those kinds of things, I always thought that they’re healthy in moderation.
01:19:51 They should be a small part of the conversation amongst other things. The natural aspect,
01:19:57 it seems that they kind of have this way of just consuming all conversations. It’s like
01:20:03 the meetings, like diversity and inclusion meetings multiply somehow, where it’s like
01:20:08 the only thing that you’re talking about. And it’s very kind of absurd. And when I look
01:20:12 at, even at MIT, it’s a strangely disproportionate amount of discussions about that. And also
01:20:20 to me as an engineer, those discussions are very frustrating because they don’t seem to
01:20:25 actually do anything. So they want to bully people instead of creating systems that fix
01:20:36 definitive problems. And that in itself, that kind of bullying, that’s the same kind of
01:20:42 thing you saw in terms of McCarthyism in America against the communists. You certainly saw
01:20:47 that in Soviet Union against everybody who’s not communist. It creates hate, not progress.
01:20:55 When you talked to Jordan Peterson recently, and people should listen to that conversation,
01:20:59 it was a fascinating one. I think he almost got emotional on the discussion about universities
01:21:10 and your experience with Columbia because he, like myself, for perhaps different reasons,
01:21:16 have a hope for our academic institutions. Some of the most incredible people, some of
01:21:21 the most incredible engineering and idea development, innovation happens in universities. And so
01:21:27 we both deeply care about them. Is there something, so the reason he got emotional, the reason
01:21:35 he was kind of hurt is the fact that you did not, you were not deeply inspired by your
01:21:44 experience at Columbia.
01:21:46 It made me dumber. It made me scared. It made me terrified that I had to censor myself in
01:21:54 America. Are you seriously telling me that you don’t ever censor yourself? Can you truly
01:22:01 say whatever you want about race, about anything, gender? We all censor ourselves. Let’s be
01:22:09 honest, right? We are all doing that. And that’s what I learned. I thought I was coming
01:22:15 to a country where never needed, like first thing my mom taught me growing up in North
01:22:20 Korea was, don’t even whisper because the birds and mice could hear you. And I thought,
01:22:27 okay, now America is truly the land of the free, home of the brave. You can say anything
01:22:32 you want, and then you have freedom to change your mind and evolve. But the people now demand
01:22:38 you to be the perfect version they demand you to be. You cannot change your mind. And
01:22:43 then what is the meaning of life if you cannot grow? You should feel safe to talk about anything,
01:22:49 and then later, okay, I was wrong. But now if you do that, you got to get penalized
01:22:53 for it.
01:22:54 I mean, censorship is a funny thing because you probably should not say dumb things. You
01:22:59 should try to say things you want to say in the most eloquent, the most effective way
01:23:04 you can. So, I mean, that’s what editing is, right? So there’s some level of like being
01:23:10 careful with what you say, not because you’re afraid of some overarching kind of group of
01:23:17 bullies, but you want to be the best version of yourself when you express stuff. But there’s
01:23:22 some sense where in the university setting, you can put that self censorship like level
01:23:27 down more and say stupid stuff and explain and play because you should be forgiven for
01:23:33 that kind of play, especially when you’re discussing difficult aspects of human history,
01:23:39 whether that include racism, that include atrocities. I’m still nevertheless sort of
01:23:46 hopeful, but at the same time, I’m surrounded by engineers. So I don’t get to interact with
01:23:53 people in humanities much. And it seems like there’s getting worse.
01:23:57 It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing.
01:23:59 Yeah, I don’t know. Well, I do sort of interact with psychologists, but they haven’t touched
01:24:07 on those kinds of topics yet. I still, sort of in defense of psychology, I still, I wish
01:24:14 I had more numbers.
01:24:15 Yeah.
01:24:16 But I still feel like most psychology people don’t partake in this kind of stuff either.
01:24:22 They’re just doing excellent research. We’re just highlighting, this is what America does
01:24:26 well. You’re kind of highlighting anecdotal experiences and making a big deal out of them.
01:24:35 But that’s good because like it’s a slippery slope. If those things start to overtake all
01:24:40 of academia, it starts becoming a big problem, even in the engineering field. So we should
01:24:44 be concerned. But it is truly tragic that somebody who’s exceptionally well read like
01:24:49 you, whose fire was stoked first with Orwell, that fire should burn bright. Like this should
01:24:56 not be, you should be writing many books. You know what I mean? Like, and you’ll be,
01:25:03 you talk to Jordan, you know, it’s very possible depending what you want to do with your life
01:25:08 that you’ll be a future Jordan Peterson, right? So like that, and Columbia should be a place
01:25:14 that enriches your mind. And the fact that it didn’t is tragic.
01:25:21 I mean, I did the same. It’s like I was there four years. It wasn’t like I had a one class
01:25:26 that was bad in a one semester. That was the thing. When Dr. Piro was asking, is there
01:25:31 any one class that had no sentiment of this virtue, signoring, politically right? There
01:25:38 was none. Entire course, I think I took 126 credits total. Not even one class. Doesn’t
01:25:48 matter we were talking about classic art. And that’s the thing. I literally thought,
01:25:52 okay, I pushed the last semester to call like the art and music, right? So I thought this
01:25:57 is going to be the least politically correct class I can take. And then it begins with
01:26:02 who has problem with calling this course the Western civilization of art and music. And
01:26:08 everyone’s like raising their hands. Because like, why do we have to learning about this
01:26:12 Beethoven, Mozart, the bigots, and all the people, like, you know, everything ruined
01:26:18 by white men. And it’s even music, even these paintings. And as I didn’t raise my hand,
01:26:26 everyone was looking at me. How do you not have the problem with this? Like you should
01:26:30 hate this, you’re Asian. So I think that’s the thing is I think the problems are way
01:26:36 deeper than what people think. And that’s what when I learned is like, it’s not that
01:26:43 safe in America, we can go complete to the south. And looking at even Europe, that is
01:26:50 like, I used to be way more optimistic. But now I actually see, wow, this country can
01:26:57 go to south. And we might, if US forced them, right, this is the only country left to battle
01:27:03 with the Communist Party in China. We may lose the opportunity to be free ever again
01:27:08 as a humanity.
01:27:10 Wow. So I mean, that puts a lot of value on having these kinds of conversations. It
01:27:15 is, I mean, I’m troubled. I’m troubled by a lot of things. But like censorship on YouTube,
01:27:20 for example. Yeah, it was very annoying to have to listen to Donald Trump all the time.
01:27:26 Just like create drama, like news cycle was completely drowned out by Donald Trump. But
01:27:31 like banning him from Twitter, it was like, that was scary for me, because it’s like,
01:27:42 that’s a step towards a direction where you’re going to, like, where does that take us? You’re
01:27:48 going to silence people, then it’s like Jordan Peterson is next.
01:27:53 That’s why we need to promote freedom of thinking and speech, right? And the one thing that
01:27:58 I love about Dr. Peterson is, he’s a psychologist, right? He talks about we think by talking.
01:28:08 That’s why when you go to therapy, you talk and then you hear yourself and then you think
01:28:12 and you come up to the answer. It’s so important for humans to talk so we can think. So when
01:28:19 they say you cannot talk means you cannot think. And they don’t know the consequences
01:28:24 of that. And this is why I promote, I want the freedom of speech, even though it hurts,
01:28:31 ridiculous, you know, sometimes it can be dangerous. But the price, the alternative
01:28:37 is so bad that we should take the, you know, make this trade off. Everything has a trade
01:28:42 off in this world. And it comes with a sacrifice, right? So I think that’s what I want to say.
01:28:48 That’s what I want to see in America. But it’s unfortunately like the people like you
01:28:53 say, who decides what is hate speech? What is dangerous? That’s what I’ve been getting
01:28:59 scared. Because everybody’s imperfect. How do we want to give that power to them? And
01:29:05 they’re going to decide, today they might agree with me, say, okay, your speech is good,
01:29:09 promotes good, and then they might come back next year and say your speech is bad. What
01:29:14 are you going to do when that happens to you? We have to almost like get ideas out and then
01:29:19 play with them. I think what’s a really important component of that is forgiving each other
01:29:23 for like realizing that we’re a different person day by day and certainly years later.
01:29:31 And I think some of that is both cultural mechanisms of saying like we forgive each
01:29:36 other for wrong ideas or not wrong ideas, but for who we are, the full evolution of
01:29:42 the human being, for the steps we’ve taken on that evolution, and also creating mechanisms
01:29:48 that allow you to allow us to forgive each other. Like, for example, on Twitter is like
01:29:56 horrible with this because one of the main viral ways that people create drama on Twitter
01:30:02 is like pulling up an old tweet that somebody said, right? And then saying, oh, this is
01:30:08 the guy that thinks that. But that’s like the opposite of the mechanisms we need to
01:30:14 forgive ourselves, forgive each other for the things we’ve said in the past. And so
01:30:20 part of that is the cultural, part of this is the technological mechanisms. You mentioned
01:30:28 Jordan Peterson. You had a great conversation with him. What was chatting with him like?
01:30:34 I’m just curious because he’s deeply passionate, especially on the Soviet Union side about
01:30:40 the atrocities of these kinds of systems. What was it like? What did you agree with
01:30:46 him on? What did you disagree? What were some things you both kind of learned from each
01:30:52 other through that conversation, do you think? So here, so my story, the Jordan
01:30:57 Peterson, a very long one. So one day I was walking down in Chicago, and they were like
01:31:04 huge theater was sold out. It says a big letter, Jordan Peterson sold out. And then it was
01:31:11 a huge theater in the middle of Chicago, right? Like, this is my comedian, like who can be
01:31:15 selling this entire thing out at like 7pm? And then with my ex husband, we were walking
01:31:22 the street. And then we saw people were like selling this like tickets, like for a very
01:31:28 higher price, right? And then do you want to take it? And then he was like, yeah, sure.
01:31:33 We went in, it’s packed. And then I was just happy birth or like, but I wasn’t able to
01:31:42 understand his English that much. My English was still bad. And you didn’t know who he
01:31:46 was really? No, no. You were just curious? Yeah, it was like 2018. Who’s the guy that
01:31:50 sells out a thing? A theater? Yeah. Yes, I saw Dave Rubin came out before him and make
01:31:56 jokes. I still don’t know who Dave Rubin is. Afterwards, I met them all. But back then
01:32:00 I had no clue what that is. And then he was giving lessons. But what I got from that night
01:32:05 was not what Jordan said, but what people did on the audience. These people like I don’t
01:32:12 know, thousands of people in this big theater, crying like babies. And that was like, whatever
01:32:20 that guy is doing is very special, right? He wasn’t like making any jokes. He had no
01:32:25 slides, just a one simple person standing in the huge, giant theater talk. And long
01:32:31 time too. And people cry as like, wow, okay, whatever that is, I gotta check it out. And
01:32:38 then I got home. And then later, many years later, I got a book. And I will start reading
01:32:43 his book. And it talks about, it explains so much, right? Like now at Columbia, I learned
01:32:49 like everything gender is like made up concept, construct, like the hierarchy is my man’s
01:32:55 idea of making the hierarchy. And then he begins with the number one, the laughsers
01:33:00 had the hierarchies, evolution of history that is within us, that we want a hierarchy,
01:33:06 right? And then chapter five about socialization of child, you know, how do you raise them?
01:33:12 And all of it, and then what’s why telling the truth is matters, right? And there’s a
01:33:19 white, like in his entire 12 lessons, I read it and it’s like, I was so grateful that I’m
01:33:25 alive with this. There’s people always say, if Socrates is alive, how much would you pay
01:33:30 to have lunch with him? That kind of thing, right? So for me it was like, okay, I’m like
01:33:36 alive in the same contemporary world as one of the greatest thinkers of my entire generation.
01:33:42 And then like, how much money would I pay? No limit amount. And I like reached out to
01:33:53 Michaela on her podcast on Twitter and connected. And then one day she said, do you want to
01:33:57 be on Michaela’s podcast? I was like, what? I was like, of course. And I was very nervous,
01:34:05 but I didn’t expect him to be like that connected. Cause I thought he was a psychologist, like
01:34:13 he saw so much suffering in the world. He studied Soviet Union, his hobbies collecting
01:34:18 those things to remind him of the suffering of a human being. So sometimes some people
01:34:24 hear so much atrocity, they become like very, you know, not engaged.
01:34:29 Yeah, desensitized.
01:34:30 Desensitized.
01:34:31 He felt, he was feeling, he was, it’s almost like he was living through the experiences
01:34:35 with you as you were talking about it. It was an amazing conversation. So Jordan is
01:34:39 one of the great thinkers of our time, but I would say the greatest thinkers of our time
01:34:43 is Michael Malus. So you’ve also got a chance to talk to him. So he wrote a book on North
01:34:49 Korea. It’s an interesting style book. I learned a lot from it. I learned a lot from Michael
01:34:55 about it. And it’s interesting that he chose North Korea as a thing to study. That he,
01:35:02 of all people, this fascinating human being that is Michael, chose this darkest of aspects
01:35:10 of humanity to study. What do you think of Michael? What do you think of his book on
01:35:17 North Korea called Dear Reader that people should definitely check out?
01:35:20 Absolutely. So back then, when I reached out to Michael through mutual friends in South
01:35:25 Korea, my English wasn’t good. So I got a copy in my hand. I tried to read and a lot
01:35:33 of them I didn’t understand. So, but I thought it was very fascinating how he explained North
01:35:40 Korea through the Dear Leader’s perspective, right? Nobody has ever done that. And you
01:35:45 can reveal so much about the state and absurdity of the entire situation. And also through
01:35:52 humor. And that’s what’s amazing about Michael. He knows the full gravity of tragedy. He knows
01:35:59 the full suffering. He’s not just like people here in America on the BuzzFeed making fun
01:36:04 of Kim Jong Un’s haircut. They don’t care what people go through. Michael cares.
01:36:09 Deeply cares. And then he still does ridiculous jokes. So that kind of reveals in a dark way
01:36:16 the absurdity of evil. And he does that masterfully. Do you?
01:36:22 He’s a genius. He is definitely a genius.
01:36:25 All right. If he watches this, let’s not make his head too big here. But is there some
01:36:34 aspect to, I mean, there is an absurdity to the whole thing. Kim Jong Un is this, I mean,
01:36:43 he’s almost like a caricature of evil.
01:36:45 It’s a joke.
01:36:46 It’s a joke.
01:36:47 A lot of people think it’s a joke. They just think like, this is too, too absurd. They
01:36:52 just, they laugh. Like, can you imagine you laugh at Holocaust? This is that ridiculous.
01:36:58 Can you maybe psychoanalyze that a little bit? Because that’s where my mind goes to.
01:37:04 Like, he’s so ridiculous that you can’t, it’s almost like hard to believe this is real.
01:37:14 Is that just, is that just my kind of and people’s desire to escape the cruelty of reality
01:37:23 by just kind of making a joke out of it?
01:37:25 I think it is a few things, right? Like, so North Korea as a nation, number one or number
01:37:34 two smartest IQ people in the world, despite their malnutrition. So…
01:37:41 So there is, I mean, that’s an interesting point. So in your sense, the people…
01:37:48 Are not dumb.
01:37:49 Still carry the sort of the brilliance. There’s a culture there that’s like hungry to become
01:37:57 realized. Like the people that are silenced by the electricity, by the actually having
01:38:04 no food, all those kinds of things. Like, if you add the electricity, if you add the
01:38:08 food, you’re going to have a cultural center of the world.
01:38:11 Like South Korea. That’s what they exactly did, right? The exact same Korea. One became
01:38:16 like 11th largest economy. One became the world’s most like poorest nation, right? And
01:38:23 this is a perfect example. Like if, I don’t know if you read that book, Why Nation Fails.
01:38:28 The system. It’s not about a culture. It is not about people. It is not about IQ. What
01:38:34 makes us too different is a system. South Korea, North Korea is a perfect example of
01:38:40 that. One is exact same capability. We are a homogeneous country, same language, tradition,
01:38:46 all of that. We gave them different system. One is free democracy, one is dictatorship
01:38:52 and came up with the biggest different result. And I think North Korea reveals that to us.
01:38:59 It’s not because we are great that we are living in this prosperity. Free market. The
01:39:05 ideas gave us to this. The system we built, our ancestors built, gave us this privilege.
01:39:12 It’s not us. Nothing is about us being special here, right? The system that we have is quite
01:39:18 special. And North Korea proves that to us. It doesn’t matter even if you’re smart. That’s
01:39:25 all irrelevant. And I think that’s why people just keep denying that they want to feel special.
01:39:32 Because I’m awesome, I got all of this. No, it’s not you, you got this. And when people
01:39:38 say, I hate capitalism. I was like, without capitalism, how do you came up with this thing?
01:39:44 Literally, how did you come up with this?
01:39:47 The systems matter. And they matter way more than this individualistic society would like
01:39:57 to imagine. It is the most important thing you can have in life. Choosing the right system.
01:40:08 Do you have advice for young people today? You’ve lived an incredible life and you have,
01:40:14 I hope, an incredible life ahead of you. What advice would you give to young people today,
01:40:20 high schoolers, college students, how to be successful in their career or maybe successful
01:40:28 in life?
01:40:30 Last thing I want them to feel is guilty. It doesn’t do anything, right? So I hate when
01:40:39 people talk about, oh, why guilt? It’s like, that doesn’t make even any sense, right? I
01:40:44 think the fact that they are born with freedom is a blessing for all of us. It’s not like
01:40:51 I want them to want to do something because they are guilty. I want them to do something
01:40:56 because they are grateful. It is true. Like we are sitting here, the fact why I have children
01:41:02 is suffering, having kids you don’t sleep, costly, like so much work. Like any like logical
01:41:09 rational mind, you should never want children, right? Why would you do that to yourself?
01:41:15 Especially as a woman, right? You don’t want to do that to yourself. But think about like
01:41:21 we are sitting here today, two of us in this amazing technology, this country, because
01:41:26 somebody in Savannah hundreds of thousands of years ago, they’re hunting berries and
01:41:31 surviving cold. Every suffering they can imagine, they fall for us. That’s why we ended up here.
01:41:38 So life is ultimately bigger than us. And I think that’s what I want them. It’s not
01:41:45 like I want them to do the right thing and be the best version of themselves. It’s like,
01:41:50 I want them to feel grateful. And we should be grateful for the freedom and then take
01:41:55 full advantage of that. I mean, it starts with the freedom to experience everything
01:42:00 in life. And for your life, literally, like how my father, like, you know, working, dying
01:42:08 is a lot easier than living. Dying takes like few minutes, right? Maximum. And living takes
01:42:16 forever. So when I was facing this unbelievable challenge, I thought, okay, this most rational
01:42:22 thing I can do is killing myself right now. But the hardest thing I can choose is choose
01:42:27 to live. And my father did that. Even in the concentration camp, even no matter why he
01:42:33 said, life is a gift. You need to fight for it. And I think that’s what’s missing here,
01:42:40 that we don’t think life as a gift. It’s a gift. Like, how many people had to fight
01:42:46 for me to be here today? Think about the sacrifice they made for many, many, many generations.
01:42:52 I don’t even know what they went through. I can’t even fathom what they went through.
01:42:56 They fought for life. Yeah. And that is my responsibility enough. So it doesn’t make
01:43:02 them, their fight was not meaningless, right? It meant something because now I’m carrying
01:43:08 on that fight. You mentioned considering suicide. Do you think about your mortality now? Now
01:43:18 that you’re perhaps in a slightly more comfortable place, do you still think about death? I do
01:43:27 because I was informed actually when I was 21 that I was on the killing list of Kim Jong
01:43:35 Un by South Korean intelligence. And then I had to live with that, right? But now I
01:43:43 actually feel more because, I don’t know, you follow Jamal Khashoggi’s story, the Saudi
01:43:48 journalist who got chopped off in Turkey embassy, right? His reason why he got killed was he
01:43:54 became very prominent on Twitter. He had a huge voice and Saudis followed him. Now I
01:44:01 became very first North Korean to have this many social media followings. And recently
01:44:07 North Korea started an investigation team to analyze whatever I do, even though it’s
01:44:13 first time for them. So they don’t even know what to do at this point. They’re like, this
01:44:18 is so new. What do we do? We do Kim Jong Nam. Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of Kim
01:44:24 Jong Un got killed in Malaysia. That is another tragedy that I feel so sorry for the US government
01:44:30 is that Kim Jong Nam was giving information to the CIA for the past like 10 years. That
01:44:36 trip, when he got killed in Malaysian airport, he was meeting up with the CIA agent for two
01:44:41 days on the Northern Ireland. CIA could have protected him. They didn’t. They let him die.
01:44:49 Who killed him?
01:44:50 North Korean Kim Jong Un killed him. Do you know the Malaysian, the ladies, the VX, the
01:44:55 nerve agent. North Koreans killed him in Malaysian airport, in the international land. So I mean
01:45:02 North Korea, who was a US resident and the Washington Post journalist, when he got killed
01:45:07 in Saudi like a lamb, they chopped him into pieces. In that most inhumane death, what
01:45:13 was the consequences for the Saudis? Nothing. The word is we think we live in a country
01:45:20 where there’s no justice. There is no accountability for killing any dissent, no matter how big
01:45:26 their names are.
01:45:27 So you don’t think your vast and quickly growing social media presence protects you?
01:45:34 No, it does the opposite. Because Kim Jong Un, initially when I spoke out, I don’t know
01:45:39 if you went through it, they did everything they could to character assassinate me, saying
01:45:44 I’m a liar, I’m a CIA spy, I get paid. And then they reached out to Penguin saying,
01:45:50 we’re going to blow up. You cannot write this book. And they did it with Sony. They
01:45:54 had a Sony studio for making that stupid movie interview. And then Penguin did their
01:46:00 investigation. They met every survivor that I went through in the desert. They got the
01:46:05 voice recordings of them because they don’t want them to change their mind later. People
01:46:09 remember differently. So they got the voice recordings, the Penguin Regal team got all
01:46:14 the audios, and now we are ready for the lawsuit. We are going to publish this book because
01:46:18 we checked, verified every single thing that was going in the book. And North Korea couldn’t
01:46:23 do anything anymore.
01:46:24 But that’s character assassination. Which by the way, that’s a whole other conversation
01:46:29 that you were able to survive that. I appreciate the kind of strength it requires to survive
01:46:33 that because you don’t know. And your character being assassinated is in some ways can be
01:46:39 as painful as actual assassination.
01:46:42 It’s worse. It’s worse. Everybody think you’re a liar. Everybody think you’re a liar. And
01:46:48 now everybody, like you said, this nature of internet is that as long as something is
01:46:53 written in the internet, they think that’s a fact. Any stupid person can start a blog
01:46:57 and write about you. But they think, oh, because it’s written on the internet, it’s legit.
01:47:02 Especially negative stuff. That’s the thing I was kind of trying to elaborate on. There’s
01:47:07 a viral aspect to calling somebody a fraud or a liar that nobody questions whether it’s
01:47:13 true or not. It just spreads. And it’s a dark side of our human nature that we want to destroy
01:47:21 the people who are rising.
01:47:23 We cannot stand it. Any change maker in this world who wasn’t controversial, right? Martin
01:47:29 Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, he was called as a terrorist. So I just did not know.
01:47:37 The character assassination is the thing. It’ll probably continue with you.
01:47:41 It will continue with me forever.
01:47:43 So you have to get stronger and stronger, I think, in the face of that. But actual assassination,
01:47:48 perhaps it’s me being hopeful because I have a situation with Russia that I hope I’m not
01:47:54 under. Well, I don’t care actually. But there’s some aspect in which social media presence,
01:48:00 I thought, protects you a little bit. Because just imagine the outrage from an attempted
01:48:08 assassination of you.
01:48:10 But what was the outrage when Jamal Khashoggi got killed like that?
01:48:14 Was the social media presence large?
01:48:17 Over one million people. I don’t have that following. He was 1.6 million Twitter followers.
01:48:23 And the outrage wasn’t there?
01:48:25 No. Because Saudis spoke to Amazon, to Prime Studio, Netflix. There were people who made
01:48:31 a documentary about him but told everybody cannot get that deal. So there was a huge
01:48:37 censorship on that. And people, of course, I mean, they can talk about it one day. Some
01:48:42 dissent from Saudi got killed. Horrible.
01:48:45 But it just dissipates.
01:48:47 They move on to the next cute puppy, right? The next cute cat. That’s what the nature
01:48:51 of this new generation does. They desensitize. It doesn’t affect them. They keep following
01:48:57 the instant pleasure, instant high. That’s what Instagram does to you. It changes your
01:49:02 brain. That’s what I was reading. We spoke about shallows. We became shallow and shallow
01:49:07 and our brain changed permanently. So this new generation, we can get them angry for
01:49:12 like 10 minutes, create hashtags for one day. But then as quick as that was, it goes down
01:49:18 like instantly. And I think that’s the…
01:49:22 Well, that means that… Okay. So that means that there is… It’s an effective way to
01:49:27 get rid of opposition is by murdering them. And that means United States, if it stands
01:49:33 for freedom, if it stands for the freedom of exchange of ideas, should be protecting
01:49:38 people like you.
01:49:39 But they don’t because they don’t want to be involved. They didn’t even protect Kim
01:49:45 Jong Nam who was giving information 10 years risking his life. That’s what is so… I
01:49:50 mean, working for CIA is not bad. The thing is that he was giving information to bring
01:49:58 down the regime. That is valuable. That is something noble about him. But then you just
01:50:04 don’t go extra miles to that. That’s when I lost my faith in the US system as well.
01:50:09 Like this country just cares about saving face. What is most the minimum cost they pay
01:50:15 for anything? And when I was in South Korea, constantly, every single day intelligence
01:50:21 calling me. The North Korean agent going this place, where are you going? The US system
01:50:26 came to US, nobody. That’s when people said, are you a CIA agent? I wish they called me.
01:50:32 I wish they called me. I really truly do. But nobody, nobody does here. I’m sure they
01:50:38 know what’s going on. But the South Korean agent is more like, oh my gosh, we don’t want
01:50:43 you to get killed as a South Korean citizen, right? Yeah. And now I’m trying to become
01:50:47 your citizen. So it’s in a way, it’s, I don’t know what’s worse. Are you afraid for your
01:50:54 life? I was afraid. For the several, three, four years, I was afraid. But I had to come
01:51:03 to terms with it. Like my enemy is not some crazy psychopath. It’s a state with nuclear
01:51:09 power to attack the most powerful country. If Kim Jong Un decides if I die, I’m going
01:51:15 to die. It’s not up to me, right? So in a way, also it’s liberating that you, it’s like
01:51:22 if you are like afraid of some mobs or some like gangsters on the street, it’s almost
01:51:27 like you have power over a little bit. You got to be like thinking that’s my fault. I
01:51:32 went that way, right? But when it comes to Kim Jong Un, I know like my enemy is so much
01:51:37 bigger than me. It’s in a ways of liberation. And also, you know, I just, I live a lot.
01:51:44 So I have seen a lot. I seen everything. I don’t have that much regret left here. Like,
01:51:49 okay, I’m going too soon. You know, it’s like, okay, maybe it’s time. Like death is a part
01:51:54 of life. So. In some sense, you’re willing to accept death to keep fighting for freedom
01:52:02 in your, in at least in part a place you call home. Yeah, it is. Do you hope that one day
01:52:09 you can return to North Korea? I hope so. I hope I bring my son and tell him this is
01:52:15 like where your ancestors from too. It would look very different than the place you came
01:52:21 from in your, as you hope. Do you hope that there’s a democracy one day that North Korea
01:52:32 looks like South Korea? Well, that would be in paradise, right? But I’m a rational optimist.
01:52:42 I’m not like just optimistic because I have to be. I think as long as there are people
01:52:48 who have changed the world, right? Like who believed in something and worked for it. And
01:52:54 like, I don’t know, like there’s like Alice Shroves, a few people holding entire this
01:52:59 world, right? I really believe in that. I think as long as that continues, that can
01:53:06 happen in my country. As long as people like you someday want to decide to do something
01:53:11 with North Korea and working for it, using your brainpower to solve this puzzle, how
01:53:15 fascinating would that be? That’s why I continue to speak, continue to recruit. To inspire
01:53:21 millions to do something. The books you like are all the books I love. I have to mention
01:53:29 this. You mentioned briefly on the, with Jordan, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is an incredible
01:53:37 book. I mean, I don’t know exactly what I want to ask here, but there’s some, I think
01:53:43 the book kind of, through telling a story, reveals that life is suffering and yet there’s
01:53:52 beauty in it. The beauty in every moment that uses kind of a river to paint a metaphor.
01:53:59 Is there something that you could say, speak to like how that book impacted your life and
01:54:07 the way you live life, maybe the way you see life, whether it’s on the life of suffering
01:54:11 side or that life is beautiful side.
01:54:14 I mean, he goes the entire journey, right? He goes in this state of, I’m so enlightened
01:54:20 that I cannot deal with the people who are there in love and quiet about it. Right? They’re
01:54:25 like, that’s so like primitive. Once he has his own son, he actually being attached. He
01:54:33 actually cares. He actually really does whole thing, right? That’s a thing that he used
01:54:37 to think not. Once his son comes find him, he looks at life differently. I think that’s
01:54:44 the thing. I did have that kind of journey where, oh, nothing matters, right? So bitter.
01:54:49 So so like, so cynical. And after I met so many incredible people, I was talking about
01:54:58 that person who told me he was gay. He told me, I love you. And I was like, why do you
01:55:05 love me? In the past, people when they wanted me was because they want to rape me. Everybody
01:55:10 wanted something from me. That’s why they wanted me. And I never understood. You can
01:55:15 love somebody unconditionally. And this gay guy, the last one was want to sleep with me,
01:55:20 right? And he loves me. And I think I had a blessing after my journey, meeting people
01:55:26 who loved me unconditionally because I was just being a human. And I think that’s what
01:55:32 it is now for me that like him. I live for love now. I live for love. Any kinds of love.
01:55:39 Love for knowledge. I like, I read so many books because I love books, right? I love
01:55:45 what I do. I love my people. I love humanity. You know, even it sometimes annoys me. I love
01:55:52 myself.
01:55:53 And that’s beautiful too. The annoying parts are beautiful too. What do you, let me ask
01:55:56 the ridiculous question. What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? Of what’s
01:56:01 the meaning of life?
01:56:02 Well, I think at this point I stop questioning why I’m here, right? Like it doesn’t matter
01:56:10 someone put the atom there or a big bang. I’m here. That’s truth, right? I’m going to
01:56:15 accept that fully. So what, instead of me keep asking the impossible question, why I’m
01:56:19 here. I’m going to let you do that. Let the science do that, right? You guys go out in
01:56:24 the space and look for the evidence. I’m conducting.
01:56:28 You accept that you’re here and you’re just going to enjoy it. Like you’re here for love,
01:56:33 as you said.
01:56:34 That’s the thing. I think I’m here for the process of pursuing something bigger than
01:56:40 me. Process of doing something. It’s not like a model. It’s not a virtue signal or anything.
01:56:47 It just makes me happy that I fight for something bigger. Like than me, right? How boring is
01:56:52 that? Every day you get up like, Oh my God, I’m going to buy myself this. I’m going to
01:56:56 get this for myself. It’s so boring, isn’t it? So in a way, I think that’s what it is.
01:57:03 I’m grateful that I’m in a state. I don’t have to fight for myself anymore. But morning
01:57:09 people have to do that. And that’s sometimes more than enough they have to do. And I salute
01:57:13 them. They are doing fighting, saving themselves every day. But now I’m not there. I’m very
01:57:19 blessed. That’s why I’m very grateful.
01:57:22 Still fighting for something much bigger than you. But do you still believe that you can
01:57:27 change the world? That you can be a thing that, at least in part, helps North Korea
01:57:37 or even broader helps alleviate some suffering in the world?
01:57:41 So that’s the thing. I was reading this book before by randomness, right?
01:57:45 Yeah.
01:57:46 I was like, oh my God, you’re so courageous. You’re amazing. I was like, no, I’m not. I’m
01:57:52 horrible. I know myself. You don’t want to tell me that. It’s random why I ended up here.
01:57:58 Like, why did I pick up English so quickly? Why do I love books? Right? I don’t know why.
01:58:02 It’s random.
01:58:03 Don’t ask why. Just enjoy it.
01:58:05 Yeah, it’s just random. I think I don’t know how the history will remember me. I think
01:58:13 only thing I have to at this point to make sure is that the people after I consulting
01:58:17 a lot of security teams, like now North Korea became a lot smarter. Like you said, they
01:58:22 make it more disguised as a, like a suicide and a car accident. So when I die, they don’t
01:58:28 even know I got killed. I think that’s a higher chance. So I think that’s a thing like people
01:58:35 are suffering, take it or not, it’s your choice. And at least it’s my responsibility for them
01:58:40 to know what’s going on. I think if you did not know and didn’t do anything, you’re not
01:58:44 even guilty of a thing. But once you know, then you are not doing it. Then you, something’s
01:58:51 like not right. So that’s what I’m doing. Like I want people to know. And then what
01:58:58 they want to do is not my problem afterwards. Right? So my role is very small in that regards.
01:59:05 And I just hope that we’re humanized North Koreans for the first time, because we have
01:59:12 been so dehumanized, right? Like we are like looking like robots. If you look at us marching
01:59:18 and cry, like when your leader dies, almost seems like we don’t even have the same emotions.
01:59:24 People cannot connect us in the same level. And I think that’s something is, that’s something
01:59:33 media have done it to us.
01:59:36 And you’re, you’re shining a small light on this dark part of the world that I think,
01:59:43 and you make it, you’re so modest, but I think, I think you will have that little light just
01:59:50 might be a big thing that changes that incredible amount of suffering that’s happening on that
01:59:58 part of the world. You know what I mean? You’re, you’re an amazing person. I’m so fortunate
02:00:03 to get a chance to talk with you. I can’t wait what you do in the future. You’re, I
02:00:08 hope you write many more books. I do hope you continue making videos, continue having
02:00:13 conversations. You’re an inspiration to me and millions of others. I really appreciate
02:00:18 you talking with me today.
02:00:19 I’m so honored. Thank you.
02:00:22 Thank you. Thank you for listening to this conversation with Yeonmi Park. And thank you
02:00:26 to Belcampo, Gala Games, BetterHelp, and 8th Sleep. Check them out in the description to
02:00:33 support this podcast. And now let me leave you with some words from Bob Marley. Better
02:00:38 to die fighting for freedom than be a prisoner all the days of your life. Thank you for listening
02:00:45 and hope to see you next time.