Welcome to this independent archival transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. This session features the complete conversation from Episode #1691 regarding North Korean Defection, Human Rights Survival, and Global Geopolitics Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan
Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by
night, all day. Well, very nice to meet you,
first of all. So nice to meet you. Thanks for
coming here. Is this your first time in Texas?
No, I've been here before. You've been to Austin
before? Yes. So for people who don't know your
story, I'm just going to give them a primer,
just to sort of establish. Your history. You
were born in North Korea and you escaped North
Korea when you were 13? Is that how old you were?
I think we should start off with what it was
like living in North Korea. I saw your interview
with Jordan Peterson and it was incredibly moving
and it was incredibly disturbing and eye -opening.
It's hard to believe for people that don't know
what life is like in North Korea, the reality
of you growing up in North Korea. But just talking
about how you essentially had no food and you
would go looking for bugs to eat. Yeah. This
was the reality of your existence as a child
that there was no protein. Yeah. Now that you
live here in America and you can kind of eat
whatever you want, when you look back on that,
what does it seem like to you? Does it seem like
reality? Does it seem like a dream? What does
your childhood seem like? Sometimes this feels
like a dream. This feels like a dream. Yeah,
so I pinched myself a lot in the beginning. Because
they say if it's not a dream, it hurts, right?
When you pinch yourself. So a lot of times I
pinch myself because sometimes I'm really horrified
if I wake up from this that I'm going to wake
up in my living room in North Korea. So sometimes
that lie is very blurry to me. Because the one
common thing that North Koreans all have is actually
in our dreams when we sleep, it's back in North
Korea. So in our dream, we somehow never able
to escape it. So every day my mom wakes up, like
she tells me about story how she was back in
North Korea. And I have the exact same thing.
No matter what, how many years we left afterwards,
in our dreams, we are still in that country.
So that's the nightmare. The nightmare is that
you're still trapped in North Korea. When you
lived there, you didn't know that there was another
way to live. No. It's like here right now, we
cannot imagine a life in some different planet
in the universe, right? We just don't know what
that life looks like. Exactly the same thing.
I never knew the life in different planet could
be like. And where you lived in North Korea,
there was no internet. Yeah. There's very little
electricity, right? And how much education did
you get? I never even seen the map of the world.
So as an Asian, I did not even know that I was
Asian. So the regime told me I was a Kim Il -sung
race. Kim Il -sung race. Yeah. And then the North
Korean calendar begins when Kim Il -sung was
born. That's like Juche one, that our history
begins. So I don't even know what Jesus Christ
is. And I don't know anything before Kim. There
was everything before Kim, the history was re
-raised for us. But the thing is that we are
hungry, we're starving. If you eat breakfast,
you worry about lunch. If you make it to dinner,
you are not sure if you're going to make it to
tomorrow. So in that scenario, who thinks about
history? Nobody thinks about anything other than
surviving. And that is why precisely Kim Jong
-un keeping us starving mode, even though the
UN, the international organizations, begging
to give food and formula to North Korean people.
But Kim Jong -un is saying no to this food aid
because he doesn't want us to be fed. So he's
purposely starving the people to keep them weak
so that all they think about is surviving so
they don't think about revolution. It's a hunger
games. It's like when I was reading this book,
Hunger Games, I literally like, oh my God, this
person copied North Korea. There's a capital.
You divide into 13 different districts. Capital
people have everything they need. And on other
provinces, their own purpose, they're being starved.
So only thing you can think of your survivor.
If you are full in your stomach, right, you're
going to start thinking about meaning of life,
art, what's out in the universe. You can do all
of that higher thinking when you are full in
your stomach. But when you're hungry, the only
thing that matters is your hunger. When did North
Korea become what it is now? When did it shift
to this totalitarian regime that's starving its
people? and puts people in these classifications.
For one example, one of the classifications is
if your grandfather or great -grandfather committed
some sort of a sin, you are perpetually punished
for that. Everyone in your generation, your next
generation, all of them are guilty. Yeah, forever.
There's no redemption. If the one person commits
a crime in that family clan, three to eight generations
got to be purged. How many generations? Three
to eight generations. Three to eight? Yes. Mostly
commonly three, but the people who challenge
the regime or challenge the leader, then eight
generations get purged. Eight generations. Yeah.
And then after the eighth generation, are they
absolved? No, they're all gone. They're all gone.
By eight generations, you even kill in -laws
of somebody in -law. So not even the blood you
get purged. If your cousin, somebody married
the in -law of somebody, so there was one official
who escaped, 35 ,000 people were purged. A lot
of them, 80 % of them, did not even know that
they were related to this person. Wow. Yeah,
cousins of cousins, somebody, somebody. That's
how they find, they get rid of the root of entire
this clan. When did this all start? When Kim
Il -sung came into power, so he was a big Marxist
and Leninist, and he was a communist. So before
the Korean War in 1948, that's when he began
this, in the name of equality, right? Let's take
everything back from the capitalists. Let's nationalize
the land, get rid of private property. But he
made North Korea into very... In equal society,
dividing people into 50 different classes. 50?
Yeah. And the way the classes worked, you couldn't
marry up. Say, like, if you were a higher class
and a man wanted to marry you, if he was lower
class, you would then become a lower class as
well. That's how they prevent the mixing with
the class. So there's no marrying up. You only
go down. So no matter what happens, if you are
at a lower class, you stay there forever. Forever.
No chance of moving out of that zone. And it's
not based on merit. It's not based on your performance.
It's not based on anything other than the way
you were born. No. This is when I was confused.
When I went to South Korea, people say, if you
work hard in South Korea, you are going to get
rewarded. And that's when I thought, wow, that
is justice. Because in North Korea, it doesn't
matter what you do, what you want to do, what
your dreams are. It's already determined by what
your ancestors did. But the thing is, how do
you choose your ancestor? You can never choose
your parents. And you had no idea that there
was any other way to live when you're growing
up like this? Because I never seen the map of
the world. I didn't even know like the Americans,
how they looked like. Because we don't have internet,
first of all. We have only one channel that government,
you know, controls every single contents. We
don't even have any, we don't even have a cookbook.
That's the thing. As a Korean, I don't even know
what cookbook is. I mean, first of all, we don't
have ingredients. Like, how do you find half
pounds of pork, scallion, blah, blah, right?
So cookbook is, like, pointless. And not only
that, there's no fashion because, I mean, we
don't have freedom to what we wear. So even when
I heard the job called modeling, I was like,
what is that? So everything that I learned here
is, like, all new concept to me as a North Korean.
So when you would eat, where would you get your
food from? So the land is government, right?
The house, there's no private property. But those
farmers working in the collective farm, they
smuggle it out and set it in the black market
secretly. So those food, if we have money, we
go to black market, buy corn, starch, those things.
But mostly we just go to mountain. to pick up
plants, flowers, and grasshoppers is the biggest
protein source for North Koreans. But the government
doesn't provide any food for the people? I heard
they did in the 60s, 70s. But I was born in 1993
in October, and that is right after the Soviet
Union collapsed. So until then, the Soviet Union
was subsidizing North Korea's economy heavily,
and China did the same. But when they collapsed,
they stopped helping the North Korean regime.
So the regime policy was if we, as long as keep
the 10 % alive who are in the capital, our rule
is successful. So they were not going to do anything
until 90 % of population dies. Wow. It's still
there, same rule they have. Until the 90 % dies
out, as long as we keep the 10 % alive, we are
not going to do anything, intervene the starvation.
So there's no effort whatsoever to get food to
the people. It's not like effort. They're actually
actively preventing people to get resources.
Not even last time, the Biden was calling Kim
Jong -un, can we give you a vaccine? And Kim
Jong -un said no. South Korea was calling North
Korea last year. There's a big flood. Can we
give you at least some medicine? And Kim Jong
-un said no. We don't want any medicine. Because
they don't want any aid from the West? They want
to keep people as weak as possible. Exactly.
They want us. Today I was on the way here thinking
getting up in North Korea, the child was challenging
because every day you get dizzy from the starvation.
You get like hear noise every single morning
when you wake up. It takes like 30 minutes to
gather your thoughts to able to walk straight
because everybody's in that mode of starvation.
Yeah, so as you can see me, I'm like very small.
I eat a lot. I'm like, say, 80 pounds. But when
I was escaping, I don't even know how little
I was. And North Korean men above 4, 10 feet
high, they have to go to military. Women is mandatory.
Men have to serve in the military 13 years mandatory,
and women is 10 years. And most men are very
small because of malnutrition? Yeah, 4 '10".
4 '10". Yeah. Wow. And so they just allow people
to forage for themselves. That's the idea. Like,
find your own food. Yes. Are you allowed to have
a garden? Can you grow vegetables? Can you have
animals? Well, one of the executions that my
mom saw was a young man was eating beef, a cow.
because he killed a collective farm cow and he
got executed for that. Everything is owned by
the state. In North Korea, you don't even own
yourself, right? So I remember going to South
Korea, I got a gift one day, and it was a planner.
So what you do, what you're trying to do is a
notebook. And in North Korea, you don't plan
your day. You don't get to plan what you do with
your life. A week before or a day before there's
announcement from the government. How you're
going to spend your day. What to eat, where to
go to work, what to do, when to go to sleep.
Everything is determined by your own state. So
this guy was executed because he killed one of
the state's cows. And you're not allowed to have
your own animals. You can't have like chickens
or something along those lines. They might hide
it, but last year Kim Jong -un confiscated an
entire dog from the population. All the dogs?
Yeah. That was because of COVID -19, right? No.
No? It wasn't? Because he said it was a corrupt
Western sentiment where we have pets. So he ordered
to kill the entire dogs for the meat. So get
rid of dogs. Because even he just didn't like
that it looks like Western having a dog, having
a friendly relationship with animals. So everyone's
dog in all of North Korea was confiscated and
killed. Yeah. And what did they do with the dogs?
I don't know what the regime leaders did. Wow.
Yeah. So do they provide you with any food? No.
No. So you have to find food on your own and
most of the food is wild food, like grasshoppers
and flowers that are edible. Yeah. So this is
why the most bizarre thing is that regime initially
said, oh, give us your land, give us your freedom.
We are going to provide free health insurance,
right? For education, free housing, free of everything.
You don't have to worry about anything. The state
is going to be taking care of everything. But
after Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea came
idea like this idea is called self -reliance.
So you relying on yourself. But you can't farm.
No, you don't have land. How do you farm? You
don't have freedom. There's no free market. My
father was sent to prison camp because he sold
metals. Metals, right. Initially he sold rice,
dried fish, clocks. And trading is illegal. It's
not like he was selling weapons or drugs. Trading
is illegal. So how do you be self -reliant? Yeah.
So the whole idea is just to keep everybody weak.
Yeah. It is so strange to someone who has been
in America their whole life, like me, to even
imagine that the same time I'm living here, one
of the big problems in America is that people
eat too much. I heard that. Isn't that crazy?
I was shocked. I never understood having too
much can be a problem. because I just never knew
that could be a possibility of problem. It's
the number one problem here. Exactly how having
too much is a problem. I don't get it. I think
the, what is the percentage, Jamie, what is the
percentage of people in America that are obese?
I think it's large. I think it's more than 50%.
I think it's, and it's a huge factor with diseases.
And I mean, 78 % of the people that are in the
ICU for COVID are obese. What is it? 43%. So
almost half of the people in the country are
obese. Yeah. Meaning they eat far too much food.
Yeah. And for you, that concept must be insane.
You're in the upside down world. Right? That's
the thing. It's like a different planet. The
common law that I knew in North Korea doesn't
apply here anymore. And it is just so confusing
to me how hard it is not to eat. It's hard when
you don't have food. You cannot find it. And
to me, I don't know why that is so challenging.
Can you do me a favor and just push the microphone
forward? Yeah, like this. Yeah, so it's right
in front of you. There you go. So, yeah, it must
be... Yeah, like another planet. The idea of
having too much food. Yeah, and that's the source
of, I mean, they're complaining about it. So
I'm like, even that is a reason for complaint.
That's something unbelievable. I just don't get
it. It's so easy if you have too much, you don't
eat it. You just don't put it in your mouth,
right? No one is forcing you to eat a lot. Yeah,
but food is addictive. And people like to comfort
themselves with food. When it's everywhere. And
it's also, it's a strange problem, right? The
problem of excess. It's a strange problem. Like
you have too much. But this is, I mean, humanity,
all our humanity, we've been starving. Yeah.
It's the very first time humanity is having this
much access, and I have some compassion for them.
But, you know, a lot of problems, like, I met
American friends in New York. I went to school
there. And, like, my friends complained. I couldn't
sympathize in the beginning. Right. I literally,
because their problem is, like, some guy, they
went on a date, and, like, don't call them back.
And they call me and complain, like, you know,
like, there's people actually problems like life
and death. Yes. This is not a problem, but. Well,
it's an issue of perspective, right? Like your
life, you've seen horrific things. Whereas so
many people, the worst thing that's ever happened
to them is someone broke up with them. Yeah.
Yeah. When you were talking about going to the
doctor when you were a child and that this is
a very disturbing story, but I want you to try
to explain it to people how people were dying
in these hospitals. And rats would eat the eyeballs
of the people who were dying. And children who
were starving would eat the rats. And then the
children would die and the rats would eat the
children. Explain what this was like. How did
you see this? Well, I mean, seeing that the bodies
on the streets, like everyday thing, it was numb.
Where were the bodies? Like just laying around
on the streets? So they are floating in the rivers.
And then they also... Train stations somehow
had a lot of dead bodies because North Korea
is very cold. And there's a train waiting area.
And North Korea has one train go to one distance
like once a month. And like here it would take
like one hour to go to the other place. In North
Korea it would take a month at least to go because
there's no electricity. And sometimes people
have to push the train. They have to push the
train. Yeah. Yeah. Traveling in North Korea is
an unbelievably difficult thing within North
Korea. So, I mean, anyway, so in train stations,
that's when people die mostly. And in North Korea,
the hardest thing as a child for me is that when
my mom goes away to find food. Like, we don't
have phones. We don't have letters. If I say
goodbye to her, I don't know when I'm going to
see her again or if I'm ever going to see her
again. Because she could have cared and, like,
raped and starved. You just never know how to
find people. So in the you know in the morning
when you go like walking the train station they've
just put the piles of dead bodies and they're
all like Become rigid, right? They're almost
like the like wood piled on them and taking away
and one but the thing is for me I didn't even
know the word compassion like nobody told me
you have to feel bad for it because for me it's
like Like fish in the water don't notice the
water right like that something Every day I saw
as a child. So you never went days where you
didn't see. This is a normal thing to see dead
bodies. It was every day as normal as breathing
the air right now. And one thing that I still
remember is my sister and I was walking by the
well. Like in North Korea, we don't have a sewage.
We don't have running water, obviously. We have
to go to a well or river to bring the drinking
water. And there's a young teenage boy, I think,
lying down. And his intestines coming out of
his back. When you're really malnourished, that
thing all opens up. You got zero, zero fats.
Every hole all opens. And you see dogs looking
at his organs coming out. And he was just somehow
conscious begging for food at the time. He was
begging for food while his organs were hanging
out of his body. Yeah. And I don't know why he
was like pants were off. And I felt nothing.
That still haunts me to this day. I don't know
how I felt nothing at that point. And that just
looked horrible. Because of the fact that he's
alive and so many flies flying by on his organs
and how he's somehow consciously begging for
food. And I didn't feel anything. You felt no
compassion? No. It was just normal? Yeah. Yeah,
so that was, like, daily life thing. And then
in the hospital, when I was 13 years old, my
parents took me to hospital because I was a bad
stomachache. And then we don't have, like, x
-ray machines. We don't have MRI. None of that.
Just doctor wraps your belly. And then he says,
oh, we need to operate on her. I think her, like,
appendix was bursting or something. So that afternoon,
they cut me open without any anesthesia. But
it's a normal thing. People in North Korea. operation
without anesthesia but the chances of you going
to surgery is a lot higher for you getting infected
because we don't have penicillin the nurse is
using a one meter to inject every single patient
so who do you know what the other person has
you get from actually more sick by being in the
hospital right And this is where we don't, of
course, have an indoor bathroom for the patient.
We have to go outside. And in between there,
there's piles of dead human bodies. And that's
when I was seeing somehow rats eating human eyes
first for some reason. Because they're probably
soft and doesn't eat. These women, I don't know,
my age probably, show hair wearing these flower
pants. And when they're dead, their mouth is
somehow open. And their eyes are hollow. And
you see children looking at the rats and laughing
and chasing them. And adults telling them, don't
eat those, you're going to get sick from it.
But of course kids don't care. Even finding a
rat is delicacy. Because even finding a snake
is a big price. You don't find those often. So
they were finding the rats and then just trying
to eat them? Yeah. Were they eating them raw?
Sometimes if you find the skin you do, but they
do find some like fire and roast them. So they
were excited to find a rat to eat? Yeah. So they
were catching them with their hands? Yeah, of
course they would catch them with their hands.
And these piles of human bodies, like, she was
on top. That's why I was able to see her wearing
these flower pants. And then, like, her eyes
were so hollow. It's like, we need to look at
the human body like nothing is left. I think
that's what, it's not like just death itself.
It's just like how it becomes nothing. So empty
inside. She does not know the shame or pain.
She was lying there like that. And you see children
just chasing them and laughing and try to catch
the rats. And the children didn't feel anything
being around the dead bodies. Just normal. It's
our daily normal thing. Seeing a death is like
our daily life. And they would eat the rats and
then they would get sick and some of them would
die. Yeah. A lot of them die. And then the rats
would eat them. Yeah. It's like the cycle we
talk about. It's like that's a spring is for
nurse because it's a season of death. And so
the diseases that they would get from the rats,
they were willing to risk those diseases just
because of hunger. Because when you ask, there's
a North Korean proverb. There is no wish for
the person who died after their stomach is full.
So even in the middle of the earthquake, the
North Koreans did not try to run. So my mom was
talking about the day when she was in the university.
There's an earthquake happening. And do you know
what these students are doing? It's not running
out of the building and trying to survive. They
go to the kitchen. So before they die, they eat
at least so they can die. So if you have that
promise of eating one meal, they're going to
risk everything for that. So it's just an entire
country in a perpetual state of starvation. Yeah.
I remember playing this game with my sister.
As a young girl, I never ate until I felt full.
So I would compare myself. I tell her, like,
I can eat 100 bread. And she's like, I can eat
the mountains of bread. I can eat, like, 10 ,000
more than what you just said. Because I don't
know the limits of my stomach. I never tested
it. So you always were hungry. Always hungry.
Never felt full. So you escaped. So your father
was arrested for... trading in metals, right?
And he was just trying to find resources, trying
to get money for the black market for food and
things like that. Is that what it was? To get
us alive. He had to, because regime does not
provide food for the people. So they had to break
the law, which is trading to survive. Without
trading, how do we even survive? So he was trading
these metals and he got caught and that's how
he's in the prison camp. And how long was he
in prison for? Several years, but he was sentenced
to more than 10 years. So I think he was totally
in prison 34 years. But he got out for sick leave,
which is had to go back once he got better. But
of course, in North Korea, that's like who cares
if you die? He was a very smart guy. So he tricked
the guard saying, if you get me out for the sick
leave, I'm going to get you money. Because North
Korea is the most corrupt country that you can
find right now in today's world. So corrupt.
So he tricked the guard, told him that he'd get
him some money. And so he was in, for how many
years? You said four years? Three, four years.
Yeah. And what was it like when he got out? I
didn't recognize him when he came back to me.
I did not know that was my father. Even his voice
changed. When I call North Korea, I do have people
on the ground. I get information. Their voice
is different. It's like their voice is so oppressed.
You can tell this is North Korean speaking. You
can tell just by their voice? Yeah. That's the
thing. When some Chinese, like we have brokers
try to trick us, by voice we can tell. If you're
Chinese, like Korean ethnic Chinese living in
China trying to trick us, or actually North Koreans
speaking to us. So you can actually hear the
oppression in their voice? Yeah, you can. What
does it sound like? It's a complete fear. Like,
terrified to the point they don't even know they're
terrified. They're like, I don't think even a
bug would be that scared. And so he does get
out, and they never put him back in jail again?
I got him out, so he had to go back. He had to
go back to jail, but he died in China. So you
were 13 when you and your family, was it you
and your mother that escaped? Yeah. How did you
get out? that hospital right initially my sister
and i was going to escape but when north koreans
say when you are escaping of course we don't
have phones we don't have a map we don't know
what's the outside world look like right luckily
i was living in this border town of north korea
by then so at night do you know if you see the
satellite photo of north korea it is literally
the darkest place on earth yes we don't have
electricity so i was seeing these lights coming
from china so we I thought, like, if I go where
the lights were, we would be finding some bowl
of rice. So at 16, my sister left with her friend,
and she left me a note while I was in the hospital
and got, like, removing my appendix. And then
as soon as I got out of the hospital, I found
a note. And initially, my mom and I went to look
for sister where she went. But when we found
the lady, she told me that she could help me
to go to China that day. And so this was you
and your mother, and you were 13 years old. Yeah.
So how did you get across, and what was that
experience like? So I told my mom, like, come
with me to China. And my mom was like, you know,
my father was home. He was waiting. But the thing
is, The tragic thing for North Koreans is we
cannot even say goodbye to our loved ones. So
if we got caught on the journey, and if my father
knew that we were escaping, he's going to be
punished so much. So it's better off that he
does not know that we are escaping for his own
safety. Because they're going to torture you
to the point that you're going to say anything.
Because they do this all subconscious torture
that they make you not sleep. in a single room
has like no air, much air. If you put there for
40 days alone, you go crazy. You say whatever
they ask you. So if he actually knew that we
were escaping, it wouldn't good for him. He would
be dead. So I told him, I'm like, you cannot
tell father that we are escaping. So that day
we climbed up this several mountains and then
we went to the river side. But she had a connection
with the guards. Why did you not bring him with
you? Because he's a man and he was sick. And
somehow she said only women can go. Only women
can go. I did not know why she meant by that.
She's like, you should just go with your mom.
And don't even tell those people that's your
mom. She said like, you are like 18 or something.
And my mom was something 30. So she told me that
our age was different. So this would somehow
or another help you when you were going across?
Yeah. How would that help you? I don't know.
Or she told me, well, this is going to be helpful.
Well, part of the issue is in China, there's
a disproportionate number of men in comparison
to women. And so they want as many women to come
across that are of legal age, like women that
can be married, right? Is that the idea behind
it? It's a smuggling. So you got it right. Because
of one child policy, a lot of girls got aborted
in China. So they kept boys. So there's many,
many men that have no chance of ever finding
a woman because there are no women. Yeah, over
30 million men in the rural areas cannot find
wives. 30 million? Over 30 million. It's number
going to keep going up right now. That's a big
problem for Chinese regime. But the thing is,
even that, they don't allow North Korean women
to stay there. They catch us, and they send us
back to North Korea. Last month, China repatriated
50 North Korean defectors back to North Korea.
It's sending them our suits. Literally, they
are sending them to death camp. But the Chinese
regime still do catch us and send us back because
they think we are posing a threat to the regime,
and they don't want the regime to collapse. So
they are catching all the defectors. But the
human traffickers seize the opportunity here
because we are so vulnerable, right? We are running
away from Chinese authority. So even they rape
us and kill us, the last place that we are going
to go is going to police and then report on them.
Why do they think that women coming over from
North Korea are going to somehow or another collapse
the empire? Because that's what Kim Jong -un
believes. He thinks they're going to collapse
through the defectors. So after Kim Jong -un
came into power, he literally, the country cannot
afford the electricity, probably electrify the
entire border. Not only that, putting the machine
guns with the guards, have a shoot -to -kill
order. Whoever crosses, they don't even bother
to ask you to stop. They shoot you right there.
And not only that, he buried the landmines. On
top of that. So there's electric fence and then
there's guards shooting to kill and then past
that there's landmines. Yeah. Entire country
became a concentration camp. Entire country.
When did they start putting the landmines in?
A few years ago. So this is after you had already
escaped. Yeah. Now there's no, you don't see
North Korean defectors escaping from North Korea
anymore. It's impossible to escape at this point.
One of the more horrific. things that Jordan
and you discussed was you seeing your mother
raped and that your mother sacrificed herself
because they wanted you. Yeah. And this is the
first time you had ever even seen what sex was.
So I didn't even know that was sex. I did not
know even that was rape because we didn't have
the vocabulary in North Korea. So in North Korea,
there's no word for stress. There's no word for
stress. Because how can you be stressed in the
socialist paradise? So there's no word for trauma.
There's no word for depression because you cannot
be simply depressed in a socialist paradise.
There's no word for liberty. There's no word
for human rights. There's no word for rape or
even sex. So I just thought something I was seeing
was horrible. But later they told me that was
rape. I did not know that was rape. But you also
said that you never heard the word love. Yeah,
no. There's no word for love in North Korea.
So your mother never told you she loved you.
You never told your father you love him. Yeah.
None of that. So in North Korea, there's even
no word for I. So they don't want people to be
individualistic, right? That's the worst thing
you can be. It's all a collective vision. So
when North Koreans say, I like water, I say,
we love water. We love kimchi. So that's how,
when I'm in South Korea, they will keep saying,
in South Korea, there's difference between we
and I. So when you say, I like this, say I. And
then, of course, all the North Koreans keep saying,
we love this country. And South Koreans get so
frustrated that we are keep misusing I and we.
And that's how regime controls your minds through
language. It is George Orwell's 1984. They create
double speak. Why language is so important. Because
it controls your thoughts. So that's how I got
rid of the romantic love. We don't even know
possibly another human can love another human.
Only love that Norse humans know is like written
from love that when we describe our feeling towards
the leader. And we don't know that word can be
used to describe our feelings to another human.
When Kim Jong -il died and people were crying
in the streets and people were sent to prison
for not crying enough. It was the strangest thing
for us to watch as Americans because it was performative,
where people were performing. They were not really
crying. They were wailing in this very theatrical
way to let everyone know that they were complying.
Your life is on the line. people watching you.
If you don't mourn enough, that's the thing.
If you don't mourn in the most extreme high,
they're going to send you to prison camp and
execute you. So we are doing it to survive. Did
you see anyone who didn't mourn enough? No, I
mean, it's impossible. How do you not mourn enough?
How do you not possibly? Your life generation
is depending on you when you're born. So everyone
knows this. Of course we all know. And everyone
knows it's a threat. Even babies know. Even babies
know. When you're born in North Korea, you know
what it is. You don't, like, start questioning.
I mean, the first thing my mom told me as a young
girl was not even, be careful of strangers. Be
careful, you know, call, like, none of that.
She would say, be careful of your tongue. because
that is the most dangerous weapon you got in
your body. Don't even whisper, because the birds
and mice could hear you. So that's the first
thing you hear from your parents, how dangerous
what you say is going to be. Did you personally
see people that you knew get imprisoned because
of things that they said? They just disappear.
Like one of my sister's classmates, her mom,
when they executed. And then because they're
accusing her to receiving money from the foreign
CIA or the South Korean intelligence. But a month
later, they said, oh, it was not a problem. She
was not a spy. So they brought the family members
back out of the concentration camp. So they killed
her for nothing. And they don't even say sorry
to that. It's like we don't even know that's
a concept the government can be sorry or they
can ever make a mistake. So how did they find
out that she wasn't really a spy? We just don't
know. Just one day that classmate came out, and
my sister's classmate came out, and then they
said her mom was not a spy. So they got out of
the prison camp. And that's it. There's nothing.
Nothing. We were none of that. And so this was
a common thing. Yeah. And you just lived in constant
fear. This is the thing. We are three people
sitting here, right? I'm watching you, and Jamie's
watching me, and you're watching somebody else.
So even I'm being a nice person, I'm not going
to report on you. I know Jamie's watching me.
He's not going to report on me. But even if you
try to be nice, but he knows he's being watched
by somebody too. So you're being spied on, and
you're spying on somebody. So no escape. And
everybody has to report anything that they find.
Like if you said something negative about the
government, I would have to tell on you. Otherwise,
I would get in trouble. Yeah. And the other person
don't report on you, that person get in trouble.
There's no way out of it. That's how they create
distrust. One thing that shocked me when I came
to the West, how trust exists. In North Korea,
there's a saying, don't even trust your own back.
Because you don't know who is a spy. You don't
know who is listening, who is watching. And people
just disappear. Yeah, just disappear. And public
executions happen in the stadium next to the
market where most people go. And in North Korea,
there's no concept of minor, right? There's no
concept like minors cannot do labor. That's not
a thing. As a child of seven years old, you go
to school, you work. You go to work in a dam,
construction, in the farm. And you are a miner,
so therefore when there's public execution happens,
you are on the front line because you are the
shortest. They line up five, six years old in
the beginning, and then in the age going, it's
mandatory to attend. So it's mandatory to attend
public executions. Yeah. And how do they kill
the people? After Kim Jong -un got in power,
he became more brutal how he kills people. He
used the air like missiles that shoot down the
airplane, that kind of powerful weapon. So when
he kills people, they blow up into pieces. Like
they literally become just... red pieces and
fireworks. That's how it, that's what I hear
from now, nowadays executions, but my time was
more the guard standing and shoot you here, here,
and three times, nine shots. And then a body
becomes like a world, world, world. And then
like, they just put in a luggage and take it
out. But nowadays I heard they are using way
more, they are starting hanging too. before my
time was just execution but kim jong -un said
even the bullets we don't want to waste on this
like trash they call us trash and so just hang
them and like or like stone to death so bring
the people around the town and hit them with
the rocks until they die so the people in the
town would contribute to the execution they would
they would be the ones throwing the rocks yeah
otherwise you get punished you have to and what
are the crimes that you could be sentenced to
death for? It's as little as, so in North Korea,
every room has to have a portrait of Kims. And
the inspector comes out of nowhere in the middle
of the night and then touch the portraits if
they see any dust. They say your royalty is not
high enough. And then you can get executed and
sent to prison camp, three generations of your
family. So if the picture is dusty, you get executed.
Yeah, and if your house get on fire, The first
thing is not you run with your family or your
children or parents. You have to protect the
portraits with your life. Otherwise, the third
generation gets punished for that. Even murderers
and rapists in North Korea don't exist. We don't
even know what rape is. I mean, they have pleasure
squad, right, every year. They go around the
country, pick up the virgin girls, bring them
back to Pyongyang, make them call the satisfactory
groups, train them to become sex machines. Every
year they do that. So these officials, now the
guy who's in the second power in North Korea,
his name is Chaeryeonghae, he has his own pleasure
squad, and he takes entire teeth out of these
girls. So when they kiss him down there, he has
more pleasure. So these things is not a crime
in North Korea. Like literally when women walk
down, if the guys stand you and rape you, you
cannot go to police. You got raped. It's your
fault. So this country, I mean, every wives get
beaten by husband in North Korea. This is not
a crime. But if there's a newspaper, there's
a portrait of Kim Jong -un, right? Or Kim Jong
-il. You didn't see the front page. In the back
page, you ripped it by mistake. That's how you
get executed. That is why we call crime in North
Korea. Wow. Having escaped that and looking back
on it now and knowing that it exists right now,
what can be done? What could the rest of the
world do? I mean, North Korea has nuclear weapons.
They have a powerful military. What can the rest
of the world do to stop this from happening?
Because it seems like... This is horrific. It's
a form of genocide, and it's happening right
now. It's a holocaust. In 2014, UN conducted
this investigation for a year, and the conclusion
was the only resemblance that we find in our
history what is happening to North Korean people
is a holocaust. So holocaust is happening again,
and of course we are denying it again. When it
was holocaust, it was happening. A lot of people
say, how is that possible? It's so hard to believe
that. And North Korea, using this concentration
camp, these people do the biology test. They
put them in the gas chambers. Right now, they
do that. A biology test? Of course. What's the
biology test? They test a lot of the weapons,
biological weapons. So they, you know, keep trying
to, they are, North Korea spends entire their
GDP on developing nukes and weaponaries. I mean,
they are the biggest provider to the Middle East.
When there's a war, they buy missiles from North
Koreans. North Korea makes money by selling,
I mean, the crystal meth and opium. That's how
Kim Jong -un makes money in hacking, right? He
steals a lot of Bitcoin and get up banks, ATM
machines. That's how he makes money because they
don't export anything other than drugs and weapons
and hacking and human trafficking. So they experiment
on their own people to find out if these biological
weapons work? Yeah. And also they need a lot
of concentration like prisoners because they
have to clean the nuclear debris. Because they
do a lot of tests. So since 2017, North Korea
conducted almost 30 missile tests. If the one
test missile caused to feed 25 million the entire
year. So if he chose to do four, like, less tests,
nobody had to die in North Korea from starvation.
And right now, Kim Jong -un recently admits that
11 million North Koreans are severely malnourished,
and he's proud to say that. And he's not even
bothering to hide in the past. Yeah, they are
starving. And he's fat. Oh, yeah. That's his
problem, being too fat. Wow. So they're forced
to clean up nuclear waste from these test sites?
Yeah. And, of course, they die from radiation.
They don't last three months. Normal life expectancy
when you go to a concentration camp is three
months. Three months. Yeah. So they need a lot
of those people. And they just use those people
for fodder. Yeah. How many people, do they know
how many people are in these concentration camps?
Nobody knows exactly, but several hundred thousand
of them. But there's also prison camps, concentration
camps, prison camps, and labor camps. And some
people are born into these camps. Yeah, those
are people in the concentration camps. And they
don't even get to know the name of Kim Il -sung
or Kim Jong -un. they're too below the level.
They don't even bother to tell them who's the
leader of the country is. And what did someone
in their family do that would allow them, that
would make them get put into these concentration
camps? They find out later their great -great
-grandfather was working with the Japanese for
like a week when the Japan was colonizing or
the Korean was starting. They were talking to
American soldiers. Or they were, they're like
cousins of nephews of like, some in -law was
a Christian. Because North Korea is number one
Christian persecution country. Because they copy
the Bible. They said, oh, Kim Il -sung loves
us so much. He's a god. He gave us his son, Kim
Jong -il. And he dies, but he's with us all the
time. That's why they can read my thoughts. He
knows how much hair I have. So when you become
a god, you need to explain. You don't need to
make sense. So they essentially use the story
of the Bible for Kim Jong -il. Yeah, they copy
the Bible. Exactly copy the Bible. Wow. That's
why I believe that Kim Il -sung was reading my
mind. And if the people believe in the West,
like Jesus knows what you're thinking, why do
you think it's surprising that North Koreans
believe that? So someone's great -grandfather
speaking to the Japanese would be the reason
why they would be raised in a concentration camp
and never even be told the name of the leaders.
Yeah. And that's happening right now. It's been
happening for the last almost 80 years. Yeah,
this has been going on, and as you just asked,
what can be done? Kim Jong -un cannot last even
one week without Chinese regime support. The
only reason the regime exists is because of Chinese
Communist Party. How do you test missile without
oil? Kim Jong -un cannot even drive his Benz
in Pyongyang. China refused to not helping the
regime. They keep helping Kim Jong -un. Keep
sending the oil. Even last year, the New York
Times covered it. The ship full of gas oil going
to North Korea. So Kim Jong -un could test missiles,
even amid the pandemic. Why does China support
North Korea? I really, really, I think one is
they don't want that democracy come to next door,
right? That South Korea, Japan, America is all
right next to North Korea geographically. And
North Korea is like this almost like a buffer
zone for them, for this Western movement coming
into their country. And also they think of North
Korea more like Tibet or Xinjiang. If they let
North Korea go, then Xinjiang people are going
to want to go. Tibetans are going to be independent.
Hong Kongers want to be independent. So they
cannot give up any one of them. It's because
of the stability and symbolic thing for the Chinese
people within the country wants to be independent.
So they all want to maintain North Korea forever.
And Mao said that relationship between China
and North Korea is like the relationship between
your lips and the teeth. Without lips, you cannot
really close your mouth and eat. Without your
teeth, you cannot chew. So you need each other
to survive. And that's how Mao's son died in
Korea, or by defending Communist Party in the
North. That's how Mao lost his son. That's how
he believed that they need North Korea. And so
the Chinese Communist Party today shares the
sentiment and they're using it strategically.
Yeah, they run the dictatorship in North Korea.
They run the whole thing. And that's the thing.
We have not been solving North Korea because
we just never named the accountability who is
responsible for this crisis. That is China. And,
of course, in America, mainstream, they do not
want to call out North Korea and China to committing,
you know, genocide. That's why I've been having
so many attacks from Marxists, communists, and
Maoists, and Leninists, all these people. And
North Korea is almost this last country that
holds ideology called socialism. So it's a very
symbolic country. empathizers of communism and
anti -Western civilization people. They defend
North Korea like hell. But do they, when they
speak of it, like the Chinese Communist Party,
when they speak of North Korea, do they have
a distorted image that they project of what it's
like in North Korea? Do they change the narrative?
Do they have a story of North Korea that's false?
that makes it seem like North Korea is a nice
place? No, they know exactly what's going on.
They know? Even Chinese people know. So there's
no defending it? No, no. Even Chinese people
see it. Like when North Koreans get captured,
Chinese is still better, nice than North Korean
guards. They like handcuff us, sort of blind
us. But North Koreans come and put the wire in
between here. in between your bones. So connecting
all the prisoners together so they cannot run.
Like cows. They put a wire, like, through their
collarbone? Yeah. So they prevent us to escape.
So while we are in China, that's when the outsiders
are watching. But imagine what they're going
to do inside the country when there's no camera.
So this is what China does to North Koreans.
No, China catches us and gives us to North Korean
guards. And they watch it. And they watch them
do that. And then they even horrify, but of course
they don't do anything about it. It's like you
don't have to go that far, but of course North
Koreans do not accept defection, right? That's
why we are defectors. We are not refugees. When
we escape, we defy the ideology. Yes. That's
why this is North Koreans are not just refugees.
They are political prisoners. They are political
refugees. They should be covered by Geneva Convention
and international law. So China catching a sentence
back, that is a crime against humanity. They
are breaking the international law. But no one
will punish them for that. And nobody going to
talk about it even here in the West. Why? I mean,
there's a Michelle Obama, right? Nobel Peace
Prize giving the girls like captured by ISIS
or like Taliban, like Malala. Michelle Obama
stands up for the girls who were captured by
ISIS and Boko Haram. Who is standing up for North
Korean girls being captured and raped in China
right now? There are 300 ,000 North Koreans right
now when we are speaking in China and are sexual
slaves. 300 ,000? Yeah. And most of them are
women and girls. China has incredible power.
Yeah. And when you see the power that... China
has and that they're supporting North Korea and
that there's no pushback from America. What does
that feel like to you when you see this, knowing
what you went through? And not only knowing what
you went through, but the fact that you talk
about this openly. You talked about it in your
book that came out in 2015. And you speak about
it as often as possible. But yet there's not
a lot of support, especially from political leaders.
No one is stepping up. to say your story. Yeah.
It's total hypocrisy. It's, I mean, all these
people in America talk about how slavery is wrong.
I agree slavery is the worst thing that we can
do to another human being. But why some slavery
matters over some other slavery? Right. Like,
right. I mean, all these corporations talking
about how they do not support the bigotry and
racism and slavery. It's happening right now
in China and they have business with China. They
don't say anything about it. No, like this is
the thing. When Hulu made a movie about dissent,
about assassins, about Kim Jong Nam's assassination
three years ago in Malaysia. Remember the Kim
Jong Un's half brother got. Yes. So they made
that movie. Hulu was supporting to make that
movie. He killed his half -brother and someone
else too, right? And his uncle. His uncle. Yeah.
So his brother is more shocking because he got
killed in the international territory. You know,
like VX nerve, the poison. And they made a movie.
But when the Hulu was bought by Disney, Disney
wanted Hulu to drop that movie. So that movie
couldn't be shown in Hulu. Because it would offend
China. Yes. Why there is not even one single
movie coming out of Hollywood about North Korean
people suffering? They made about Congo genocide.
They made all about genocide, not about North
Korea. That is a strange hypocrisy, isn't it?
Of course it is. And it's about money, right?
Absolutely. It's all about money. All these people
talking about justice, what they care about.
I mean, none of them do in real life. And these
are not secret stories. It's not. I mean, so
this is the thing. Oh, don't make it up. Kim
Jong -un killed his uncle, right? That was on
the national newspaper. He killed his half -brother.
And look, do you remember the other one? We are
the American 21 -year -old student. Yes. Who
was accused of stealing the banner. He was brain
dead. By the time he got to America, he was beaten
to death, right? Yeah, and he was sentenced for
15 years in the labor camp. for trying to steal
the banner. But this is a country that did to
white American mayor, to the most powerful country
citizen. Imagine what they're going to do to
their own citizen. You can't even imagine what
they do to their own citizen. So North Korea,
this like nationalism is to the highest. So when
North Korean women go to China, get raped, and
we get pregnant. When we go back to North Korea,
the guards kick our belly until baby dies. They
don't let the baby live. They, yeah, it's just
unbelievable. This is happening in 21st century
and still we somehow don't talk about it. Not
just don't talk about it, but it keeps going
generation after generation. Yeah. I mean, if
it's been happening like this for more than 80
years, what's going to stop it from happening
for another 80 years? And if people are quiet,
nothing. It's going to keep going. And this is
what... To me, as an activist, I'm a dissent.
I'm fighting against this regime. We know when
Jamal Khashoggi got killed in Saudi consulate,
there's no accountability for the dictator, right?
Saudi prince, he didn't get anything. When Kim
Jong -un killed his hot brother in Malaysia,
nothing, there were like, there's no accountability
that we are asking of these people. So standing
up fighting, it doesn't incentivize people anymore.
So you don't see justice being served. And I
think that is why it is so hard to fight now.
Because people think justice is there, but I
don't think it is that. It's something I don't
see in real life when you actually fight against
injustice. It's most likely you're going to be
just like get killed and nobody cares and just
keep moving on. What can be done? I mean, if
the United States and the relationship the United
States has with China, they're unwilling to do
anything or even speak out about it. When they
talk about the problems of the world, North Korea
is rarely discussed. And the horrific crimes
of the North Korean regime against their own
people, rarely discussed by politicians. They'll
talk about Afghanistan. They'll talk about Iraq.
They'll talk about all the problems we have with
Iran. They don't talk about... what's going on
right now what you're describing in north korea
with these concentration camps and these people
they don't talk about these things yeah what
can be done i think by talk i think this is a
beauty about living in democracy like when i
go to whole foods right coming from north korea
i'm shocked by how many hand washing is like
by i mean all about like environment friendly
products right And that means a lot of people
want to support this cause. Right. Look at how
many vegan restaurants are popping up in New
York. So a lot of people demand that now. So
if individuals are being educated on what is
happening and who is actually responsible for
supporting North Korean regime and how hard it
is for the people who are being oppressed, if
they start demanding the politicians and the
world leaders and companies to be conscious and
act, I think that is, at this point, my only
hope is individuals. I have stopped trying to
talk to the UN. I don't even give talks anymore
at the UN. Did you give talks in the past? Yeah.
What was the response? They, in Geneva in September,
the Human Rights General Assembly meeting, how
dumb of them. They literally put me alone right
next to the North Korean delegation team. Because
geographically, you are somehow close. So these
five guys from North Korean delegation team are
swearing at me. And the UN, that's what they
do. That's how dumb they are. They sat them next
to you? Yeah. They put me right next to North
Korean delegation team. And no protection? No.
I was so scared that going to hotel room that
night. Because I don't have anybody protecting
me. I have tried, of course, but at the UN, who
decides the human rights violators, Chinese and
Putin and Saudis do. They decide who actually
violates human rights. That's crazy. Yeah. So
I have to go ask Chinese who actually committing
this crime and complain that, of course, they're
not going to listen to me. So what is the even
point of the UN for this? And, of course, I met
Nancy Pelosi. I met a lot of politicians. And
on surface, like, oh, that's really horrible.
Let me think about what can I do. But, of course,
this is not what they care. They care about the
systemic oppression that is happening in America
more. They care about what's going to get them
votes. Yeah. And what's popular, what's on people's
minds right now and whatever the narrative is
that they're currently pushing. Yeah. It's going
to allow them to get elected again. Yeah. It's
all about their own interest. So when you spoke
at the UN, what was the reception like? Oh, they
are saying like this is the West propaganda trying
to interfere other people's autonomy. North Korea
is a state of their own. You should not interfere
the other people's affairs. That's like still
to this day Chinese narrative, right? They don't
ask us what we are doing to Xinjiang Uyghurs
or Falun Gong or like organ trafficking, all
of that. It's our own business. Organ trafficking.
Yeah. So when North Koreans go to China, we're
ending up like several different sources. Worst
case is they take us and take our organs out,
and suddenly we die. Like which organs? Everybody,
your eyes, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, all
of it. They sell them. Of course, in China, you
order the organ, it gets to you within three
hours. How is it possible? How somebody dies
miraculously in three hours for you? Do you know
how many hospitals are being built for the organ
transfer in China? How many? This is the biggest
revenue right now being built in China. So do
people from other countries go to China for organ
replacements? Yeah. A lot of the Middle East
and those countries go to China to get the organs.
So they just turn a blind eye to it. Yeah. They
don't think about the origin of the actual organs
themselves. Yeah. They just go. Get it. Oh, I
need a lung replacement. And China says, well,
if you go here, we can get it for you. Yeah.
And they go, and then they kill someone and take
their lungs. Yeah. It became a biggest now, like,
new industry that is rising in China is organ
transfer. And those people are generally North
Koreans? Those are, a lot of them were Falun
Gong. practitioners in China. Okay. Uyghurs?
Yeah. Now the Uyghurs. But Falun Gong is different,
like a peaceful religion they were wanted. Falun
Gong, Uyghurs, and not as much Tibetans, but
more like Xinjiang now with Falun Gong and North
Koreans. And so they have them in some prisons
somewhere. Yeah. And they feed them and just
wait for someone to come along that needs their
organs and then they kill them. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
And this is proven? It's, I mean. Well, a lot
of other things are proven because when these
people die, how do we ask them, how did you die?
They are dead. So that is a lot of Falun Gong
survivors do testimony. They have told about
this. Yeah, it's very well known. Jamie can look
it up. The UN even condemned China for that.
Even they couldn't turn their eyes blind on it.
It was too evidence. And another thing North
Koreans go is prostitution, brothers, right?
And these girls resist. So what they do, they
give them drugs. So they make them become drug
addicts. So now all they want is drugs. So that's
how they go to brothels. And then these men,
I said, in these villages cannot afford women
in these little towns. So they buy one girl,
and they rotate the entire men in that town.
and then like me uh some of them just being sold
like my mom was source for uh just like mentally
retarded family the farmer's family and we go
became a free labor for them and being a sex
slave for them and and then being a sex slave
for a mentally retarded family yeah i mean because
if they're normal and they wouldn't they can't
find wives they order like mentally retarded
and not functioning people, those people cannot
find a wife. So that's why we're ending up in
the most horrible places. We don't just go and
fall in love and meet some normal person. So
when you were 13, you escaped. Tell us what it
was like. First of all, where did you escape
to? You escaped to China? Yeah. And how did you
get across? It was a frozen river in March, end
of March in 2007. So you travel on the frozen
river. Yeah. And we luckily didn't get shot by
the guards. And when we got into the other side
of the riverbank of China, that's when my mom
got raped. And then they took us in a house.
And they were, like, turning me around like a
slave market, right? They checked my teeth and
my body structure. And somehow being a virgin
is very precious in China. So they sold my mom
for around $65. And it's 21st century. And they
sold me less than $300. And they sold us separately.
But the thing is, they didn't even try to force
us. They were asking, if you don't want to be
sold, you can go back to North Korea, right?
And even if the North Korean regime doesn't punish
me, I couldn't find food to eat. I was going
to die anyway. Even if the regime doesn't kill
me, the starvation was going to kill me. And
for the first time, I remember that night in
the trafficker's house, I saw a trash can. And
I did not know what it was. So I asked this lady,
like, what is that? And then I hear one thing.
I said, oh, that's a trash. Like, what is trash?
She's like, oh, the things that you don't need
to throw there. Like, you just throw bin away.
And I was like, what do you mean you have things
to throw away? Because we never needed a trash
bin in North Korea. We had nothing to throw.
Even these hairs, it comes down. We don't have,
like, heating like that. We have to start a fire.
And starting fire takes paper. It's very precious.
So we burn, like, hair there. to try to start
a fire. Like literally nothing was thrown away.
Even human poop, right? Yeah. I mean, that's
the thing. That regime cannot have a fertilizer.
They don't even have the technology to have a
fertilizer. So they demand us to bring the poop.
And as a kid, you go to school, the teachers
beat you and then go home and look for poop.
So I would go on the streets and looking if anywhere,
like, a dog pooped or something. Of course, like,
all those dogs or poops gone. So finding a poop,
and when you don't eat much, you don't poop,
like, in North Korea, like, a few times a month.
It's a very precious thing. Yeah, of course.
A few times a month. Yeah. And it becomes very
precious, and you have to give it over to the
regime. Yeah. So that's nothing. It's being raised
in the regime. toilets or do you go to the bathroom
in outhouses oh we have all our houses digging
a hole but we have to lock it because some people
come and steal it they come to steal the poop
yeah it's a government quota you get punished
if you don't bring poop everything is punishment
in that country so how much what is the quota
like how much poop do you have to give them so
sometimes per family they say one ton how do
you find that a ton yeah so two thousand pounds
I do the kilograms, so like 1 ,000 kilograms,
right? It's like a ton. 1 ,000 kilograms. Yeah,
it's about right. Yeah, yeah. So per family,
or they give you the kora. So that's per year?
Yeah. And then we have to bring them in usually
January. So because the farming starts around
March, so they have to... In January, they collect
them and pile them up, and then they start burying
it, and then the thaw happens, and they start
the farming process in the spring. And even then,
you don't get any of the food that they're growing?
No, it's a collective farm. So they take 98 %
of the food to the regime, and then that 2 %
is spread among the elites who's running the
farm. So you work entire year in the collective
farm. You get nothing from it. There's also cannibalism.
Yeah. How does that happen? It's really like
people say, oh, don't dehumanize people of North
Korea. Because they say, oh, just tell us the
nice things. That's just too much for us to handle.
And this is the thing. and there's like people
go to black market you sell meat people don't
ask what meat it is we don't ask it's like pork
or like it's just a rabbit we don't and we just
sometimes we go find a very very cheap meat and
we don't ask and luckily I was too poor to afford
the meat I didn't get to eat them a lot of Children
just disappear. But the thing is, there's no
evidence. Everybody dies in some corner, gets
drowned. So we go to river to bathe. We only
bathe a few times a year. Wintertime, we don't
even bathe. And during the winter, we have to
go to wash our clothes. So we make a small hole
in the river. And sometimes you fall and slip
through, and you die like that. So it's just
so easy to... Murder is not a thing. So many
cause killing you. So some people, you lose your
children. We just don't even know what killed
it. And nobody bothered to go out and find it
for you. So many people die. So that's why it's
easy to sell the human meat. So either they're
killing the children or they'll find them dead
and then just cook their meat and sell it. Yeah.
This is common. Yeah. So when you escaped to
China, what is the process like when you're in
China? You eventually got to South Korea. Yeah.
How long were you in China for? Almost two years.
And what was that like? What was the process
like? Well, living in two years of China, I feel
like I lived a thousand years on this earth.
i feel like very old um yeah i remember after
there for six months one day i was walking alone
and then it's like i literally felt like i lived
thousand years right like making it one day was
such a struggle whenever you let one day leave
you think like oh my god i made one more day
on earth in china yeah so it was that hard in
china what was so hard about it because one you
don't know when you're gonna be arrested So you
always put your shoes on tight, shoes races.
And whenever you get into some indoor, you look
for a place to run. If you are invited to somebody's
house, you see the door, check the doors. Where
can I run? Which route do I run? When you even
sleep, you know how to run. You get ready to
run from the police. And that is a constant threat.
And of course, you're raped every single day
by these human traffickers. And they even come
follow you to the bathroom. There's no human
dignity in it. They beat you and they, I mean,
you're not your own person. And the common things
that they tell us, tell us that you, our lives
are even not valuable like pigs. Because even
they kill us, they know that we cannot go to
police. How did you escape from all that? This
is, so the man who bombed me. He was very impressed
because by then I went through two human traffickers
prior me. So by the third human trafficker, nobody's
virgin. They all got raped. So he was Han Chinese
and couldn't believe that I made it to him as
a virgin. Because the first trafficker, my mom
covered. Second trafficker, I fought like hell.
I would literally lose my mind. And thankfully
he had his mistress in the next room. So I didn't
get raped. He tried so hard, I didn't. So by
the third time, Han Chinese, I was trying to
kill myself. And then he said, oh, if you become
my mistress, I'm going to help you to get your
family to you. But before that, he showed me
the phone he had, because I'd never seen a phone
in my life as North Korean. And he showed me,
oh, this phone can take pictures, and look at
these pictures I took. And in one picture, I
saw my mom in it. And I started telling my mom,
and that's how he knew that the woman that he
sold was my mom, and obviously he raped her too.
So he said, if I become his mistress, he's going
to help me with my family. So he took my virginity,
he raped me, and thankfully he did help me. He
brought my mom back from a farmer that he sold,
and he brought my sick father from North Korea.
That's how I brought my parents back to me. How
did you escape from him? After almost two years,
he became a gambling addict. He was a big gambler.
He was spending all his money. And somehow this
evil man was letting me go because he couldn't
even afford to give me food at that point. He
was so broke. So he said, like, I'm letting you
go. And in some ways, in his most evil way, he
loved me. So after two years, I was let go, and
then I went to this chat room. So this is another
thing. A lot of North Korean girls capture in
these chat rooms where we do body cams. Clients
are South Koreans. So we chat, and then we show
our body. But North Korean women, we choose that
route because it's better than being touched
by men in person, right? You're not raped in
person. So this is all on the Internet with web
cameras? That's the number one thing that North
Korean women do in China. All this nightlife.
So in that room, I heard about something called
South Korea for the person because the clients
are South Koreans. You didn't know what South
Korea was? I knew the different name, like different
name, but I knew that country was colonized by
Americans. I heard that in South Korea, that
South Korea was very corrupt capitalist and raped
by American soldiers every day. And they are
like, cannot go to. Kids cannot go to school,
and they all want to come to North Korea. That's
what you learned from North Korea? Oh, yeah,
that's what I thought. Wow, they all want to
go to North Korea. Yeah, they all want to come
to North Korea. The entire humanity wants to
be like North Korea, so we are so fortunate.
They tell us that we have nothing to envy in
this world. Wow. Yeah. So you find out about
South Korea from these chat rooms, and you start
to get a different idea of what South Korea must
be like. Yeah. and we met this defector lady
in that chat room she told me she knows some
missionaries and if we become christians they're
gonna help us to go to south korea and be free
and that's when i heard like free for the first
time i asked like what do you mean free and she
said oh, you can watch TV and you can wear jeans
and nobody can arrest you for that in South Korea.
So that's what I thought about freedom. Watching
TV and wearing jeans. That's what you thought
of freedom. It was never like freedom of speech
or none of that. I was like, oh, that's cool.
I can wear jeans. Because I was a teenage girl.
I wanted jeans. And in North Korea, you get sent
to prison camp for that. You get sent to prison
camp for wearing jeans. Yeah, it's just a joke
for Westerners that North Koreans even haircut.
is like ordered by the regime. Like the only
thing that North Koreans allowed to do that in
that country fully, really is breathing. Everything
else is controlled. What we wear, what we watch,
what we listen to, how we dance, what haircut
that we get, every single thing is controlled
by the regime. So you're working in these chat
rooms. And you meet this woman and she says,
you just have to become a Christian? No, we have
to go to a shelter that Christians had. So we
have to go and they study Bible. And we have
to prove our faith to them. Then they're going
to rescue us. That was a condition to be rescued
by Christians. So it's a Christian missionary
from South Korea. Yeah. So did you have to go
to South Korea in order to prove yourself to
them? They do this all through online? No, we
couldn't go to South Korea, obviously. So they
had a shelter in China, in some house hidden.
So we went to their shelter, and then we joined
them as a group and studied the Bible every day.
So we would go fasting. I mean, we've been starving
all our lives, but they say, you know, God provides,
so you go fast, you study Bible, you memorize
verses, they come test you. And we pray together.
And then once they think we are actually Christians,
then they tell you how to go to South Korea.
How long did that take? Several months. But when
you're so desperate, right? Like, I'm going to
believe in rocks if somebody asks me to believe.
Like, you believe in anything, literally. Right.
And it was so easy. Like, North Korea regime
was Bible. I was like, what the heck is this
thing called Jesus and God? And North Koreans
were like, don't worry, baby. Just plug God to
Kim Il -sung and Jesus to Kim Jong -il. And Paul
perfectly made sense. God loves us so much, gave
us his son. He's there to protect us. We've got
to suffer and go to paradise with him later in
life. So I did become a Christian. So it made
the same sense to you because it was so similar
to the story that they taught you in North Korea.
The logic was so similar. So you became a Christian.
Yeah. And several months of studying the Bible.
Yeah. And then they eventually got you to South
Korea. They told us how to go. How did you do
that? Which was literally walking across the
Gobi Desert into Mongolia from China. You walked?
Yeah. Wow. So they gave us one compass. We had
even toddler in our group. We had one father
and his father and the seven ladies and a few
teenagers. They told us... You went by compass?
Yeah. Did they give you a map? I mean, you cannot
look at the map in the desert. You don't have
GPS. How do you know? Nothing tells you if you're
going circle or straight or backwards. That was
the... horrifying thing about desert is that
it looks all the same right right nothing tells
you what you're doing you can just keep going
circle all night and then so they told us go
follow the west and the north between in that
direction and if you across the eight wire fences
hopefully that's gonna be mongolia hopefully
and then you find the mongolian soldiers and
tell them that you want to go to south korea
not north korea So that means so dangerous. The
chances of you making it in that desert is not
even like 2, 30 percent, right? Like 90, 80 percent
of time you're going to fail. So they cannot
lead us there. It's random luck. That's why they
believe that God is going to show us a miracle.
How long did it take you to walk from the Gobi
Desert? It was just only one day. One day. But
we chose that in February 2009 after Beijing
Olympic. And in the frozen Gobi Desert, it's
like minus 40 degrees. So the soldiers is thinking
nobody's crazy enough to cross right now in this
freezing time. So that's how you can do it? That
security is lower. Other times they're going
to shoot you because in that desert nobody knows
if you got killed or not. So who would be shooting
you? Chinese or the Mongolians. Both of them
can just shoot you. They would just shoot anybody
walking through the desert? It's called a shoot
to order. It's like a shoot to kill order. So
they don't bother to ask who you are. Just going
to shoot them right there. and kill them so we
don't even have ID none of that so we chose a
time it was frozen and cold and even guards wouldn't
don't want to come out and look around so we
from walking from Chinese side but they took
us to the border of China inner Mongolia that
which was still China from that border we started
walking towards Mongolia And the entire day of
walking, we got there. So miraculously, we didn't
die from the cold. Did you bring food? Did you
bring water? What did you bring with you when
you were walking? Like in minus 40 degrees, you
cannot even stand still for three seconds. Like
if you stand still for 10 seconds, you're going
to die right there. You're going to get a heart
attack, frozen to death. So you don't even need
to eat. You just have to, only thing I remember
was moving, moving, moving. Keep going. Keep
moving. Whatever I was doing, I had to keep moving.
Otherwise, you don't get enough oxygen. So very
hazy and not clear. You get very sleepy. That's
the thing. Dying from cold wasn't bad as I thought.
You become very numb. And you don't really desensitize.
And you become very, very sleepy. And that's
when you know you're dying in the cold. How many
people were with you? We had one baby and seven
people. Toughest thing is when we were going
across China, we had to give him sleeping pills
because he would cry and he doesn't speak Chinese.
But in the desert, he had to be wake up because
he's going to die frozen to death in the desert.
So this baby keep falling asleep. So we had to
keep checking our passing around between us.
And he made it eventually. So he has to stay
awake because if he falls asleep, the cold will
kill him? Oh, yeah, of course. But he's not walking,
right? You're carrying him? He's a toddler. He
cannot walk. He's a few years old. But he still
needs to be awake. So we had to keep, like, shaking
him and, like, massage his feet and hands and
shake him up and down so he could be, like, conscious
and up. Because he would keep falling asleep.
What kind of clothes are you guys wearing? We
didn't have gloves. We didn't have anything.
You didn't have gloves. No. Four degrees below
zero. Yeah. So my mom didn't even have shoes
at that point. So she eventually borrowed the
shoes from a guy and robbed him so big. And I
was like, just wear a thin coat. And somehow,
that's why I guess we needed a miracle. That's
why we had to pray. I don't know. It's a very
low chance of making it. So nobody is escaping
through Mongolia anymore. So you walk through
Mongolia, it takes you 24 hours? Just roughly
one day, I think we took, yeah. And then what
happens when you get to the other side? We didn't
get to the other side. One just suddenly in the
morning, the guards with the guns coming at you
and asking to put your hands up. So we were like
lifting our hands up, right? And then they were
like saying they're going to send us to China
and then back to North Korea to get killed. So,
North Korea's women escapee bring the laser and
poisons with us to try to kill ourselves. Because
I mean, going to North Korea to get killed is
way worse than killing ourselves right there.
So we... So you brought poison with you to kill
yourself? And a laser, yeah. And a laser? What
kind of laser? Very, very thin laser. That's
like China or North Korea said it. Like very,
very thin laser. Oh, razor? Like blade, yeah.
Blade, metal. Yeah, metal thing. Very thin one.
Yeah, right, right. It's razor. Oh, razor. Yeah,
we hide in the beds like everywhere. So to cut
your veins. Yeah, like right here, right here.
It's very easy to cut. So we were... This is
like what... still shocked me is that these mongolian
soldiers didn't have the sense to china but they
want to see how we react so that's what they
were playing with us right for us is like a life
and death for them is like a joke and thankfully
they will not let us kill ourselves a lot like
very last minute they stopped us and turned the
car back around to the mongolian side but the
next team that crossed the border Got all arrested
and sent back to North Korea. But the following
team, they were doing that, and Mongolian soldiers
went too far. So one of my friends, she swallowed
the entire sleeping pills to cure herself. And
then they took her to ER, and they revived her,
but forever her brain got damaged. So this was
a joke to them. So they thought it was funny
to scare the refugees. Yeah. It's funny to see
how we fight for our lives. Yeah, but thankfully
nobody's choosing their route anymore. So when
they capture you and they threaten to send you
to China and then back to North Korea, how did
you get out of it? I remember telling my mom
we did everything to survive. it was like because
in China in the prisons they even get rid of
the buttons everything is all like you cannot
swallow to kill yourself right they don't even
give you a spoon so that's how prevent a suicide
because all nurse can kill themselves before
they go because they know the fate so I know
like if I miss the opportunity to kill myself
in the car On the way to China, we are never
going to get the chance back. So we were ready
to cut and then swallow the thing, and that's
when they stopped. And sometimes they just go
too far with it. So it's always a joke to them.
Yeah, we did not know. But later, when we were
leaving Mongolia, that's when they told us, actually,
we didn't mean to send you guys to China. We
just do that every time when you arrive here.
And some people wind up killing themselves anyway.
So eventually they let you go? Yeah, they did
reach out to South Korean embassy, and then South
Korean embassy comes, right, and they interrogate
you to make sure that you're actually North Korean.
So several months in Mongolia, we do different
detention centers. They move us around and interrogate
us, and when they confirm that we are North Koreans,
that's when they give us a fake passport. And
from Ulaanbaatar to South Korea, we flew there.
And so when they determine that you're North
Korean, what are they trying to find out? They're
trying to find out if you're actually a refugee,
if you're a spy. What are they trying to find
out? So in China, there's a Korean ethnic Chinese
who were Koreans back then, but they became Chinese,
the ethnic Koreans. So China has 56 different
ethnicities. It's a very diverse country, right?
So one of them are Korean ethnic Chinese. So
those people tried to go to South Korea. So they
rule out those people and also spy. So they rule
out everybody's defectors. When you escape, you
become defector right away. So they rule out
the spies and also rule out if you're actually
North Korean or ethnic Chinese, ethnic Korean
Chinese. So that's what they try to investigate
you. And so... You finally, eventually get to
South Korea. And then what happens? And then
what happens? I hear about this thing called
freedom. And then hear about this country is
obsessed with competition and hard work and studying.
The vigorous academia. that these kids study
English when they're in their mother's tummy.
Right. And they study like crazy people. Yeah.
And then I'm like almost like, you know, high
schooler. And they did a placement test on me.
And I'm like, I need to go study with seven years
old. I don't even know what continents are. Right.
I don't even know what Africa is. Right. I don't
even know what different races. I don't even
know the map. I'm like blank page, like adult
baby. Adult baby. Yeah. And how old are you?
I was Korean age. I was 17. You were 17, but
you're really about 10 years behind. Yeah. At
least. At least, at least. That's what it is.
And so what kind of education did they give you
in South Korea? They told us that South Korea
was a free country, that Americans are not bastards.
Because they told the Americans were cold -blooded
snakes. in North Korea so I remember one of my
friend I took to South Korea she was a white
lady my mom got drunk with soju and touching
her right and then like I just want to make sure
that you are like actually warm blooded because
that's what they and in school we have a posters
Americans posters because we don't have actual
pictures of them So our enemy is Americans, right?
They're like our sore enemy. So we got to know
how they look like. So they are called the bloody,
huge nose and blue eyes, green eyes, monsters.
Wow. Yeah. So where did they educate you in South
Korea? There's a re -education center. Oh, so
they have a place where they take in people from
North Korea? Yeah, for three months. So they
take you to ATM machine. So we never had a bank
in North Korea, right? Like in the past, I heard
there was a bank, but regime asked you to put
the money and they don't give the money back
to you. So nobody uses bank in North Korea. So
I literally thought ATM machine, there's somebody
inside the machine handing the money out to you
through the window because I don't know automation.
And they teach you how to take a bus. How to
even go to a movie theater to order a ticket
because we've never seen the digital devices.
How to take the elevator. What is an escalator?
It's like you're just landing on a completely
different planet. What is that like? Overwhelming.
It's very... Having that choice, like when you
go shopping and you have 10 different pants,
right? And it's up to you to choose what you
wear. And in North Korea, it was chosen by the
regime. Freedom was difficult. I was literally
saying if I had enough frozen potato, had at
least minimum food to eat, I would go back to
North Korea. Really? Yeah. Why? Because I was
not used to thinking. Thinking was hard. Thinking
was not something I'm used to. I never had to
think. But not only that, you have to think for
yourself. What do you want to do in your life?
And I was like, do I have to know? Can't you
just not tell me what I need to do? Because I'm
so good at following the orders. But they go,
like in South Korea, they were asking me, so
what do you want to do? And what do you think?
And what I thought never mattered. I couldn't
believe what I think matters to you. So really
thinking for yourself was very difficult. I would
be so tired after thinking for five minutes.
I would get exhausted all day. I literally get
like, okay, working out with thinking is so hard.
Like I would get so exhausted. How does people
like keep thinking here all day long? They say
the same thing happens to people when they get
out of prison. Then when they get out of prison,
they call it being institutionalized. When they
get out of prison, they want to go back to prison.
And oftentimes they'll commit crimes just so
they can get arrested and go back to prison because
in prison they're told what to do. Yeah. And
they become accustomed to it. Yeah. That's what
it felt like for you? Yeah. But for me, when
I was born, that was my lifestyle. And thinking
was not a natural thing. So a lot of North Koreans
do have a hard time to adjust to freedom. When
you first went to South Korea and you were able
to eat whatever you wanted, what did you eat?
Eggs. Eggs. Boiled eggs. That's what you wanted?
Yeah, because even beef was too fancy. I did
not know what cow was, right? You didn't know
what a cow was? I never knew the milk came out
of cow because I never had milk in my life. So
all North Koreans, we know it's like chicken
and eggs. So in North Korea, egg is the most
fancy thing you can imagine. So I literally thought
I could eat a bucket of eggs. Egg is the most
fancy thing that you can imagine. Yeah. So in
North Korea, we boiled eggs, and we're like,
let me see actually how many I can eat, right?
But after five, you cannot eat more than five
boiled eggs. So that's when I realized, I mean,
not that much it takes for me to full. How I
wasn't able to do that in that country. So that
was, do you remember the first time you ate until
you were full? Yeah, in China. But the thing
is, you think you're going to eat everything.
is that in China, like, our stomach is not used
to seasoning, like, oil or fat. So I was getting
nauseous a lot. I couldn't, like, eat the normal
food that Chinese, even South Koreans eat. Because,
I mean, our system was eating without seasoning.
Just all the wild plants and flowers and not
much going on. So going to China, eating for
the first time that was seasoned food was very
hard on my stomach. And so it was actually not
that great. You would think, oh my God, it's
a paradise. Your system doesn't take a while
for you to adjust to the new kind of food. How
long did it take in South Korea before you...
felt comfortable eating like hamburger i think
yeah at least like two three years wow yeah it's
uh two three years took me if not like getting
used to coca -cola i literally thought some like
fire was happening where i never had a bubble
in my life so like learning about now champagne
is like in the beginning i couldn't like what
is going on in my mouth they're popping everywhere
You'd never had anything carbonated. No. So it
was like shocking. It hurts me in the beginning.
It took a while. Now I drink a bit, a few sips
of Coca -Cola, but I couldn't do it for a long
time. I still don't drink sparkling water. I
don't know why anybody does that to torture themselves.
It's very painful. Really? In your throat, yeah.
They're like pounding you with something. I don't
know. Wow, that's crazy. What about alcohol?
People make alcohol illegally from corn. In North
Korea? Yeah. But they are like very... Moonshine?
Like very strong? Very strong. And very thick
and not diluted at all. Right, right. You get
like the worst hangover from it. Yeah. That kind
of alcohol to drink. I never knew what wine was.
So I went to Napa with my mom last year. And
they will keep telling us, what do you smell
like? How do I know? Oh, they're so crazy with
all that wine tasting stuff. I know. It's like,
I just heard about wine. Right. Oh, they're saying
it's hints of nutmeg. Yeah. And oak. Exactly,
oak. Yeah. And they're smelling. Yeah, it's the
strangest thing in the world. Yeah. For someone
who's coming from North Korea to go to, that
might be the polar opposite of North Korea, is
a Napa wine testing. I don't know. I was like,
and a lot of people tried to get me Burning Man.
I wanted to take you to Burning Man. I saw some
pictures. I was like, I don't think I'm ready
for this. I might go crazy there. That's hilarious.
That's hilarious. Burning Man. That might be
the opposite. Well, there's probably like multiple
polar opposites of North Korea, but Burning Man
is probably one of them. But the fancy people
of Napa, that's got to be up there. So somebody
was treating me to this restaurant called Single
Thread. single like the french laundry same restaurant
and then they did those tour at their like a
front yard farm they grow on their tomatoes and
peppers and like my mom was like we've been eating
this every day in north korea organic we did
not know we were having like 500 hours a meal
you know because here people keep telling us
it's organic it's like everything was organic
in our country like what i want is like big portion
Right. But here, people are really obsessed with
the North Korean lifestyle. So, yeah, my mom
would never do this to me ever again. She's like,
you're a torture. Don't ever do this to me. That's
funny. That's funny. So, your experience in South
Korea, they're educating you. Are you working?
Do you start working? You're 17 years old, right?
So, what did you do while you were there? So,
I... I remember this interrogation man was asking
me, so what are you going to do in South Korea?
I was like, I don't know, maybe study because
I'm still young. And he's like, why do you think
you can study? Because he thought I was a hooker
in China because all North Korean women are them.
And a lot of North Korean women ending up doing
the same thing in South Korea because they don't
even know how to turn on the computer. They don't
know even what Gmail is. Creating account online
is impossibility for them who never grow out
of it. So they cannot get like nice office jobs.
Right. So only job they can take is like washing
dishes. They cannot become even the waitress
because we have an accent. And South Koreans
are very racist. They discriminate people who
have an accent. So they hear the North Korean
accent? Yeah. What is the difference? Like what
does it sound like? Like in South Korea we say
안녕하세요 is a hi. But in North Korea it's 안녕하십니까.
Very formal. More like we call our friends. There's
no friends in North Korea. Comrades. Comrade.
Only comrades exist. So they know by the way
you talk? Yeah. But is it an accent? Are you
saying the same words? No. You're saying them
in a different way or using different words?
Both of them different. It's a bigger difference
than British and American English is that in
North Korea, as I said, there's no bank. So for
me to understand credit card. what the heck you
build your credit. They give you money, you pay
back and debit card. Right. Like saving. I mean,
like for me to understand hedge fund, it took
10 years. I still don't get a lot of parts, but
that's the thing. Like we don't have the vocabulary.
Right. So learning from South Korean to English
are a lot easier because I know what credit cards
in South Korea means and America means. But like
gay, what is gay? You didn't know what gay was.
Of course, there's no dictionaries. I remember
in San Francisco a few years ago when I came
to America, after my speech, somebody came and
hugged me. And I got really stiffened because
some guy was hugging me. And he said, don't worry,
baby, I'm gay. Like, what the heck is gay? You
didn't know what gay was? How old were you when
this was happening? I was like 20, 20. Wow. So
there was no gay people in North Korea? We don't
know the word. So now tell me about the sexual
non -binary, but like, whatever, how many pronouns
that I found later. I was like, this is a different
planet. Oh, wow. We don't know the concept. And
we don't know the concept of romance or love.
How do you expect us to know what gay is? How
do people find their husbands and wives and relationships
in North Korea? So the South Koreans are racist
against the North Koreans, even though you look
very similar. Can you tell a difference by looking
at someone? Height difference. Height difference.
Because of malnutrition. Yeah, on average, three
to five inches shorter on average. But the younger
generation in North Korea gets shorter. That's
the thing. Our grandpa was the tallest, and my
father and me. South Korea is the opposite. It
keeps going up. And North Koreans keep getting
smaller and smaller. So in South Korea, because
of nutrition. And so when you are learning, where
do they have you stay? I had to find this thing
called a koshite, like a one -feet room where
it's very cheap in Seoul. So I was working at
this, like, Daiso. It's like a $1 store in Korea.
So I was a teenager. American age, I was 15 years
old. South Korea is a different way of counting
age. So you're going to be confused. So in South
Korea, North Korea, when you're born, the day
you are born, you're one. You're one when you're
born? Yeah. And then January 1st, you're two.
So if somebody was born December 31st, they're
one. Tomorrow, January 1st, they become two.
Even when they're a baby? Yeah, they're two days
old and they're two years old. Really? Yeah,
so they count age like that. So when you're born,
you're one, and you gain age not on your birthday.
January 1st, you gain one year. This is only
North Korea? And South Korea both. South Korea
too? Really? Yeah. So if you're born in December,
you're one years old, and then in January, you're
two, even though you're only a month old. Yeah.
Exactly. Wow. So I was born in October. So I
was born, I was one. And then December, two months
later, I became two years old. So you were two
years old when you were two months old. Yeah.
So even though you were 17, you were really 15.
Yeah, so America, that's why there was some confusion
when I was giving interviews in the beginning.
When I escaped from North Korea, North Korean
age, I was 15. So in South Korean press, I had
to tell them Korean age. Right. Right? Then it
translates to English article. So why I was 15
and 13? Because the age counting is different.
Oh. So I arrived there as American age, I was
15. But South Korean age, I was 17 years old.
Wow. Yeah. So you're really 15 years old American
age. Yeah. And you are working in a dollar store.
Yeah, the dollar store. And so you're supporting
yourself? Yeah. And learning. Yeah. I taught
myself. I took GED. So I crashed from one year
to elementary, middle school, high school, everything
within a year. So that's how I went to university
when I was 17 years old, American age. Which
is amazing because a lot of people here don't
even go to university when they're 17. And they're
studying their whole life under normal circumstances.
But you were obsessed, right? Yeah. I was obsessed.
You were obsessed. Like you had gotten to the
point where you were malnourished because you
weren't eating because all you were doing was
studying. Yeah. I know. It's like I end up in
the ER. Somebody called and there's like, you're
malnourished. So I'm still like 79, like 80 pounds,
but way smaller than this. So right now you're
80 pounds. Yeah, yeah. But back then you were
like. I didn't have the scale. It was too poor
for the scale. But you weren't even thinking
about food. You were just trying to learn. And
the food was expensive. So it was, you know,
in South Korea as a student working in a dollar
store and studying, everything was expensive.
So it was, you know, I couldn't really afford
three meals a day, obviously. Right. Yeah. And
so what were you studying and how were you doing
it? I was doing the old school requirement project
for GED, right? Biology, physics, math, English,
history, all those writing everything. But on
top of that, I was reading books. I read, like
last year, I read like a few hundred books. But
in South Korea, I was reading at least a hundred
books outside of the school curriculum books
that you require to read. So because I was, I
mean, I did not know what Shakespeare is. How
embarrassing is that? People talk about Romeo
and Juliet. I'm like, who the heck is Romeo and
Juliet? I remember I got to South Korea. This
guy, somebody called Michael Jackson died, right?
It's on TV and there's some funeral. Who the
heck is Michael Jackson? And then sometime later,
this guy called like Apple Steve Jobs died. And
like, is that a big deal that Steve Jobs died?
Who was it? Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, oh. So I
don't know who Steve Jobs is. Right. So like,
that's amusing why these people are so upset.
And like, obviously, there's like, some days
later, Nelson Mandela dies. Who is Nelson Mandela,
right? I don't know. It's so strange to be 15
years old and learning about the whole world,
not knowing anything that's happening in other
countries, other continents, not knowing anything
about pop stars and world leaders. No, I think
that's so. There's a thing like when I came to
America, I did not even know what Arab is or
Hispanic is. I have no preconception of a race.
So that was great. I don't know the difference.
For me, it's like you guys are all strangers.
So I remember I had a talk. charleston south
carolina or north carolina i don't know charleston
like in a room for the first time i like there
and then like a thousand people all like white
people and like they looked all the same i just
couldn't believe they all look the same to me
that's hilarious that's funny so one of the things
that struck me is that you were so obsessed with
learning that even when you went to sleep you
would you would play like ted speeches yeah and
i listened to a lot of your podcast did you yeah
i'm sorry no it was wonderful this thought i
mean even to this day english i learned even
i was 21 like five years ago so it's still like
struggle for me so you were listening to podcasts
you were listening to npr you were listening
to ted talks and What was it like for you to
try to absorb all this information at such a
frantic pace? It was, I mean, it's amazing. First
of all, that you read whatever you want. Like
the one point that changed me as a child was
reading Georgia West Animal Farm. Yeah. That
was random. Like I literally went up and then
pick up the book, the thinnest book. And I thought,
okay, it takes this time for me to finish it.
And reading that book made everything sense to
me because after North Korea, of course, I mean,
learning what Subway is is challenging, right?
Learning what hamburger is is like a learning
experience. But learning how to trust again,
I think that was the hardest thing. Obviously,
I don't trust guys. I didn't, right? And not
only that, like they say, everything that you
believe in North Korea was a lie. They are dictators.
They are not gods. They didn't love you. They
are dictators. You've been lied to your entire
life. And I was thinking, so how do I know what
you're telling me is not a lie then? Right. That
was so scary. How do I trust ever again? So only
reading George Orwell's 1984 and the animal farm,
that's when I understood what happened to my
people. Then you understood double speak and
propaganda. And then price of silence. the price
of silence yeah that's when i knew i until that
point i was blaming the dictator why did you
do that to us but i was started thinking what
all those people like my grandma she knew life
before kim's she knew the alternative life In
that animal, you see the revolution generation,
then next, and the new ones don't even know what
the world could be like. So that's the thing.
When people say, why there's no revolution in
North Korea, I'm like, how do you fight to be
when you don't know you're a slave? It's impossible.
And this is the thing. In America, everybody
is talking about how they're oppressed systemically.
I'm like, you know people in North Korea don't
even know they're oppressed. If you know you're
oppressed, you are not oppressed. Like not knowing
is a true definition of oppression. Unfortunately,
in this country, they've made oppression a valuable
thing. Like if you can say that you're oppressed
and people look for oppression that sometimes
doesn't exist. For sure, there is oppression
in this country. And for sure, there is racism
in this country. But it's become a commodity.
And it's become a commodity that you can claim.
And you can use it. to bolster and fortify your
personality and your personal status. It's a
real problem. I know, like, I went to, right,
after all of that, I ended up at Columbia University
in New York. And as you can see, I love learning.
I'm a very curious person, and I go there. And,
like, truth doesn't matter. It all matters, your
feelings, how you feel. Well, you caught Columbia
University at a terrible time, right? Like what
year was this? 2016, I joined after Trump became
president. The worst time you could ever join,
right? Because this is like political correctness
at the peak of its frenzy. And also they feel
justified because they feel they have this despot
in the White House, this terrible person who's
going to destroy. People of color and gay people
and he's a this and a that and a homophobe and
a racist and a sexist. And so everything that
you can possibly do to stop a person like that
must be justified, including distorting truth.
Yeah. It was unbelievable. I couldn't believe
it. I came out after four years later scared
more than ever. What I say, like I was seeing
myself censoring every day again. And it was
like I never thought by America I had to go censor
myself. What was it like the contrast between
learning in South Korea and then learning at
Columbia? So South Korea is like I was too little
I knew about the world. So everything they told
me was truth. Like everybody who I met was a
teacher. Do you know what I mean? In South Korea,
my knowledge was so little. I was like one year
old, right? Everybody told me, do you know Africa?
I mean, that's new. What's Africa? Do you know
I've been to Australia? What is Australia? Right.
That's new. So everybody was my teacher in South
Korea. Right. So I never, like, questioned anybody.
Just everybody was my teacher. Everything was
new. Yeah, everything was new. And everybody
taught me something new, for sure. And coming
to America, it was a bit different because by
then I read, like, a lot of books. And I was
a bit advanced than when I was in South Korea.
So now going to Colombia, I mean, as soon as
I tell them my view, they say, oh, you're brainwashed.
You're brainwashed. Yeah, that's the reason.
They said you were brainwashed because of what?
What was your perspective? So, like, my professor
was arguing that, like, she was asking, so, how
to, the sensitivity training, why you got to
be sensitive to all findings, hidden oppression.
And, like, what do you think about men holding
a door for you? And I was thinking, okay, that's
a sign of decency. Like, I hold a door for other
people. Right. And she, no, that's a sign of
toxic masculinity. That's, like, how to show
you they're overpowering you. Holding a door
open is overpowering. Yeah, it's a man when man
does that. What kind of class was this? What
was the subject? I took a junior or something.
It was humanity class, of course. And then she
was like, I told her, no, I think that's sign
of distance. That's over, like you're brainwashed.
You're brainwashed? Yeah. How rude is that? Well,
I mean, for them, it's, I mean, that's the thing.
Like for me, a safe place meant where you can.
express your views right and especially in the
universe you can be dumb right to search for
truth but here in the name of safe space no other
than the mainstream view you cannot have them
but it's just so sad to me that there's such
a lack of nuance because for sure some men will
hold open a door for you because they want to
pretend that they're stronger than you or they
want to show you that they're better than you
or they want to pretend they're being nice because
they're trying to manipulate you yeah because
there are people like that but also Some people
who will open the door to be polite because they're
nice. And to deny that is to deny reality and
to deny nuance. And that's what's really scary
is the sacrificing of nuance to promote a narrative
that fits your needs. Exactly. I think if things
are so complex, why humans do what is very complex.
Yes. And they lose entire complexity. Right.
And also seeing that how this thing called like
white guilt. Yes. Or privilege was so new to
me. It's like, how are you guilty for what your
ancestors did? Right. That's exactly what North
Koreans did to us. Exactly. And I was like, why?
You didn't choose to be born as a white. I don't
choose my birthplace. It's again the same thing.
It's the commodity of accusations, of finding
people that are guilty for no reason of their
own. Yeah. and may be guilty and they don't even
know it. Or maybe they have some hidden bias
that they're not even aware of and they're going
to search it out. And so you have these paranoid
people who are like, oh my God, am I like secretly
a bigot? Am I secretly a racist? And they'll
reaffirm it with you. And then in order for you
to get points, you have to say, I will do better.
I'm going to find that I'm going to be not just
not racist. I'm going to be anti -racist. And
then they'll say, well, now you're a good ally.
And it's just really strange. strange way of
communicating and when we were complaining about
it years ago people would say why are you complaining
about this it's just a few random fringe people
in universities and the people that i knew that
were professors that were secretly terrified
of this they would talk about it this is like
before jordan peterson started talking about
this openly When they would talk about this,
they would get chastised by the people in the
university. Because these people had a vested
interest in continuing this sort of this type
of thinking and behaving. And this was like they
had gold in this. Like there was profit in this.
There was some social brownie points in this.
And they were going to continue to mine this
vein of gold. And when everybody was stepping
in and talking about the dangers of this, people
were saying, no, no. You know, this is the future.
This is progressive. This is all about love and
trust and anti -racism and all this. And then
the people that were scared of it, they were
sort of silenced in the universities until it
started trickling over into corporations. And
then when it started trickling into corporations,
people started getting genuinely scared. And
now we're at a point where I think the dam is
broken. And I don't know how they're ever going
to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.
I think that's the thing. Initially, I was thinking.
Maybe only the academia is this crazy, right?
I thought, but then last year I spoke at TED.
And then these people who run social media companies
like Facebook, Twitter, all these people come.
And I told them I had an engagement in Texas.
And they were saying, why do you go to Texas?
I was like, well, because America is America.
And I was like, that's a Trump country. I decided
not to set a foot below a certain line of states
that supports Trump. And these are the people
who run the biggest media companies in the world.
It's ridiculous. Especially ridiculous in a place
like Austin, which is a progressive city. Yeah.
And then last year during the looting in Chicago,
I was robbed by these three black women. And
robbing is okay. Anybody can become a murderer.
Anybody can be a thief. But just there happened
to be a black woman. And I have a nanny who is
Muslim in the nation with a hijab carrying my
stroller behind me. And then I was trying to
catch and call the police and these people on
the street, the bystanders, the white people,
calling me I'm a racist, telling me that the
color of skin doesn't make them a thief. Wait
a minute, wait a minute. So you got robbed by
these three black women. And I got punched. You
got punched and robbed. Yeah. And so you called
the police. I tried to call them and they prevented
me from calling the police. Who was trying to
tell you not to call the police? All the people
on the street. That watched it? On the Michigan
Avenue, yeah. People that saw the crime? Yeah.
They said you're racist for calling the police?
Yeah, and accusing these girls of being robbers,
right? How does that make you a racist by accusing
them of... Because I'm not black and they are
black. So calling a black person a thief is a
racist, even though they are a thief. So, of
course, I got punched. I couldn't call the police.
And later I called. Thankfully, these girls took
my car to spend the money on the sex. And then
police got the footage of them. Saks Fifth Avenue?
Yeah, in Michigan Avenue in Chicago. And then,
of course, they are not going to prosecute these
girls. There's so much crime in Chicago. They
are not going to prosecute somebody who robs.
And that's when I was thinking, this country
lost it. Like, even in North Korea, if you see
somebody, one small girl, being robbed and being
punched by three big girls, they're going to
help the victim. They're not going to just out
of nowhere scream at you, you're a racist. So
they were screaming you were racist because of
the phone call that you were making? No, because
I held their arm. I told them, I'm not accusing
you of anything. I'm just going to call the police.
Can you wait here until the police comes? You
were holding whose arm? The girl who robbed my
wallet. Oh, so the girl who robbed your wallet,
you were trying to hold on to her. Yeah, because
she was trying to run. Okay. So I was trying
to call the police. And then she was like, you're
a racist. A skin of color person doesn't make
me a thief. And then she was punching me here.
And this is after she already robbed you. Yeah.
Yeah. And then the people gathered. And I remember
there's a bus station. There's one white mom
with teenagers. And I became the lifetime example
for her to show her children how racism exists
in America. Like me became a bigot and calling
these black girls a... thief so she didn't look
at that kind of racist that's the problem that
we how many people were around you it's like
i don't know some 20 people and they were like
20 people they're circling me around so i cannot
call the police circling you and calling you
a racist even though this girl just stole from
you this girl still ran away and they let the
girls run away yeah just go go run right they
told the girls to run wow So that's why when
I started speaking out and now I became the enemy
of the woke. Enemy of the woke. I got the North
Koreans going on. I became the Kim Jong -un's
killing list a few years ago. And South Korean
intelligence is like, you are on the kid's killing
list, right? Oh, boy. And I'm like, cool. I expected
that. And now I'm Chinese enemy, Chinese regimes.
And now in America, I got so many enemies. Oh,
boy. Jesus. Yeah. That's when you realize that
this stuff spills over into real life, right?
That's when I knew that my son is American. I
have a son in America. And on his birth certificate
in Chicago, like, father's birthplace, America,
USA, and mom is North Korea. Like, on birth certificate,
his mom is North Korean. And to me, giving him
that American citizenship was bigger than winning
the lottery. I thought I did everything I could
to give him a better life, making him American.
And seeing that last year in America, I was like,
this is not a safe country. Because he got the
worst. He got half Asian who wants to work hard
and we believe in meritocracy. And he got half
white who's supposedly oppressive because of
their... So he's so screwed. His caste is so
low right now. That's funny. That's funny. It's
sad. It's truly sad. Unfortunately, in some circles
it's true. I think there's a lot of people that
are waking up to this problem. I hope so. There
are. Yeah. And a lot of it is because of people
like you speaking up from a place of true oppression
like North Korea in comparison to what's going
on here where these privileged weirdos are attempting
to distort reality for their own personal gain
because that's what it is. What do they gain
from it? I don't get it. They gain social status.
They gain status. If there's a narrative that's
being pushed and they go along with it, people
say, oh, you're on the right side. You're doing
the right thing. You're saying the right words.
If you go against it, they'll chase you down
and yell at you. You will be on the outside.
You'll be an outcast. People are cowards. They're
terrified. Even if they know something is true,
they're terrified of saying it because they don't
want the blowback for it. So that's what a lot,
you see a lot of that going on in this country.
And you see a lot of people, unfortunately over
this last year and a half because of the pandemic,
you see a lot of people that are more than willing
to sacrifice personal freedoms. in order for
a little bit of safety and a little bit of security.
And they'll give up those freedoms to the government,
which will never give them back to you. When
the pandemic is gone and you've given them vaccine
passports and allowed them to track your whereabouts
and allowed them to contact trace you. That's
not going to go away. They're going to use it
for other reasons. They're going to find other
reasons to control you and keep you scared and
keep you compliant so they can suck resources
out of gigantic corporations that are funding
their campaigns. That's what they're doing. And
they're going to continue to do that if we let
them. And we're going to slide further and further
away from freedom and democracy, freedom and
the ability to express yourself openly. And all
of these things, people are willing to give up
if it supports their side. And that's what's
so terrifying. They don't understand. If you
give the government vaccine passports and if
you let them censor social media posts that you
don't agree with, the problem is then what happens
if someone who's far worse than Trump gets into
office? Because that's... probably going to happen.
Unfortunately, we're going to have this teeter
-totter back. We've divided this country so thoroughly
that there's going to be someone that's a far
left person that makes people so angry that they're
then willing to vote for a far right person.
And when that far right person comes into office,
they will have access to all of those powers
that you so willingly gave up because you wanted
to stop this idea that you didn't agree with.
And they've done this in this horribly short
-sighted way. And they've done it in the name
of the woke. They've done it in the name of progressivism
and wokeism and all this stupid shit that is
this social contagion that's running through
this country right now. It's like, to me, I've
never been to an American public school system
like onto universities. Like nothing has been
more dangerous than governments to individuals,
right? Right. Think of us. I mean, Mao killed
60 million Chinese people. Right. Stalin, Hitler.
They drive us to go to the war. And our biggest
threat is governments. I mean, big governments.
Yes. And it's so unbelievable how people still
just keep wanting for someone to take care of
things for them. People are scared and they get...
They get delusional. They have this bizarre idea
that someone's going to come along that has power,
that's a benevolent dictator. It's going to take
care of things in the right way. And you just
give them the power. Give them the power to shut
these people up. Freedom of speech, it's not
the end all, be all. Maybe it's more important
to just say what I want you to say. It's just
strange. The short -sightedness is so strange
because you hear people on... CNN, it's supposed
to be the news, and they're espousing these ideas.
And they don't recognize that if you give that
power up to the people that are in charge currently,
the next people are going to have it too. This
was the thing about the Patriot Act that people
were so terrified of in this country that were
aware of the consequences. They were saying,
well, Obama's never going to do this. Obama's
not going to be in office forever. He's going
to be in office for eight years. If you love
Obama and you trust Obama, that's great. Look
what came after Obama, Trump. And now you have
a dead man. Now you have Joe Biden who doesn't
know what the fuck is going on. What are you
going to have after that? Well, you're probably
going to have someone on the right. And it's
going to be someone that is a reaction to what
you have on the left. I mean, this is what we
do in this country. We go left, right, left,
right. And we pretend, well, this guy has our
interest in mind. Oh, he fucked it up, too. Let's
go with someone who's polar opposite. Oh, he
fucked it up. And you give them eight years each
side or four years each side. And it just keeps
getting worse. And for whatever reason, people
are constantly willing to give up powers. They're
constantly willing to ignore the core principles
that this country was founded on, which is freedom
and liberty. And you need those things. You need
to be able to express ideas and debate them in
full view of the world so that we get to see
whose ideas are correct and whose ideas are incorrect.
But in this society and today. You have people
on the left, which are supposed to be the progressive
people, the open -minded and intelligent people,
supposedly, the people that are educated, supposedly,
and they're the ones who are willing to censor
people. It's bizarre. It's very, very strange.
Very strange. I'm not a Christian, but one day
I was asking if there's God. He says everything
happens for a reason. Why does North Korea exist?
It makes no sense. Why does it exist? Why does
China exist? Or why does the Communist Party,
I should say, exist? Why do they have the power
to run the country that way? It's because of
that delusion, ignorance in the people to not
learn from history. I don't know, do you think,
do we have hope in this country? Or how do we
get out of even this? I'm worried. I'm worried
because it just seems to be sliding further and
further in this direction of totalitarianism.
And these people are willingly giving up these
rights because they believe that that's going
to support their side. And they think they're
on the right side of history. They're on the
right side of the truth. They're on the right
side of facts and kindness and anti -racism.
Whatever concepts that they are willing to subscribe
to that they think that giving up these rights
will promote. It's strange. It's very strange
because it's an anti - It's an anti -objective
perspective. They're not looking at all of the...
And we're so polarized with the right and the
left in this country. We're so polarized with
Republicans versus Democrats in this country
that there's no middle ground anymore. The center
is this weird place where no one wants to exist
because they don't want to be attacked by people
on either side. Particularly the people on the
left. It was funny the other day when I was after
Jordan Peterson interview about he out of nowhere
like randomly asked how did you like Columbia?
And I was like it was terrible. And then... that
wasn't we never discussed that we were going
to talk about that and then fox asked to ask
me to have an interview about it so i did but
then all my friends in the like liberal why did
you have to go on propaganda channel fox to talk
about the work culture in america and i was like
i'm still waiting a call from new york times
if they call me about workism in this country
and danger of it i'm going to talk to them Wait
a minute, the New York Times never called you?
I mean, they only called me when I was criticizing
Trump about meeting Kim Jong -un without preconceptions.
They never wanted to talk to you about your experience
in North Korea? No. Only when I was talking about
Trump, they wanted me. Who has tried to talk
to you about this? Some British newspapers still
do, like Daily Telegraph. They still do want
me to talk about China. But whenever in American
media... It's whenever I talk against Trump,
that's when I meet their narrative. Really? Yeah.
That's the only time they want to talk to you?
Yeah. So that's the thing. But the thing is,
Fox never accused me, why did you get on New
York Times and criticizing Trump? Therefore,
we don't want you. But the people in the liberal
mainstream media, why did you get on Fox? So
I'm like, they are people too. They are both
newspapers. So it is unbelievable. I just...
There's a big thing that's happening now where
liberal people who are saying things that are
outside of the narrative that you hear from CNN
or MSNBC, they're going on like the Tucker Carlson
show and people are furious at them. Yeah. But
they're saying all the same things that they
would say on MSNBC or CNN. They're not saying
right -wing talking points. No. They're saying
things that they believe in, whether it's Glenn
Greenwald or Brett Weinstein or whoever these
people are that go on these shows and talk. These
are progressive people. Yeah. But they're being
chastised. Yes. And they're being attacked. It's
very strange. It's really dark. I'm happy to
talk to anybody. I want to go on CNN and talk
about this. But they just don't give me. your
platform to talk about it they don't just call
me well it's in support of this narrative that's
occurring now where it's okay to air quotes de
-platform people this is the idea you're de -platforming
people off social media that say things you don't
agree with like alex berenson who used to work
for the new york times he's critical of the way
the government and the fda and everyone is handling
covet right or the cdc or the world health organization
and so he's got a lot of stuff that he talks
that's critical about the COVID response in this
country, critical about the vaccine effectiveness,
critical about all sorts of different things
in the healthcare system. And they removed him
from Twitter for a week. Yeah. And he's not,
I mean, they removed him from Twitter recently
for discussing the actual CDC's reports on the
effectiveness and ineffectiveness or whatever
on COVID vaccines. It's very strange, you know,
and you can't mean maybe they think he speaks
in a way that's inflammatory or in a way that's
causing people to distrust certain institutions.
Then oppose him. Oppose him. Debate him. The
way to answer speech that you don't agree with
is to counter it with what you think is a more
sound argument. It's not remove someone from
social media. But everyone's like, yes, he should
be deplatformed. You see people from the left
just calling out. Willingly calling out for censorship.
It's a disturbing trend. And I don't think they
understand that it's going to come for them.
Because censorship is a monster that is never
full. And it's going to come for you. It's going
to find, it's going to keep pushing the boundaries
and go further and further left until you can't
be woke enough. And then it's going to come for
you. Exactly. I think he does. In North Korea,
even though one top janitor in the meeting a
few years ago, he was falling asleep, and that
afternoon he got executed. And this guy was working
for this system his entire life to support the
system. But he was tired. Yeah. And his uncle,
right, did everything to make Kim Jong -un to
succeed the line and be secure. He got executed.
Was the uncle, did they think that the uncle
was planning to overthrow Kim Jong -un? No, that
was an accusation. It was just an accusation.
Was it true? No, it wasn't. So it was every time
when they do it, like that thing, they get killed.
What was the thing that happened recently where
Kim Jong -un was missing and they said that they
thought he was sick? Was that a trap? No, it
was CNN got some source from CIA saying Kim Jong
-un was having some surgery and he was gone away
for like a long time, disappeared and didn't
show up in the very important meetings. And Kim
Jong -un does have health issues at this point.
What kind of health issues? I mean, he's over
330 pounds and he's like 5 '7". And he gained
weight very rapidly. And he drinks like 13 bottles
of wine like a night. Wow. And he has insane
parties every single day. So he's not healthy.
He does not know how to control himself. So recently
Kim Jong -un lost weight dramatically in one
month. But people say that's like, oh, is he
becoming healthy? No, he just became very, very
ill. So they are preparing who's going to succeed
him afterwards now already. How old is he? He's
36. In Korean years or American years? American
years, I believe. Good. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. But
it doesn't seem like there's any hope for North
Korea to get out of their current situation.
As long as China, the CCP is there, it's not
going to be out. And whoever gets in next is
China maintained exactly the same thing. So without
changing Chinese Communist Party, we never get
to change North Korea. But what's crazy is the
Chinese Communist Party has recognized that they
had a flaw in their own system, and they allowed
free market to run through China, and it's only
made China stronger. But that's the thing also.
We thought economic freedom was going to bring
the political freedom, but that's the unique
thing about freedom. Unless you fight for it,
you don't get it. Right. They don't have political
freedom. Like right now, the censorship, the
social credit system. If you don't have the highest
credit, you can't even buy a bus ticket to see
your mom in the countryside. Right. You can't
even get on the airplane and bus and public transportation.
Well, that's what comes next after vaccine passports.
Yeah. It's like what you say on social media.
They're going to read your text like what China
does already and give you the social credit and
people rate you. you are forever controlled i
think to me is that this is the last time that
humanity ever tried to be free as individuals
and i mean being individual is such a unique
thing to me like that i can be different than
you right it's the people talking about like
oh the comparing the biggest difference that
people have between individuals like the difference
you and i have is unthinkable right and difference
that i have with my mom is unthinkable That's
the beauty of America, that you can be different.
You can be an individual. But now you cannot
be an individual, and that's what North Korea
did. So when the North Korean regime criticized
me, they said she was, as a young girl, very
individualistic and ambitious. That's hilarious.
That was the worst thing that came up. Because
in North Korea, that's the worst tradition to
give somebody. So they did not know that thing
was embraced here. So North Korean propaganda
channel on YouTube, you can see they say, and
this is another amazing thing about YouTube is
that I talk about women getting sold in China.
And those old videos get demonetized. Because,
I mean, it somehow doesn't meet the YouTube guideline.
And they letting North Korean regime to have
their propaganda channel on YouTube. So they
give a platform to dictatorship. But they do
not want to give a platform to the people who
is fighting the civil rights justice fight. And
this is a thing like one video I made about the
Second Amendment. It was like my thoughts on
second. I thought like if every Hong Konger had
a gun in their hands. Chinese would not take
them over like that. 75 % of the population went
on the street demanding they want to be independent.
One country, two systems. They wanted that. But
China took it over because these people did not
have any self -defense. Imagine North Korea.
Even if 20 % of the population had guns, we would
assassinate them. We would not let our children
die like that. So to me, you can't... have crimes
with the guns accidents happens but it's very
important when people have a ability to defend
themselves from the governments when they become
corrupt and of course sharing this is just one
perspective you get like blocked right so this
is a country that i am in now i have to fight
for freedom of speech in america and i thought
my journey to be freedom ended coming here but
of course not no not even yeah The Second Amendment
is a very contentious thing in this country.
And one of the interesting things about it is
that people always want to cite mass shootings.
But what they don't want to talk about with mass
shootings is pharmaceutical companies. They don't
want to talk about the fact that most, I mean
most, of the people that are committing mass
shootings are on some kind of psychotropic drugs.
Most of them. And they want to conveniently ignore
that. Whether they're disassociatives or SSRIs
or anti -anxiety medication or anti -psychotic
medication. And it doesn't mean that that medication
is causing them to do that. But they don't even
want to address it. It never even gets discussed.
The only thing that gets discussed is the actual
weapon itself. The ability to do that is so beyond
most people. The ability to kill random strangers
just in horrific acts of violence. Most people
are not capable of doing that. Most people want
the ability to defend their family if someone's
trying to break into their home and kill them
or steal from them or kidnap a child or whatever
it is. When you see what's going on right now
in Australia, Australia confiscated all of their
guns in the 1990s. Right. And I'm not saying
that they should raise up against the government,
but there's some crazy shit going on right now
where the army is trying to keep people inside
in Australia. And one of the things that I read.
was that as they're doing this, only nine people
have died from COVID. Yeah. See if that's true.
How many people have died recently from COVID
in Australia? Because they have full -on government
lockdowns where the government is flying helicopters
over streets and go back indoors. You're not
allowed to be outside, which is crazy. It's like
this disease doesn't even transmit well outside.
It doesn't make any sense. Being outside and
getting vitamin D from the sun is probably one
of the best things you can do. Exactly. I mean,
like, the babies that born last year during the
pandemic, like, my son is, like, three over three.
They didn't go outside the house for a year and
a half. Right. And I told their mom, your baby
might die from not getting a son once even in
their life than getting a COVID and die. Right.
It's not a dangerous thing for children. But
the thing is, like, not going outside for a year
and a half is actually very dangerous. Wow. Zero
deaths. Zero deaths. Oh, my God. Okay, so in
July there's a couple. So you have zero deaths
from literally from October 20th. October 20th
you have zero deaths until July 11. Yeah, July
11 you have one death. And you got a little spike
there. What's that spike? How many people is
that? Oh, that's crazy. So I think it's nine
deaths total since September and they have a...
a full -on government lockdown where the military
is locking down the streets. Testing has gone
up. Yeah, of course. But the deaths have gone
down. That's the thing. It's like, folks, people
die from heart attacks in staggering numbers
every year. You're not making the government
force people to exercise and put down cheeseburgers.
I mean, we have to decide. And they say, oh,
well, the heart disease is not infectious. Okay.
But the actual cause of death is pretty staggering.
The numbers of people that are dying from heart
attacks and cancer, from preventable decisions
that people make that actively wind up costing
the public untold numbers of... I mean, what's
the amount of money that's the burden, the financial
burden on the health care system because of people
that are obese, because of heart disease, because
of cancer? It's crazy. And a lot of it is lifestyle
choices, and the government does nothing to stop
those deaths. Did you read that on Guardian?
They're talking about thinness is a sign of white
supremacy now. Thinness? fitness fitness sign
of white supremacy yeah i know a lot of black
people that are really fit they need to talk
to david goggins he's a white supremacist he
doesn't even know it well that's just people
looking for things to be upset about and to call
things racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever
or bigoted they're just looking for things to
target but this is in north korea is that In
North Korea, when they said this is our sworn
enemy, death Americans doesn't mean much. There
are so much words that doesn't mean anything.
And now, I mean, America is the same thing. Everybody's
Hitler. Everybody's a Nazi. Everybody's a racist.
And I'm a racist. I'm a bigot. I'm a Nazi now,
too. I didn't even know what the Nazi was. The
problem is they're just trying to shut people
down by using those words. And those words are
horrible. If someone is an actual racist... and
you call them a racist and everybody else sees
that they're racist it's a horrible accusation
so they're using that so freely that they're
distorting the meaning of it and it doesn't work
anymore it's like crying wolf the old expression
of the boy who cried wolf the story that's literally
what's happening right now in this country it's
very strange I know this is what people told
me. This is new to them, too, because I came
here in 2016, January. Yeah. And I thought this
was always America was like. And I go, what was
a country that I dreamed of far away? So it's
still here. You know that the ideals that built
this country still here with a lot of people,
you know, a lot of people that support freedom
and the freedom of expression. the ability to
speak freely and to debate thoughts openly. All
that stuff still exists with a lot of people
here. But there's a lot of people that are willing
to give that up. They're willing to give that
up if their side can win. And it's very confusing
because it's a mixture of toxic tribalism and
short -sightedness mixed with ideology. And it's
a disturbing moment in time. It really is. So
how do you, what do you think, how can we oppose
Chinese regime? It's infiltrating everywhere.
That's a good question. You know, when you see
John Cena from the WWE apologizing for calling
Taiwan a country, you're like, holy shit. LeBron
James. Yeah. This guy talking about justice all
day long in America. Yeah. So how... What do
we do with China? Well, they're corrupted by
money. That's the problem. The problem is China.
Look, when that movie, The Fast and the Furious,
came out, I think the numbers, I'm roughly saying
the numbers, but I think the numbers were the
box office weekend was $160 million. $136 million
of it was from China. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It's
terrifying. Oh, man. So when he had to apologize
and said, I'm so sorry. I made a mistake. I was
really tired. All he did was call Taiwan a country.
I mean, it wasn't something where he said, you
know, China's a terrible place. It sucks. I hate
the Chinese people. He didn't say anything like
that. He didn't say anything like that. All he
said was he called Taiwan a country. It's crazy.
It's crazy that people are willing to give a
country like China that much power because of
money. But that's the reality of this world that
we live in. We don't manufacture anything in
America anymore. I mean, all these woke people
tweeting on iPhones that are made at Foxconn
in China where they have nets around the building
to stop people from jumping off the roof because
there's so many people that commit suicide that
they have to have fucking nets. And the fact
that people don't make that connection, they
don't understand how crazy that is, that you're
literally supporting... This company that is
making people work so much for so little and
they're so desperate and so sad that they're
jumping off roofs in numbers so high they have
to put nets on them. No one even brings it up.
Convenient. Yeah. Strange. It's a strange form
of hypocrisy. Yeah. Do you think? I mean. I don't
think capitalism is a problem because then people
say, oh, because of the capitalism make people
greedy, right? Because people in capitalist countries
were way better than people in communist countries
that I've ever seen and way less corrupt. I think
they look at the worst examples of capitalism.
And there are horrible examples of capitalism
and there are people that are willing to do anything
for money. I mean, you've seen that with people
like John Cena apologizing for China. Right.
And that's the kind of thing that is a form of
capitalism that you're seeing apologizing to
the Chinese Communist Party. But it really is
about capitalism. It's about his ability to make
money and the chance that he might lose money
or that is. His film might not be distributed
over there anymore anyone's like a real problem.
He had to apologize for you're seeing that with
like these subprime mortgages that cause the
housing collapse. You're seeing that when you
see corruption in the stock market or when you
see any kind of savings and loans corruption.
And there's financial corruption and stealing
money and the corporate influence that they have
on politicians and lobbyists and special interest
groups. That's all capitalism run amok, right?
But the bare bones of it, the idea that... there's
many parts of this country that are still a meritocracy.
There's many parts of this country where you
can work hard and do better for yourself and
accomplish things and provide a service that
people enjoy and they give you money and the
harder you work and the better your product is,
the more you profit from it. And that gives people
incentive to do well. The foundation of that
still exists. We just have to be very careful
that we don't give that up. We have to be very
careful that we don't give that up and give the
power over to the government. Because the government
is... Ultimately, they're human beings. And people,
human beings, when they have unchecked power,
it's very dangerous. And it has been throughout
history. The default position, if you go throughout
history and you look at all of the governments
that existed until America really came along,
it's dictators. All of it. It's always been the
case. It's always been one group that's in power.
The best way to be in power is to be ruthless
and to attack anytime you're challenged and confronted
and punish people in open air. Execute them publicly.
Any dissent gets shut down instantaneously. Censor
any speech that doesn't go along with the speech
that the government is projecting. That's always
been the standard. That's been the standard throughout
human history. Every king, every emperor, they
all did the same thing until the United States.
And there's people in the United States that
are willing to give that up. They're willing
to give that up because they want their side
to win. And it's terrifying. It is. It's terrifying.
Because once you give it up, you're never getting
it back. Unless we go to war again. Unless we
have a civil war in this country. And then if
we have a civil war in this country, guess who's
going to sneak in? China. China's going to sneak
in and they're going to take over all sorts of
corporations by buying them out. They're going
to take over all sorts of politicians by influencing
their campaigns and changing the laws that they're
willing to support and changing the amendments
and the different ways that we govern the country.
They're going to change the way people vote.
They're going to change all kinds of things.
And this is just, it's just, it's almost. The
founding fathers somehow or another knew that
this could happen. When they put in place the
Bill of Rights and all these amendments, when
they were putting in the First Amendment, the
Second Amendment, all these amendments, they
were doing it because they understood human nature.
They understood what has happened in the past.
When people have organized, what has happened
in the past when free speech has been stifled?
What has happened in the past when we allow someone
to censor us and we allow someone to dictate
what gets discussed and what doesn't get discussed?
It's very dangerous. I mean, the only thing I
can remember for years that I hear is that. The
only way to solve the problem that we have is
tearing down this foundation of this country.
Because the Constitution itself is a bigotry
written by white supremacists. So that is, I
mean, I don't know. That's every conclusion of
every class that I took. It's crazy. What's the
alternative? The alternative is socialism. And
they always say that socialism hasn't been done
correctly. Okay. But the problem with socialism
is what Jordan talks about all the time. Jordan
Peterson, he says, you cannot have an equality
of outcome. And it's true. You can't. It's very
dangerous. And people don't see it that way.
They tried. And one guy became a god. And everybody
don't even know they are slaves now. And you
can manipulate the truth to fit the narrative
that allows you to stay in power and keep utilizing
the tools that allowed you to get into power
in the first place. And then make it no different
than every other government that's ever controlled
the people. throughout human history. We have
a chance to not have it like that in this country.
That's why when people oppose universal restrictions,
when people oppose widespread government powers
to do things, like that was one of the big oppositions,
one of the big things that people opposed about
lockdowns was not that we shouldn't. be careful
with vulnerable people during a pandemic. The
problem is you're giving the government the ability
to decide what is essential and what is not essential,
who can work and who can't work, what chances
you can take and not take. And they're not being
honest about all sorts of aspects of the disease.
They weren't even willing to discuss whether
or not this disease possibly was leaked from
a lab until long after Trump was out of office.
And even to this day, liberals are terrified
of bringing that up because they think that if
you bring it up, somehow or another it can connect
you to Trump or Fox News or you've said something
that Fox News said. What if Fox News was right?
Do you care about the truth or do you care about
supporting your side? Do you care about your
tribe? And more people are terrified of being
rejected by their tribe than they are of the
truth not getting out. You should be terrified
of lies. You should be terrified of the truth
not getting out. You don't know what the landscape
is unless you're allowed to assess and analyze
all the aspects of life, all of them. And people
are terrified of doing that today. And a lot
of it is because of social media. It's because
there's so many people that just live on social
media all day long. And they're on there just
constantly going to war in the worst way possible
with text messages. Get triggered by every single
thing they see. Well, didn't they talk to you
about that in Colombia too? They tell you about
things that triggered you? So before the class,
they send you email. and say, oh, in this material,
we're going to talk about maybe racism or rape
or any kind of oppression, whatever it is. If
it hurts you, it triggers your feelings, do not
even do the reading and don't even come to class.
And before the class, they announced, even at
any point during this class, it triggers your
feelings, leave the class and don't even tell
me what you feel. People emotionally not stable,
so they bring the comfort dogs in the classroom.
They bring dogs? Yeah. So dogs are licking around
the people because they need the comfort from
the animals, right? They cannot even sit in the...
How many dogs? Several dogs at a per class, right?
What if the dogs start fighting? They bark and
they lick and they chew. And I asked one day,
like, can I take my baby? He was going to take
a nap in the store. I said no. So they said no
to the baby, but it's okay with the dogs. No
babies, but you can have a dog. Yeah. Wow. And,
yeah, this is the... It's my emotional support
baby. Exactly. What if I said... I get triggered
easily when I see a baby. I wonder, why can't
you do that? Why can't you say that? This is
so madness. The problem is your baby's half white.
So your baby might be racist. Your baby might
be a part of the patriarchy. But what is this
self -loathing? Why are they committing suicide
by themselves as a civilization? In North Korea,
we have a gun next to our head. But in this country,
you have freedom to learn and read and think.
Why are they doing this? It's so thing about
human nature, right? We chose Hitler. We voted
him. People did that. You know, there's an expression
that I've said on this podcast many times, but
I'll say it again, is that hard times create
hard men. Hard men create soft times. Soft times
create soft men. Soft men create hard times.
We are now around soft men. In hard times. We're
in the time of toxic masculinity, right? Where
you could be toxically male. And then if you're
suppressing masculinity, you're going to bring
on hard times. Masculinity doesn't mean you're
mean. It doesn't mean you're angry. It means
strength. It means discipline. It means the ability.
You need. And if you don't think you need a military,
you need to go and pay attention to the rest
of the world because there's militaries all over
the world that are doing horrific things. If
you don't have a military in this country that
can combat that and at least act as a deterrent
to them doing things, you're going to get taken
over. That's what's happened. I mean, look what's
happening to Hong Kong, right? I mean, this is
a city that essentially doesn't have a military
and they were a British colony for a long time
and they gave it back over to China and they
were kind of acting like they were Independent
until recently. And during the pandemic, they
ramped it up and it's gotten even worse. It's
exactly what we talked about. You can't be weak.
And in this country, being weak is thought of
as a virtue. Jordan Peterson has a really interesting
way of looking at this. And he said it to me
once and it made a lot of sense. He said, people
think that you should be weak and you should
be docile and then you should be a pacifist.
He goes, no. You should be a monster. He said
you should be a monster. You should be ruthlessly
ambitious and then learn how to control it. And
it's that old expression. It's better to be a
warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.
Wow. It's an old expression, but it makes sense.
Because it doesn't mean that you can't be kind
if you're strong. But it does mean you can't
be strong if you're weak. Yeah. If you're weak,
you're fucked. And there's a lot of weak people
in this country right now that are trying to
take control. And they're gathering up all the
other weak people and they say, yeah, let's all
be weak together. And they're willing to embrace
all sorts of ideas that have been disproven.
Not just disproven, that have caused the deaths
of untold millions of people. And Mao is China
and Stalin is Russia. It's crazy. And they're
short -sighted. And they're short -sighted because
in the short term, They want their tribe to win,
and there's so many weak people that will join
along with them. There's so many simple -minded
dullards that just want to promote their tribe.
Yeah. I mean, they encourage you to be triggered.
Yeah. They encourage you to be weak, right? When
you go in, they try not to expose you to any
reality. That's the thing why universities, like,
scare you. And you are never getting a real sense
of the world. I mean, the fact they cannot, they're
triggered by hearing the word rape. What are
they going to do when they get raped? They're
never going to revive again afterwards. Well,
it's, the disturbing thing is that when you're
learning things. If you're going to learn, you're
going to be exposed to some horrific truths.
Yeah. Like if you're going to learn about Stalin,
you're going to, I mean, I've talked to my friend
Lex Friedman when he was talking to me about
some of the experiences that his grandmother's
people had when Stalin was running Russia. And
people were eating their own children. Yeah.
I mean, that's. Those Koreans. And it's the same
sort of thing. They were starving these people
to death in order to keep control of them. And
the results were horrific. If you don't hear
that, if you don't hear that in all of its terrifying,
brutal detail, then you're not going to be aware.
And even then you're not going to really be aware.
Like you're aware. You are absolutely aware of
what can happen when things go horrifically wrong
because you were born into a society that was
horrifically wrong. You were born into this terrifying
dictatorship. that exists right now while you
and I are sitting here in Austin, Texas, talking,
drinking coffee, having a good old time. There's
people in concentration camps for no fault of
their own in the country you were born. And if
that doesn't get discussed, people don't understand.
If you say, oh, are you triggered by this? Well,
you don't have to hear it. You're not going to
learn. We're not going to expose these things.
We're not going to learn. And even then, just
the abstract concepts, the way you're discussing
it, It's resonating. I understand what you're
saying, but I don't know what the fuck you experienced.
I'd have to go there. I would have to live your
life. You would have to physically experience
it in person in order for it to really get into
your head. And we're not even allowing kids to
read words that fuck with their heads. Yeah,
no. It's almost you are so capable. And by going
to this school system, they make you almost a
handicap. They disable you. They change your
potential. And as you say, we're born as warriors.
Who knows? But they make us incapable of anything.
And the biggest problem you have is somebody
calls you the wrong pronoun. And this triggers
them. This makes them depressed. And this is
a thing or they think it's the biggest injustice
they've ever seen. Yeah, we've weaponized people
being offended, too. When people are offended,
they get a massive amount of extra attention.
All they have to do is yell about it and scream
about it and talk about how horrible it is. And
everyone is like, oh, my God, I hear your truth.
I feel you when you're saying this. And it makes
them special. You're encouraging people to act
up instead of encouraging people to. To change
their perspective and to see things for what
they are or to look at the way other people see
things. To look at it from someone else's viewpoint,
from someone else's life, from someone else's
learned experiences. It was really funny. While
I was writing my book, uh my agent was telling
me my editor was telling me like you and me you're
traumatized so you need to go see somebody called
a therapist right so it's like what the heck
is therapist and then they're like oh you gave
like pay her like um she's normally 200 i mean
700 per hour but she's gonna give you a discount
so for our 20 dollars $700 an hour? Yeah, in
New York City. But then she's going to give me
discounted rates of $200 per hour. Basically
go talk to her how hard my life was. And I was
like, the fact that I know what trauma is, what
PTSD is, the fact that there are people like
right now, 25 million of my people don't even
know what trauma is. This is ridiculous. And
I was like, what is the point of me then surviving?
All of that. Now just complaining how hard it
was. What is the point of me surviving any of
it? So someone can tell you you're going to be
okay. It's okay to have these feelings. Exactly.
It's okay. It's okay to have these feelings.
It's okay to hate men. It's okay to be bitter.
It's okay to be complaining and blaming everything
else. Did you go to therapy? Did you do it? Absolutely
not. But, I mean, 80 % of my investment bank
are consulting friends in New York go to therapy.
And I support that they should. They can afford
it. It's a thing. But the fact that I couldn't
fathom in the beginning that you need to go to
therapy to survive in Manhattan. I think people
need to be able to talk to people about things
to try to work through them. And I think a lot
of people feel like they can't. find someone
in their life that they trust enough with their
true feelings and their real thoughts and that's
a that's a sad testament to the kind of relationships
that a lot of people have a lot of friendships
and and and romance romantic relationships that
people have in their life that they can't talk
openly about the real live experiences It's like
people, we have so much versions of ourselves
inside us, right? Like I can see why people become
the guards of concentration camps, right? Like
that's a thing. Humans are not initially good
or bad. It's all about how we shape them. When
you were talking about experiencing dead bodies
on the street but feeling nothing or feeling
that boy with his intestines hanging out his
back and feeling nothing. Yeah. That's because
of the way you grew up. Yeah. That's the thing,
like humans are most adaptive species. We are
so adaptable. Yeah. And that's also good and
bad. We can adapt. We can adapt to the concentration
camps, right? We can be the guards and not feel
guilty about it. And I think not talking about
that, not talking about the evil or what we are
capable of, the darkness. That said, everything
in North Korean news is wonderful things. Now
in this country, because they say there's no
room for hate speech, they want everything to
be happy, flowery words. But the thing is, we
have dark side. No matter what you do, they're
going to be murderers. They're going to be rapists.
Even if we don't talk about rape, rape is going
to happen. So getting rid of these people and
deplatforming them and canceling them, we don't
get rid of the actual problem. So in a way, it's
better for us to talk about our full nature,
what we are actually capable of, right? We can
be so resilient, compassionate beings, or we
can be complete like asshole, like not caring
about anything at all, like Kim Jong -un. And
we have to learn why people think differently
than us. And the only way you can do that is
by talking to them. And there's a lot of those
people that think in a way that you find problematic.
They can be converted. They can be talked to.
But not if you... treat them like they're the
enemy and cast them aside and block them from
communicating. Yeah. It's like, there's a thing,
like, would you rather, like, I would rather
know if there's a Hitler exist. Yes. When I do
the genocide, I want to know about it. Would
you not want to know about it? Yeah. I want to
know if somebody planning that. Right? There
are, like, people in the past where on Facebook
they're posting, I'm going to commit a, like,
murder in the Soms church. Right. They post on
Facebook. Isn't it much better for FBI to know
that? They're not giving them the platform so
we don't know who's planning the mass murder
right now. Right, right. When do you feel like,
because you had this time in your life where
you could see that boy with his intestines hanging
out of his back and it didn't bother you, you
didn't feel anything. When do you think you started
to feel things? With my son. Because the hardest
thing wasn't learning about the system or none
of that. Even in China, I was always numb. Even
when I was raped, I was looking at myself on
the roof, in the corners, and like, oh, that's
not me. How can that be happening to me? I was
completely ignoring that. And in North Korea,
you're so numb in your brain. When I had my son
in America in 2018, That's when I was feeling
things. And I was so grateful that I felt even
sadness. You were worried that you wouldn't feel
it? I was very worried. Feeling something was
very challenging. And giving birth to my son
brought a lot of new feelings to me. And, of
course, the compassion is one of them, right?
Like, I worry about the world. I want the world
to be a beautiful place for him, right? I actually
care about the humans. And, I don't know, this
part is, like, this is edited. The first time
that I knew what love was and unconditional love
was, did you, I saw that you had Rick Doblin
here. Yes. I had one of those experiences, like,
unplanned. Nobody knew. The MDMA? Is that what
it was? In California. But until then, people
told him, oh, I love you. I was like, if you
don't sleep with me, rape me, want something,
why would you love me, right? I never understood
that unconditional love between humans. Never
felt safe. You never felt love with friends?
No. I learned love later in life, so I knew the
word, but I did not actually ever felt it. So
when I was on that, for the first time, all I
felt was love and zero, zero fear. And that's
when I was like, I know that when these people
say they love me, actually this is how they feel,
actually. It's possible to love somebody unconditionally.
And after that, I became pregnant because I wasn't
able to get pregnant. From all the trauma I had,
I had three IVF cycles at 22. And after that
medicine, something relaxed in my body, I was
able to conceive, and I had my son. I think a
lot of people could benefit from one of those
experiences. I think it would change a lot about
the way we look at life, the way we look at each
other, and would just eliminate a lot of the
anger that people have, a lot of the misplaced
anger, unproductive, unhelpful, corrosive, dangerous
anger for no reason. There's so much of it, and
so much of it is so confusing, and so much of
it is based on... Our own insecurities and our
fear that other people won't love us back. Yeah.
And if you do one of those experiences with other
people and you're all in it together, you realize,
wow, so the world could be like this all the
time? Exactly. The world can be so different,
isn't it? Yeah. Everything can be understood.
That's the thing. In the center of everything,
there's love. And I did not know what love was
in the time of my life. That's the thing. When
people ask me, If you can be on North Korean
television, what would you tell them? I think
I would tell them I love you because they never
heard that before. They might not know even what
I'm saying, what the heck she's saying. She loves
me, right? Right. But I think that's the thing.
I did not know what it was. But everything that
we do for love, we have children for love, right?
Why do we even live? Everything, the point of
life is love. Right. And I did not know that
until I had the point. That's why I cannot be
bitter. I love men. My son is a man. My father
was a man. Even though a lot of experiences I
had with men was negative, that I was able to
overcome it. But I think a lot of people cannot
overcome that trauma because they're just not
able to make that connection. It's one of the
terrifying lessons of being a human being is
that there can be wonderful, loving experiences
at the same time where horrific things are happening
somewhere else. you know better than anybody
alive because of the country where you were born.
I mean, that's happening right now, that there's
a place where there is no love and everyone's
afraid. And there's just this horrific regime
that's running this country and keeping people
starving. And it's happening at the same time
as iPhones and the internet and electric cars
and all the wonderful things that we're experiencing
here in America. It's the worst example of human
life, and it exists simultaneously. I know. It's
a thing. I thought if I can show them, tell them
what's happening, I thought something's going
to change, right? But of course not. It's not.
And there's a reason why these problems keep
existing. But the thing is, I saw that one of
the interviews we did with Elon Musk, right?
I have to be hopeful because what's the alternative?
Yes. What is the alternative to being hopeful?
Nothing else. That's the thing. That's why even
though I don't know people are going to now listen
to me and help me to raise awareness and condemn
Chinese regime to stop sponsor Kim Jong -un.
I don't know that's going to happen, but I got
to be hopeful. That's the only thing we have
as a humanity. We got to be hopeful and we can
do so much when we keep that hope alive. It's
just terrifying that it's ignored. by the powers
that be in not just this country but many countries
that they're not all just standing up and saying
that this is an atrocity that's happening inside
of our lifetime we're doing nothing about it
it's a thing like I have no problem when people
are going, like, at the Canada goods store, putting
the, like, blood on them, like in New York, Seoul,
right? I remember when I was in South Korea.
This is on TV. There's a national concert with
the celebrities and singing and crying. I thought,
like, okay, big disaster happened, right? Why
are these people all emotional and crying? And
it was a fundraising for the dogs and puppies.
People eating animals? No, no. It was just like
their environment, how shelter, like environment
is hard for these animals. How it's not clean,
how they don't, you know. Animal shelters, right.
So they were crying and I was initially shocked.
Like, what do you mean animals have rights? As
a human being, I did not know I had the rights
as a human. Right, right, right. And what the
F really? Like animals, puppies have rights here?
And then... On top of that, I go meet so many
people, the philanthropists, and they are willing
to give millions of dollars to save animals and
dolphins and little ducks that don't die from
Canada goose, but they do not want to rescue
these girls who are raped every single day. And
somehow, I think it's anti -human sentiment.
I don't know even what that is. The fact that
we care about animals is a beautiful thing, isn't
it? We care that something cannot speak for themselves.
They are vulnerable. And there are people, a
lot of people cannot speak for themselves right
now. As you said, being free is an exception.
This is a very unusual thing. Even to this age,
like 4 billion people living under some authoritarian
dictatorship countries. So what we got is really
unique. And people somehow refuse to speak for
another human being. they would rather speak
for a little puppy and it's very the hypocrisy
that doesn't make sense like if someone's suffering
that bothers you why the human suffering doesn't
bother you i think it's so big and so insurmountable
that they don't feel like they can do anything
about it and so they're scared and so they don't
speak about it because to actually do something
would require an enormous effort, to do something
to change the regime of North Korea. What does
a person who lives in Berkeley, who loves to
support social justice causes, how is that person
going to affect the dictatorship that's happening
right now in North Korea? It feels like they
can't do anything about it. They can tweet about
what's happening that China does to North Koreans.
Yeah, they're scared to even tweet about China.
They'd rather tweet calling some white guy racist.
inherently or this person or that or that person
or this and come up with some sort of insults
for people that don't agree with what they agree
with. It seems too big. It seems like they can't
put a dent in it. But that's a lie that they
are telling themselves. Little things, even little
tweets would help. I think a lot of people don't
even know about it. Exactly. That's the thing.
The mainstream doesn't give a platform to the
people who want to challenge the CCP. Right.
So, I mean, these girls were captured by Taliban,
ISIS. A few hundred thousand people were oppressed,
gets Nobel Peace Prize, right? Yeah. There are
like 25 million people oppressed. When did you
hear anybody world recognizes from North Korea
or anything for this cause? What did you think
when Trump met with Kim Jong -un? We did Trump,
right? That's the thing. It seems like Trump
got everything do wrong or everything got to
be right, right? I mean, everybody, nobody's
perfect. I do think Trump was really right on
calling out China. He was the first president
to actually talk about to Xi Jinping that you
got to fix North Korea because you enables it.
That was the first president ever mentioned China
with North Korea. That was great. But sitting
down with Kim Jong -un without any preconception.
Because think about it. Inside North Korea, there
are military powerful men. And they think if
Kim Jong -un is backed by American president,
they're not going to start a coup or do anything
about it. So for Kim Jong -un, it was a very
good opportunity to legitimize his power within
the country. inside North Korea to consolidate
power. Because until that point, even Xi Jinping
didn't invite Kim Jong -un to China over, even
once. So Kim Jong -un was more like this young
man, nobody accepted. But Trump wanted to meet
with Kim Jong -un, so Xi Jinping invited Kim
Jong -un to over first before Trump meeting.
So that's how he went to China for the first
time. Meeting Xi Jinping. Because he knew that
Trump was going to meet him. So, I mean, of course,
China won't have influence beforehand. That's
why right before the meeting, he went to China
first. And until that point, China didn't even
invite Kim Jong -un. It was too low for them.
Really? Yeah, it was their little brother's puppet
state. So they would not treat Kim Jong -un like
a leader. He didn't even get the invitation to
visit China. Is there a real possibility that
someone could overthrow him from within inside
the country? It's impossible because China is
behind it. China is fully behind. You know, China
lent this land for 200 years, 50 years on these
mine towns, mining, blah, blah. Everything is
lent to China. So North Korea is not Chinese.
And the labor is free for the Chinese to use.
So everything is now Chinese in North Korea.
It's China, basically. Nothing is North Korea
anymore. Wow. In his mind, everything is like
land, like 200 years. That's the least they have.
I mean, how many generations that change in 200
years' time? Right. So it's China. North Korea
is China. There is really no distinction at this
point. And China is very clever in the way they've...
They have all these interests in all different
parts of the world, in Africa and all these different
mines. It's all through economic power. That's
how they disable them and enslave to their ideology,
and then they cannot speak up, and that's happening
to Americans. Even Ivy League schools get funding
from China. So all these researches, like papers,
they don't do things that challenge their narrative.
And the media, Hollywood, they need the money
from China, so they are not going to do anything
about it. So that's how slowly they infiltrated
every sector that we have right now. You know,
part of me is very upset that more people have
not talked to you. Well, because I'm a liar.
Because I'm a liar. I'm the propaganda puppet
of the West. CIA trained me. That's what they
say. Oh, yeah. So when I was starting giving
interviews in the beginning, they're like 15
and 13, the age difference that I did not know.
Right. And then like the mountain I climbed,
they went to Google Maps somewhere and check
the altitude. So basically, scientific altitude,
I should not have said it was a mountain. It
was a high hill. But as a child, I don't know
what altitude is a hill or mountain. I still
don't know the difference. So I said the mountain
that she's alive because what she climbed was
a hill. So they try to get you on a technicality.
Yeah. With that, with the altitude of the hill,
and then also on a technicality with the age,
which you explained. So she's trying to change
her life. But one thing I did hide was that I
trafficked in China. Because in South Korea,
girls, virginity is everything. And I wasn't
planning to come to America, right? I didn't
even have a right to come here. I was South Korean.
I wanted to have a child. I wanted a family.
And if I say I was raped two years by a human
trafficker, who's going to normal same family
going to take me? Right. So I had to lie that
I said I was okay. My mom only raped and she
covered me. And when I was writing my book, I
knew, I mean, of course, Penguin is not stupid.
took a legal team the people with me and then
got the live recording of people who crossed
desert with me who grew up with me everybody
so they got the live recording in the legal team
so that's why after the book there's not even
one single accusation because they were going
to sue afterwards like we have entire evidence
so it was all everything before the book and
also that is the thing is uh i mean a lot of
maoist leninists they sympathize north korean
regime right So many people hate America. And
I'm here saying America is the best country in
human history. Of course, I now became the symbol
of this bigotry. But I'm just shocked that more
people in America are not talking to you, that
more of these mainstream outlets don't want to
hear your story. Because of China, my story is
very inconvenient. Because I'm a slave. Actually,
I was a slave. And I was bought by Chinese and
exploited by them. So how do they cover my story
without including China peace? It's impossibility.
I can't believe that that's keeping people like
the Washington Post or the New York Times. Of
course it is. I know, but it's hard to believe
that this isn't just a human story, a staggering
human story, an amazing human story in terms
of the education that you've had, the experiences
that you've had, the way you've changed and evolved.
having escaped from North Korea into China and
then to South Korea and then eventually to America
and experienced all these things from this very
unique perspective. I mean, it's an incredible
story. But no, because they expect me to become
now a victim, right? Because they expect me to
hate all the men and the system and not, but
like I... do not tell like i'm not a victim i'm
very grateful like my book stars that there are
two things i'm grateful for that i was born in
north korea and that i escaped so it's like i
don't fit the narrative they are trying to portray
in any way wow just that's very disappointing
to me that there is a narrative that they want
you to portray because your actual story is a
very human story and it's a it's a contemporary
story that's very important when you look at
the way the world is is being run certain parts
of it like north korea or like china it's this
is this is from a person like yourself no one
else is going to be able to tell that story your
story is it's impossible for anyone that hasn't
experienced it to tell it has to be you yeah
but then that's why i'm grateful despite all
that you know North Korea did everything they
could to character assassinate me. Because that's
what they have the biggest hackers. And they
have the armies of hackings and go harass people.
And hacked the Sony studio, remember, when they
made the movie. So they're exactly the same thing.
They were reaching out to Penguin, my editors.
Like, we're going to blow Penguin if you write
this book. And there was so much harassment.
And internally, we were so scared. Penguin people
were like, we don't want to lose our job. We
don't want to blow up. They don't even talk about
in the public that you get attacked from North
Korean regime. North Koreans diplomat in London
was reaching out to my editor to sit down and
meet them in person to stop the book. And of
course, everything is written on media. That's
all believable, right? Everything is written
and people just believe whatever it was. So now
that's what North Korea is so good at, creating
this narrative and character assassin people.
And eventually it doesn't work, they're going
to kill you directly. And that's what they did.
Initially they were threatening me and stopped
talking about it, and then I still did. So they
put entire three generations of my family on
that North Korean propaganda channel. And they
made them to denounce me. And they were gone.
They're gone? Yeah. Because I still have agents
in North Korea, and they all disappeared. So
they were all killed. Yeah. I mean, concentration
camp means death. So even including my neighbors,
I think that was so unbelievable. I mean, what's
the crime of being a neighbor? They were not
even that close to me. But these neighbors, the
fact that they knew me, that was their crime.
And this video is on YouTube. And so they went
after everyone you knew. Yeah, everybody I knew.
Everybody I knew. In my entire town, my father's
side, mother's side, entire generation. And my
cousin that I raised. And, yeah, that's the thing.
I knew this was an evil regime. But I somehow
thought, like, how can they be threatened by
13 years old? I'm not even sharing how North
Korea develops their missile program, right?
All I'm saying is what the UN says. Like, there
is a public execution. You see from satellite
photos, you see. And there's like 33 ,000 North
Korean defectors made to South Korea. They talk
about starvation. And then that we get captured
in China and being sold, and there's documentaries
about it. So I'm not even sharing the first -class
information. I just didn't think they were going
to be threatened. I just really didn't think
that I was going to be a threat to them at all.
And, well, they don't, like, allow any dissent.
What do you think is going to happen with that
country? Like China, they can last a lot longer.
They might last longer than us. They might beat
us. Because that's the thing, like, it's, as
you said, people become softer. And they do not
know how to be resilient, right? And also, as
you said, people here surrounding such a goodness
of the world, they don't recognize, they don't
even know how evil can be a man be like, right?
A regime can be like. They don't know how cruel
these regimes are. They don't even recognize
the darkness they see. So I think because our
inability to recognize this crime and darkness,
I think... they might outlast us so that is my
biggest fear and so you have a genuine concern
that this country could collapse yeah i mean
every civilian civilization collapsed persians
i mean how many civilization before us came right
exactly so there shouldn't be any exception to
western civilization If we do not push and guard
this civilization, the enlightenment that we
got. Especially if you pay attention to what's
going on right now. Of course. And especially
the way it's emanating from the universities,
which is what's teaching and, you know, putting
ideas in the minds of young people who will then
go on to run things. This foundation is corrupt.
The only way that is for us to change is getting
rid of the Western civilization, getting rid
of American Constitution. Wait, it's not like
I'm saying like every class you set up at Columbia,
that's how they end the class, right? Every problem
goes going back to root, getting rid of white
men. They are the problem. They are the source
of every single problem that we have. They mess
up Africa. They mess up Asia. They mess up every
single thing. And like one class I remember at
the end of senior year, taking the music class,
right? It should be the least political. Western
music is a core, one of the core curriculum.
And the professor asking, who has a problem studying
Western music? And of course, everybody raised
their hands. Because of the spigots like Mozart
and Beethoven, they silence all the minority
groups. We have to listen to the spigots right
now. And it's the fact that Colombia having this
core is like a shame. And so I'm like, I'm studying
the West. What's the problem studying Western
music in the West? Right? Well, not only that,
you're studying musical history. You can't deny
the history. You can't deny that these people
made this music. It doesn't absolve anyone of
any crimes that they committed if they committed
crimes. Yeah. But to deny it all. Yeah. They
say like reading Jane Austen is like a hidden
oppression that we don't see because she was
living in a time of white colonialism and white
supremacy. So the fact that you read Jane Austen
is you get subconsciously brainwashed. This is
how you need to look for hidden oppression. Oh,
my God. Oh, it's so disturbing. It's so real,
though. I mean, that's really what's happening
right now. And people are paying. hundreds of
thousands of dollars to have your children indoctrinated
into these ideas. Yeah. I don't know where we're
going to end up in 10 years. I don't know. I
don't know. I don't know either. But I really
enjoyed talking to you. Thank you very much.
You're a very, very brave person. And I think
that your message is, it's very important. And
it's also, there's no one else who can tell it.
It has to be someone like you who's gone through
what you've gone through. And I think it's huge
for the world to hear. It's incredibly significant.
And I hope more people want to talk to you. No,
I think I'm so grateful that in the desert, when
I was crossing the desert, my father died a few
months from a cancer he had in the concentration
camp. And he died, and I had nobody to call,
right? He died in the morning, 7 a .m., waiting
till night so I can, like, bury him in the middle
of a mountain. And I couldn't even cry because
if you cry, people, neighbors are going to hear.
So I'm numb, like, sitting next to a dead body.
And I was thinking, wow, like, being a human
means nothing. Like, even dog dies. You go to
your neighbor and ask them, like, your dog died.
And in that desert, that's the thing, I wasn't
afraid of dying. I was just thinking, nobody
knew that I existed. Nobody knew that I came
to this earth and left in this middle of desert.
And that's the thing, nobody knows that North
Koreans exist. Nobody knows our stories. So I
think the fact that people know my father and
my people is the biggest comfort for me. You
know, I think that even... That's not even given
to us. They don't know we exist. So I'm so grateful
that you gave me this opportunity. Well, I'm
very grateful that you came here just to talk
about it and to tell people. And I'm glad a lot
of people are going to hear this. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. All right. Goodbye, everybody.