TRANSCRIPT: Tyranny, Slavery and Columbia U – Yeonmi Park

And I’m like five to you, but most of North Korean men are shorter than me. So if we are above 4’10 feet high, you must go to military. So tons of North Korean adult men are around 4’10, like even below that right now. So this severe malnutrition effect is in our brain development. North Korea’s average life expectancy is like if somebody lives up to 60, we think they live a really long life.

My grandmother, who died from malnutrition before her 60, everybody thought, oh, you should live long enough to do that. So it is a different planet we are talking about. Being in North Korea, of course, the only way for me to get my proteins were eating grasshoppers, dragonflies, a lot of insects, tree barks, plants, flowers. And that’s how we survive. And most people die in the spring because that’s when there is no insects and plants are. And that’s where every spring there’s most people dying and most people dying that time.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yes, and you said, that for you and the people around you, spring wasn’t a time of hope and renewal, but the absolute worst time of the year. And so maybe you can explain that.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, every spring, I remember my skin cut off from the vitamin lackness that I would get. It’s not bad. Every spring, the people who couldn’t wait until the summer so the plants grow. And that’s when we all know that tons of people are going to die. And I still remember ice skating in the spring, in March of 2007, one day I had a really bad stomach ache and my mom took me to the hospital. But in North Korea, of course, there’s no electricity. There’s no x-ray machines. None of that. Literally a nurse using one meter to inject every patient in the hospital.

And people don’t die from cancer in North Korea. They die from infection and hunger mostly. And the doctor literally told my mom that she has appendix. We got to operate on her like right now in this afternoon. And they do not use anesthesia. It’s a very like people don’t use anesthesia in North Korea. They would have cut my belly open that afternoon and I was fainting. And they said, oh, she just mangled. She’s got an infection. She doesn’t have any appendix. And then they closed me back.

And then literally from our hospital to the bathroom, there were like piles of human bodies piled up. And you see children like chasing the rats, eating just rats eating human eyes first. And then children catch this rat. And they eat and they somehow die from I don’t know what it is. Then rats eat the children back. So this cycle of us eating rats and they eat us back is going to continue and continue.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah, you said, and you said that was happening in the hospital. You also mentioned that in that episode that you woke up before the surgery was over because the anesthetic ran out.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, it was. It was not even like actually a full anesthetic. It was more like a dose of, I think, sleeping pill, like a lot of tons of it. So most of people in North Korea, even when they cut their legs open, sewing their bones, they do not give any anesthesia because it’s a free health care. And we do not provide anything for the people.

Average Wage In North Korea; Living Off Grasshoppers

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you mentioned as well, and so we can talk about your familial situation, that in the 1990s, the average wage in Korea was the equivalent of two dollars a month. And so a dollar ninety a day is what the UN regards as the line between poverty, absolute deprivation related poverty and enough to barely subsist on a dollar ninety a day. And so North Koreans were making as much in a month as the UN allows for poverty in a day.

And you describe, well, eating virtually nothing. Rice was a luxury. Other forms of food, especially protein, were virtually unheard of, including fruit. And you, in some of the most memorable sections, you described going out into the fields with some other children. And you were about seven or eight years old, I guess, at this time, and catching dragonflies and roasting them with a lighter. And that was where you got your protein.

YEONMI PARK: That is, yeah, I mean, I ate tons of grasshoppers. I remember always, even though it was a free education when we go to school. So in North Korea, there’s no concept of minor. And there’s no concept of I. They don’t allow us to use the word I. So even though I say I like food, they say we like food. We like our country. And in that scenario, when we go to school, they all view us as revolutionaries. And therefore, even the children, when they go to school, even eight, seven, nine years old, we all have to work in the manual construction zones.

So therefore, children, even when they can afford to go to school, it doesn’t really mean much to them to go to school. And most of the children now in North Korea cannot afford to go to school and stay at home. And that was like my job. And parents go out to find food. Children would like clean and bring the drinking water. We don’t even have sewage. And going to mountains and bring a lot of the firewood, because we don’t have gas or coal or anything. We have to find anything we can find in the nature to cook food. So it’s an almost 16th century of lifestyle that we go to the river and we bathe in the summertime and in the winter we don’t bathe. And only a few times we take baths. And that’s why I sometimes cannot believe that this is the same life that I’m living in right now.

Class Distinction In North Korea

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you mentioned earlier the class distinctions that were drawn in North Korea. And this is a characteristic of other totalitarian states, including those predicated on, hypothetically predicated on absolute equality. You saw this happening in the Stalinist era and also in Maoist China, where if your family members were associated with a group that was deemed oppressive, then that still might impede your chances of survival, let alone progress three or four generations later.

So you, and I believe your family, if I remember correctly, your grandfather or great-grandfather was a landowner. And so what did that mean?

YEONMI PARK: So exactly, that’s what North Korea does right now. They still have this thing called the Guilt-By-Association. So if one person does wrong in North Korea, it doesn’t mean just you are the one get punished. Three to eight generations get punished. So when there was one high-ranking official escaped, they killed more than 30,000 people because of the one person’s defection. And that’s the cost that I had to bear, me speaking out afterwards, of my three-generation family back in North Korea that punished. So that’s like that.

My great-grandfather, I think, were a small landowner before the communism and everything began in the 1900s, early that time. Because of that, then my grandmother was her, so status was down. And the trickiest thing about North Korea’s status is that there’s not even something called marrying up. So other countries, if you marry somebody from higher status, you can go up with them. But in North Korea, there’s only going down. If you’re high status and marrying somebody low, you go down with them. That’s how they prevent mixing different classes.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right. And so that’s one of the consequences of this idea of group guilt. And so the system is predicated on the idea, or was predicated originally on the idea, that the landowning class was a group of people the landowning class was oppressive, tyrannical, and, well, they were thieves. They were immoral thieves, essentially, as an entire class. And then that class guilt became so pervasive that it wasn’t escapable across generations. That’s where the idea of group guilt takes societies. And how would you contrast that to what you see in the West?

YEONMI PARK: It is so unbelievable. I mean, I went to school in America, to university, or talk about this. I mean, America always had slavery and all this oppression. But now they are collectively being guilty for their history. And how many generations ago was that even? And then people are still trying to punish people who were not doing it at the time. And how do you choose your ancestors?

I think that’s what was the hardest thing for me to be in North Korea. That, I mean, I wish I had an option to choose the things back then, but it’s not within your control. And now also in America, I see this trend of people going after people whose ancestors were perhaps the slave owners. But how is it relevant to that individual right now who they are? It’s not only they contributed back then.

So this idea of like, you know, they’re collectively, we associate them. And I never knew that the rest of the world was might be also like this, in a different degree. But this is something that mainly North Korea holds against these people. They literally call your blood tainted. Because your father, your great-great-grandfather did something that means you are forever, your blood is tainted. You are not like redeemable.

And almost now in America, I see that because some white people, their ancestors owned the slaves, they are like redeemable. They should be forever guilty about their privilege. And like the idea of this word of guilt is also very, it’s very hard to even look at this. And it’s so heartbreaking. Why would you cause that kind of shame on other humans? Why it’s not their fault at all?

What Yeonmi’s Parents Did To Survive

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah, well, that’s a good question. But why would you want that to happen? Well, I think it’s part of a demand for some hypothetical radical equality. I mean, it is the case that some people are born, we’re all born with different advantages and disadvantages. And some of those are linked to our ethnicity and our race from time to time. And there’s an attempt to, at least in principle, level the playing field. But it gets very dangerous when you try to equalize the outcomes. And when you enter the realm of guilt by group, that’s a catastrophe. Everywhere that’s ever been instituted, it’s just a complete catastrophe. It’s exactly the same thing happened in the Soviet Union and in Maoist China.

Your family, your father in particular, but also your mother, they, and many, many Koreans in the 1990s when things fell apart so catastrophically, there wasn’t the emergency re-emergence of free enterprise in some sense. It was illegal, highly illegal. But tell us what your father and your mother did to survive.

YEONMI PARK: So as you say, in the 90s, until then, so in North Korea right now, you cannot own cars, you cannot own houses, everything’s private. So no private property in North Korea. You don’t even own your stuff. Everything is state owned. So therefore, trading is illegal. That is that you are committing a crime. But after the 90s, the Soviet Union collapsed, people had to find their own ways to survive outside of the North Korean government.

So the regime created this ideology called the Juche ideology, self-reliance ideology. So they told the people, okay, you are alive on your own. We are not going to give you public distribution. You just figure out on your thing. Then they go, how do we figure our own thing? We don’t have freedom. We cannot even trade. People started getting into this thing called the black market.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right, so simultaneously, so what was happening in North Korea simultaneously was that the centralized government distribution system collapsed completely when it was no longer subsidized. And the North Korean government decided that everyone was now on their own, while simultaneously making any ownership and any trade whatsoever illegal and punishable with extreme punishments. So you were on your own, but forbidden to do anything that would get you out of your condition of starvation and privation.

YEONMI PARK: Exactly, like now I’m thinking back, people are like, oh, what were you allowed to do in North Korea? I literally sat down one day, like what was I allowed to do on my own? Literally just breathing. That is the only thing that I was allowed to do on my own. The regime literally tell you what to read, what to listen to. They even send you prison if you dance in a wrong way. If you wear jeans, they say the symbol of capitalism, they send you prison. If women wear like skirt, like pants, sometimes they say, oh, you got a women have to wear the skirt.

And if you watch a wrong movie, and even the haircut, they tell you what kind of a haircut. It was a funny joke for the Westerners say, I cannot believe in North Korea, you have to follow the haircut line, the guidelines. That’s how controlling the regime is. They intervene every aspect of your life. And literally, when there are some times when we have even electricity, they would give us this radio that we cannot turn off. We can lower the volume, but can never turn off at home. So they force us to listen to this propaganda.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right, and it’s stuck on one channel. And you can’t move it, move the station selector to listen to anything else. That’s illegal as well.

YEONMI PARK: Yes. And that’s the thing, the regime doesn’t allow us to do anything, and then let us somehow find a way to survive. And of course, that means breaking the rules in North Korea. My father was involved in black market, where he started selling dry fish, sugar, rice, clothes, cloths. And then later the metal, like copper, silver, copper. And of course, that was illegal. And that’s how he was sent to prison camp.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right. And so he started to trade. And you mentioned in your book that the trading, as far as you were concerned, that the trading activity that emerged as a consequence of the black market gave North Koreans their first small taste of freedom. So what do you mean by that? Why did that strike you that way?

YEONMI PARK: Because the trading is a very empowering act, because until then, North Koreans had to rely on everything from the regime. Like literally even the water, everything. But when we started being creative, and they said, okay, I can find the corn, like cheaper price in this region, and then bring it to the other region, and bring on maybe fabric from this region to the other region. So we start getting more control over how we even think, how to look.

And, but it was like North Korean marketization was extremely controlled and still very limited. But that was almost just giving the people now to think, oh, there is a life, when I take my own control of my life, it’s better than relying on government who just promised to take care of everything, but who never does. So now the younger generation has tasted marketization and thirst for more freedom to being in the market system.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So your conclusion was that there was a direct connection between the act of engaging in free trade, say, at the personal level, and the idea of freedom itself.

YEONMI PARK: It forces you to think for yourself when you trade. When you trade, it’s not like you’re thinking about, oh, I’m gonna become a better revolutionary for the region. You think for yourself, how is it gonna benefit me and my family if I do this? But for North Koreans, thinking for yourself was something so unheard of. Like when we are born, the first thing they teach us how to bow properly and respect. And the first thing that my mom told me as a young girl was not to even whisper because the birds and mice could hear me. She told me that the most dangerous thing in my body that I had was my tongue. If you slip out a wrong word, that is the end of our entire family clan. That’s how much dangerous your tongue is.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yes. So you carefully discuss your experiences with free trade and attribute to that the dawning idea of autonomy and individual freedom, whereas the act of trade is deemed illegal and immoral by the totalitarians. And that’s associated in some manner with their insistence that private property is theft and that capitalism by its nature, which would include any free trade of any sort, is also corrupt and malevolent.

All right. So your mother, you talked about the restrictions on your speech that even the mice had ears, so to speak. Your mother was almost thrown into prison camp because of comments that an uncle of yours made. I believe he was visiting from China. So can you tell that story?

YEONMI PARK: So when I was really young, we had some relatives from China. He came and told my mom and Kim Il-sung, the first Kim died. And he said he didn’t die from hard working for the people. Because when the Kims died, they told us that, you know, like literally they tell North Korean people, Kims are starving like all of us. They cannot even sleep. They work tirelessly for us. How grateful we are for having a leader who’s that selfless.

But told my mom, actually, he didn’t die from like those exhaustion from hard working. Rather, he died from some heart attack caused by medical conditions. And then my mom was a true believer still. She was telling her best friend that, can you believe how far on my bad people are saying like this ridiculous rumors about our dear leader. And she was more like telling out of anger that she heard. It was like she was questioning it. But even that was…

So in North Korea right now, like you and me and there’s one person, three of us sitting here. I’m watching you and you’re watching the other person. And that person watching me. So even though I’m being a nice person, not gonna report on you, I know that someone watching me gonna report on me. But if that person is not reporting on me, then he can report on the other person. So you’re being spied and you’re spied on someone. That kind of system made us not trust in other humans. It killed our trust in another person.

Like we are always paranoid. So that’s a good lesson for my mom to learn. Even she thought all her life that was her best friend. She was a spy. And she told all officials. And my mom almost risked killing all of us. But the thing is, because she never flipped the water to another person and she said from the intention of defending the revolution, they pardoned her and told her never, ever say something like that ever to anybody. So even my father never knew what was happening there.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right. So even though she thought the rumor was a lie, and when she talked about it, she was outraged, that was still enough for a full investigation with a tremendous amount of danger associated. And it was luck in large part that she escaped from more severe punishment. And the fact maybe that she had small children.

YEONMI PARK: Definitely. Like in North Korea, like when you have a newspaper, every front page has to be Kim’s. But when you turn in the back of the newspaper, you don’t see the photo of Kim’s. By mistake, if you rip that newspaper, your family goes three generations to concentration camp.

JORDAN B PETERSON: If you rip it.

YEONMI PARK: Oh, yeah. So it’s like if you get a newspaper, you’ve got to be very careful how the photo is going to be positioned. So every household in North Korea have them portraits of Kim’s. If your house caught on fire, the first thing is not you holding your chandelier around. You have to hold the portrait to your death. Otherwise, it’s going to kill three generations of your family again.

So this is like the Kim’s are gods to us. They can, they are almighty, that who can without thoughts. I literally believed that. So North Korea copied the Bible. In its exact bible, Kim Il-sung was a god, loved us so much, gave his son to us, Jesus Christ, like Kim Jong-un. His body dies, but he stays with us forever and ever. Therefore, he knows how many hair I have, what I think, what my future will be. So if we sacrifice ourselves right now for the revolution, we are going to show him in a paradise afterlife.

So North Korea, therefore, is the number one Christian persecution country because it’s so, like so they copied it so like similarly, they cannot show it to North Korean people. There’s some other ideology like that exists in other countries. So that’s why there’s also a lot of religion in that way.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you spent a lot of time when you were a kid completely on your own because your dad, your father was eventually put in a prison camp. And for a long time, and then your mother spent a lot of time away from you because she had, well, she had to do what she needed to do to raise money so that you could survive. But also she was trying to deal with the situation with your father.

So you and your sister, how much age difference is there between you two?

YEONMI PARK: Three years.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And she’s older?

YEONMI PARK: Yes, I was eight years old and she’s 11 years old.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And you spent a lot of time on your own. Months?

YEONMI PARK: Years.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Years. So what would, tell me about a typical day and a typical week when you were on your own. So you’d get up in the morning, you said the roosters would crow, there’s no electricity, the roosters would crow. You were living in a city at that time?

YEONMI PARK: That time I was moving around a lot. So initially I was left alone with my sister when I was eight years old and I left my sister. We were living like that for three years. And then our relatives separated us. Our uncle took my sister and my aunt took me to the countryside. That’s how I lived my, also my two years like that way.

And so my typical day is like, you know, when the rooster like cries. In the summertime it’s usually 5.30am and the wintertime is 7am. They’re pretty accurate. Normally they cannot afford a clock. And that’s how we follow the, you know, rooster, the timeline. We get up and we go to the mountains and do the daily work. We go and the regime also assigns the children to raise rabbits at home. And then we skin them and give the skin to the regime so they can make the soldiers’ coats for days. So everybody gets assignment with the regime.

And also the thing is that they don’t even have fertilizer. So they make sure that everybody bring their own bathroom stuff to the school. So tons of them. So even when you’re a child, you get tons of assignments from the regime. Every single one of them associate to something and get your assignment and get it done. Collect it.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yes, well you said that as a school child, all of your, you and all of your friends, your peers, well, as well as the adults were set out all the time to collect dog waste and human waste. And that that was actually stolen from toilets because it was valuable. It had to be handed over to the state because that was the only source of fertilizer.

YEONMI PARK: Yes, even that. So I remember one of my culture shock was when I was in the trash can for the first time in my life. Because there was no trash can in North Korea. We literally had nothing to throw away. And coming to the West, where people are having these trash problems, like, where the heck am I? And in North Korea, even your own poop is so valuable that they fight for poop. It’s like the war on poop. And if you don’t bring the cola, you’re going to be punished by the regime.

So the kids, rather than they even school, they don’t study. They sent out us to hunting for poops from everywhere and gather them, bring it to school afterwards.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right. Well, that was one of the most striking parts of the book. I’d never… I’ve read a fair bit about poverty-stricken existence under totalitarian regimes, but that was the first time I’d encountered that particular wrinkle, let’s say. So, all right. So you’re eight years old and your sister is 11 and you get up with the roosters and you have work to do. What are you eating at that point? How much are you eating? And where do you get your food?

YEONMI PARK: It really depends. In North Korea, it’s not when you eat, it’s so random, like what you get that day. It’s a, you know, that’s the thing. I’ve never seen a cookbook. You know, how do you find a half pound of pork and flour and garlic? We just eat whatever we have at that moment. So if that day we had potatoes who were frozen outside because we didn’t have a place to put them, then they become very dark colors. We cook them and we put lots of water in it and then some dried cabbage in it because, you know, usually water fills you up.

So a lot of food has a lot of soup in it in North Korea to fill you up. And, you know, we make sure that we have enough food for the evening. We divide each meal. So depending on how much food we have that day, in the morning, I’m more like the public distribution for each one of us and how much you can eat per that certain meal. And some days we just cannot eat.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And who was distributing it?

YEONMI PARK: I was, my sister was the one more like chopping wood because she was bigger. She was doing more manual work, and I was the one more like cooking and doing the domestic work.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And where was the food coming from? Apart from what you gathered?

YEONMI PARK: Sometimes my mom, before she goes away, like for several months, she leaves us with a few kilograms of corn and like other grains. Then we have to divide it for like six days. You know, we don’t know when she comes back.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Well, you told us, you told a story at one point about your mother leaving. I believe she was gone for several months, and she left you some money, and you and your sister spent it on sunflower seeds and something else. Some cookies on the way back from where your mother left from. And then you had no money for all the time that she was gone.

YEONMI PARK: Exactly. So we learned that lesson the first time she left us, gave us some money, and then we never had those kind of money, big money in our hands. On the way back, we bought sunflower seeds and some cookies in a plastic bag. And then we had nothing left for us and we were not even sure.

So in North Korea, we don’t even have phones. It’s not like you can call up somebody where are you. Like a lot of times they go out and they never come back. They might die, you know. You know, disease or situation like accidents, a lot of people never hear back from. So going on a journey in North Korea is like higher chances of you never seeing them again.

And so even though mom would say I will come back, but we never knew she would. And once that happened, the first time we learned the lesson, mom would like leave us a few kilograms of grains and we would divide as much as we could. So we would not run out until she comes back.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And you said that all you ever thought about and your sister as well was food and that you dreamed about bread and you fantasized about bread and you talked about how much bread you could conceivably eat and that you were possessed all the time with hunger.

YEONMI PARK: I know I’m like still thinking as a child, like I never ate until I felt full. So I never knew what was like the limit of my own stomach was. I never knew how much should I be fed so I feel like full. So as a young man, I literally thought if I even eat the mountains of food, I thought I would never feel full.

So we would compare how much I can eat more. So my sister said, like, I’m 100, I’m thousands and like a mountain and 10 million and whatever the number, whoever comes the bigger. And that’s how we were like dreaming of it. That was the only thing on your mind. That’s the thing. When people talk about like the civilization, right? It’s false when you don’t eat. People like become animals. You lose all this dignity. All you’re thinking is just food, basic survivor. And that’s what my people always telling me, the basic survivor.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah, and you were at that time too, you were seeing death everywhere as a consequence of starvation.

YEONMI PARK: I still remember like one day, my sister and I walked by near the well. It’s like people bring the drinking water. There’s a young man, I don’t know, like maybe teenager. He lies down and his intestines come out of him and he was still alive. And like, I’m hungry, give me something.

But as a young mind, I didn’t even feel sorry. That’s the thing haunts me the most is that I feel nothing all my life there. And because every single thing I saw was like that. And now I’m thinking, was I a psychopath? I feel nothing about it. But that’s, I think, so desensitized North Koreans are.

JORDAN B PETERSON: I think if you’re in shock, you’re in shock all the time. I mean, you said in many of the experiences you had, for example, that you felt like you were outside your body watching. And that’s a classic sign of dissociative stress. And you were in a situation like that all the time. All the time.”

So I don’t think that you have to consult your conscience about that. In your book itself, there’s no shortage of empathy on display. So, and I don’t think it’s a comment on your character. It’s a comment on the absolute horror of the situation that you found yourself in. And obviously you were capable of great loyalty to your family members. And even to some of the people that treated you very, very badly. I mean, the men that you were involved with, in part, once you escaped from North Korea, you had ambivalent relationships with. But I mean, you were able to see their humanity, despite the terrible situation that you had been placed in by them.

So I don’t think there’s any issue of you not having the full range of human feelings. It’s just you were in situations that were so terrible that fortunately, no one in the West, essentially, can even imagine being in a situation like that. None of us to speak of, or a very small minority of us, have ever been hungry for ever, let alone for any protracted period of time. And certainly not to the point of chronic malnutrition. That just doesn’t happen here.

And so, okay, so you lost your father. Your father was imprisoned when you were about eight, seven or eight. And what happened to him? What were the consequences for him? He was doing quite well, in some sense, by North Korean standards with his trading. So he was good at what he was doing, and your mother helped him. But he got imprisoned, especially after he moved up into more dangerous commodities. You said that he started to trade metals and that he was hiding the metals in cars, railway cars, that were reserved for, for, I think I’ve got this right, for Kim Jong-il. Yes. Because they wouldn’t be searched.

YEONMI PARK: Yes. So every train in North Korea, we only have one train line and that goes from one side of the country to the end. It sometimes takes a month to go because of low electricity and the railways are very bad. And that’s why there’s only always reserve one cargo that carries the things to Kim’s.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And what’s in that car, just out of curiosity?

YEONMI PARK: I mean, we hear these rumors, they grow, I mean, the parts of the country that has the best land for growing apple or growing something like the best of the best from the country that is specially reserved for them. And nobody actually knows what’s even in there. Even when those people who search that cargo cannot go and the people who guard it, they have to do body search and health checkup for them. So that’s how severe is control. So nobody knows what they’re carrying inside. And my father was able to do something with them and then carry the letters in that cargo hiding.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And he was bribing guards to allow that to happen.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And then he got caught. And was put in a… So what kind… Talk about the prison situations, because just normal life in North Korea is unbearable by all accounts. But the prisons take that to a whole new level of hell. So what would have your father experienced in the North Korean prison camp?

YEONMI PARK: So there are three types of prisons in North Korea. One is for the [Gwaliso]. It is a concentration camp. Usually you’re born there. So you’re… Because you’re… It is that one day my grandfather committed some crimes and they take all the generation to there. And it is a permanent living condition there. You live there forever for the rest of your life.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And you’re born there. You can be born there because of the group guilt of your ancestors, which never goes away.

YEONMI PARK: Right. Now you can never redeem the bite of your group, whatever your ancestors did. Forever you’re there. So they don’t even consider these inmates are human enough. They don’t even teach them who the leader is. They don’t even know what Kim Jong-un is in the concentration camp. They are just…

JORDAN B PETERSON: You said they’re not even allowed to look at the guards.

YEONMI PARK: Yes. But there’s every level. So where my father went was a prison camp. But those people know what Kim Il-sung is. But the thing is, they too also treat them like animals. They don’t let them to ever see the guard’s eyes. And of course, the conditions are, I mean, it’s a holocaust of what the UN said. In 2014, the UN did a three year investigation and the only resemblance that we found in our history is the holocaust. This is a holocaust happening in North Korea, like again.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And do you have any idea how many people are in the concentration camps, the worst of the prisons? Do you know what the estimates are?

YEONMI PARK: They say around 200,000.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And what about the total prison population? Do you have any numbers for that?

YEONMI PARK: Because so many are dying. So when you go to the prison, a lot of them die within three months. So those numbers are very hard to get. And this is the most secretive country in the world, even though America cannot figure out North Korea. So we know that their positions, we can even sound like seeing those public executions happening. But it’s very hard to estimate how many are going in and how many are dying after three months. It’s hard to calculate the numbers.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And so your father was in prison for how long?

YEONMI PARK: He was sentenced to more than 10 years. Initially, I thought it was 17 years, but North Korea showed the record. It was like, I think, 11-year sentence, prison camp. He got out something four, five, four maybe years later for the sick leave, which means he was bribing. That’s the thing.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right, he played a trick on the ward.

YEONMI PARK: Right, right. So he think was a sick leave. Once you get killed, you go back to prison again. And he was a very like a business man. He learned like guards and get him out. And that’s how he got him out during his sentence.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And so you saw your father again after a couple of years. How many years were you without him?

YEONMI PARK: I think four years. I saw him again when I was 12.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right, and you described that in the book. And so what did you see when you saw your father? What had happened to him?

YEONMI PARK: So when I was reading this book by George Orwell, 1984, it talks about the man like Winston, who had a lot of wits. And after that all the torture, he became empty, right? And a lot of people read that book as a fiction to them. But for me, that was like my father.

When I saw my father again, of course, he had no hair. He just got out of prison camp. I mean, all he got was his bones, like literally skin on the bones. And the thing is, I didn’t even feel anything. That’s like what I’m saying. Like, I felt nothing. He was just so empty. His eyes were just hollow and empty. And then he was starting singing songs like I didn’t do enough for my country. Like he was so guilty that he was not a revolutionary at all. And if he wasn’t him, and in so many ways, I was worse than killing him. He was just so permanently, that he never came back. Until he died, he felt guilty that the crime that he committed for the regime. Till his death, but he told me, never betray like the leader. And I don’t know what he did to him, but he came out as a completely different person.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So it was not long after that, that you and your family decided to leave North Korea to escape. You were 13. Your dad died. He died of cancer. And it wasn’t long after he got out of the prison that that was the case. And then you guys decided to make your way to China?

YEONMI PARK: No, I escaped. So my sister, at 16, she escaped with her friends. And I told you, as I got my stomach ache, she left me a note to say, go find this lady. She will help you to escape. Initially, we didn’t plan to, I didn’t plan to escape with my mom. I was going to escape with my own sister. But because I got sick, my sister had to leave first. I found the note and found the lady with my mom and told her that, she told me if I go to China, she said I was going to find my sister.

And then, I mean, but when you’re so desperate, like you don’t even know what China is. Like we don’t have internet to look search and what’s going on in China. Just hoping, because China is the only place that had a light that night.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And if you look at North Korea from a satellite image, it’s quite interesting because the entire country is black at night and it’s surrounded by the bright lights of South Korea and all of Southeast Asia. But you have this immense territory, the whole North of Korea, that’s completely dark. And you talked about standing with your boyfriend at that time, looking at the lights in the distance of China. But you didn’t know anything about it at all and had no idea what was going to happen to you if you escaped into China.

YEONMI PARK: No, I did not even know what was China. I just saw the lights and maybe if I go where the lights were, I thought maybe I would find a bowl of rice. That’s how innocently we thought about it.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right. And some of that motivation was direct hunger, right? You were hoping to find somewhere where you could at least get enough to eat.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, it was that thing. It’s the thing when people say, you’re so brave that you risked your life for freedom. No, I wasn’t. I didn’t even know what freedom was then. How do I know what freedom is? I just was literally escaping to find some food to survive from hunger. And that’s how we crossed the frozen river that night with my mother and my step-brother, 13 years old, to China, leaving my father behind back in North Korea.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So tell us about what happens to North Koreans as they move with the traffickers into Korea, because that’s a whole story in and of itself. And it was something you had no idea about.

YEONMI PARK: I know, this is the thing. The world is obsessed talking about slavery, but this is the slavery that’s happening just right now at this very moment that we are talking about this. So there are like 300,000 North Korean defectors in China and they’re all enslaved by Chinese people. I was one of them. In 2007, we found this lady. Miraculously, she wouldn’t help me to go to China. I didn’t even know why. She bribed the guard.

So in North Korea, the most heavily guarded border with the people with the machine guns and Kim Jong-un literally buried landmines on the border so people would not escape. So entire countries are concentrated camps. Entire border is there. We were lucky to bribe the guard to cross the frozen river to China. Of course, the first thing I see was my mom being raped in front of me.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And you said that your mother offered herself as an alternative to you.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And you were 13 at the time. And that was your first introduction to sex of any sort, because there was no sexual education or contact for young people. There was no sexual education and no romance, no dating, anything like that. So that was your first introduction. I don’t imagine you even understood what was happening.

YEONMI PARK: No. I had the thing like I go there and I was like something 60 pounds. I was very manly, maybe 50-something, so small. And this man was like, I want to have sex with her. And my mom was like, what do you mean? She’s only a child. And then he said, I want to have sex with her. She said, just take me instead. And he was raping her in front of me. But I’ve never seen a sex video ever. Never even knew what rape was. That word was not even in my head. I just seen something so horrible that I didn’t want to see.

And after that, they took us to this house where they would literally make us stand up, make us turn around, take our teeth and everything and make him price on our body.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah. Now, let me fill in a bit of background there. The way you lay that out in your autobiography is that there’s a heavy demand for North Korean women in China, especially rural China. And the fundamental reason for that, apart from desire for labor, is that China instituted a one-child policy back in the 60s. And many, many female fetuses were more aborted than male. So there’s a disproportionate number of young Chinese men who have no partner and no probability of acquiring one because there’s an absolute shortage of women. And so you and your mother were valuable commodities because of the shortage of women.

YEONMI PARK: Exactly.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yes, I’ve got that right. And there was a price on, you both had a high value. And so, and that’s when you entered what was essentially the world of slavery.

YEONMI PARK: It’s, as you said, right now in China, literally 30 million young men have no hope of finding women in their life. 30 million men in China right now. So because of the regime, Chinese regime do not want these men to revolt even because of dissatisfaction with their lifestyle. In a way, regime, Chinese regime does not crack down on human rights trafficking either. We are almost like a price they are using to pay for these men not to revolt.

And then, so when we go, I was 13 years old. I was a virgin. So my price would be less than $300 in 2007. And my mom’s price was less than $100. That’s how we show human being worth right now in this 21st century. And then each trafficker buys us, price goes up. So the second trafficker comes and buys us and then pay more price. Then they sell us to the Chinese farmers or the men or they sell us to brothels or prostitution and like a lot of other like underground work and sell us like products, like commodity.

And that’s, and then I remember, that’s the thing. They were asking, so in China, in order to be here, you gotta be sold. And I didn’t know what human trafficking was. What do you mean you’re selling a human? I’m not a puppy. Like, how do you sell me? And they were like, no, you gotta be sold here. And they said like literally to me was that, well, if you don’t wanna be sold, you can go back to North Korea. We can let you guys go back.

But the thing is going back to North Korea is a death. Like even though we are completely, regime doesn’t punish me, there’s no chance for me to find food. I mean, that’s the hardest thing. It’s like, there’s no place for us to go outside of North Korea. Like if we leave that country, whatever the condition is, it’s better than being in North Korea because at least in China, we are being fed. Doesn’t matter we are raped, tortured, we are at least being fed. At least being fed. And that’s how we stayed in China and decide. And they sold me separately from my mom because they can charge two people’s price.

So they sold my mom and sold me separately. And that’s how I got separated from all my family at 13.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah, well, you said at the beginning when you went into China that you didn’t tell the smugglers, the traffickers that you were traveling with your mother. You said that she was younger than she was. And you said that you were older than you were. Because they weren’t going to take you otherwise. And you had no idea what was in store for you at that point also.

YEONMI PARK: No, I did not know. She told me, oh, don’t tell them you guys are mother and daughters. Just say you’re maybe aunt or something. And told my mom, you’re much younger. You’re much older. And because human trafficking was something that I didn’t hear about in my life. I was so scared.

Because in North Korea, there’s no bad news. Every news is a happy news. How amazing we are winning in the revolution. So I never even knew what rape was. In America, if you watch news like somebody rapes, you know what rape is. But in North Korea, they steal every information from you. Like news is not actual news. So not knowing what rape is, not knowing what human trafficking is. And just completely into a new, just another planet.

JORDAN B PETERSON: But you had enough to eat.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And was that the first time in your life that you’d actually had enough to eat? Were you able to find enough so that you could eat until you were full? Did you experience that at that point?

YEONMI PARK: That’s when I learned. Another thing is, it didn’t matter that I had food to eat again. Because I lost everything that mattered to me. I lost everything. And so I wanted to kill myself. I finally went to a place where there was food for me. But then that means me being a slave. And I’m losing every single one of them in my life. And I was going to kill myself.

And at that point, this broker told me, if you help me become my mistress, help me with my trafficking business, that I’m going to help you with your own family.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Why did you decide to stay alive? What kept you going?

YEONMI PARK: Because my mother, he told me at that point, he said, if I don’t kill myself, I’m helping him. Then he said he was going to buy my mom. Because he’s the one who sold my mom to a farmer.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right. So at that point, you were separated. Your mother was the enslaved wife, so to speak, of a farmer in a rural community. So she had to be bought back. And that’s the deal he offered you.

YEONMI PARK: Yes.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And so you decided to stay alive because you thought you could help your mother. It wasn’t for you.

YEONMI PARK: No, I was… Yeah, it was… Then my life mattered to something. It meant something. I could do something more than that. So he offered to bring my father. And that’s how I brought my father to China from North Korea. In that October, when I was turning 14, in that October 2007, I saw my father again.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And so then you were with this man, Hongwei? Was that his name?

YEONMI PARK: Hongwei.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Hongwei. And you describe a very complex relationship with him. He was violent and a gambler. So he would spend vast amounts of money raised by this trafficking trade and disperse all of it in gambling fits. And he was violent to you. But you also believe that over time, he came to love you. And so what do you make of that in retrospect? It’s an unbelievably complicated situation, to say the least.

YEONMI PARK: You know, even though… Actually, it’s a thing. Last year, he came out of prison in China after a 10-year serving sentence. And I sent him money from the U.S. to help him. And it was for me to…

That’s a thing. And then I could… Actually, this morning, I woke up from this nightmare of my time with him, how violent he was. All my day, I was like so… It was hard, all the nightmares I went through. But the thing is, nobody’s pure evil. Nobody’s pure like anger. I think that’s what it is. As much as he was so evil, I’m still haunted by nightmares. He still saved my parents. He still gave my father the last moment that I can cherish. And I think that’s life, really. It’s not that simple.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you were with him for how long?

YEONMI PARK: Two years.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And what occurred after that? You went to Mongolia. What was the trek from him? Now, so he brought your mother back. And so you’re together living with him, you and your mother?

YEONMI PARK: Yes.

JORDAN B PETERSON: You can’t find your sister yet at that point.

YEONMI PARK: No, we couldn’t find my sister.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Your father, is he still alive at that point when you’re with Hongwei?

YEONMI PARK: So during that time, after finding my mom, he brought my father six months later. And then my father died three months later after I saw him again.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And you said you had changed dramatically after you left North Korea. You stopped being a child very, very rapidly. And you started to take care of your mother and to make the decisions. And also when your father saw you, once he came to China, that he could hardly recognize you.

YEONMI PARK: I, oh, it still affects me. I think that at 13, I became, I don’t know what I became. It took so hard for me to feel something again. Like when I had my own son, actually in 2018, when I met you at the lecture, that is the year when I for the first time felt something. And like, I was so grateful that I was feeling things ever again.

And so at 13, I learned how not to fear ever. And I don’t know how it was possible even. So my father came and then he died. So I buried his ashes in the middle of mountains. And after that, Hongwei, like he blew all his money from gambling. He couldn’t even handle it.

JORDAN B PETERSON: You said when your father did come, though, you did revert to being a child from time to time, that you would sit on his lap and that you would turn back into a younger child and then go back into whoever you had become when you went to China.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, I think there were many versions of me back then to survive. Whatever the version that was fitting me to survive, I think I became that person. It just, it was so complex. I don’t even know, like, who was am I? Which person was am I? Like, I became so many persons. And so I think I just don’t even know how that was possible.

Because, you know, my father, before he died, like he was telling me about his childhood. And I think he just really missed me being a child. And I think something has brought that out of me. So my father is a very hard thing for me to deal with. But so he died and then Hongwei couldn’t afford to have us. He couldn’t even able to buy us food in China. That’s really bad. He couldn’t even able to feed us.

So he was saying, OK, I’m not going to let you go. And how do we go? Where do we go? Even though…

JORDAN B PETERSON: Your mother at that point, she was insisting that you sell her again, if I remember correctly.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, I did sell my mom because I couldn’t feed her. She was the only way for me to feed in China. I was being sold again. So I sold my own mom and then gave the money to Hongwei. And then he blew it out in a one night gambling. So three months later, I brought my mom to make her run away from the farmer that I sold her.

And then we luckily found a nursing lady who operates in a chat room. I don’t know if you know this. They bring these girls. So it was better than brothel. That’s the thing. I had the option of going to prostitution or going to a chat room. And I thought it’s much better than being touched by men physically than going to a chat room.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Well, you said that with Hongwei that, you know, that was your introduction to sex, essentially, and that it was catastrophic for you. And so, well, and then you, after Hongwei could no longer afford to feed everyone, that’s when you entered the chat rooms. And you were working in the chat rooms for how long?

YEONMI PARK: Maybe six, over half a year, maybe less than a year. I think so, like eight, maybe eight months or nine months time.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And the people that organized the chat rooms took the vast proportion of the money. I think you got one dollar out of seven, something like that.

YEONMI PARK: Something like that. But even that’s all we had to buy food and clothes and other things. But the thing is, it was better there than going into prostitution. And in that chat room, we met another North Korean fellow defector. And then she told me there was way out of all this, which means going to South Korea.

And then they say, I told them, what do you mean South Korea? I thought South Korea was colonized by America. It’s like the horrible, horrible, capitalistic, corrupt country. And she was like, no, South Korea is free. And that is, I remember still the time I learned the word free that day. I was asking her, what do you mean I’m going to be free in South Korea? And she, of course, did not know freedom meant freedom of speech. None of that.

She literally told me, oh, in South Korea, you can wear jeans and you can watch on TV and no one’s going to be arresting you for that. And that’s how we conceived the freedom as North Koreans. Freedom meant wearing jeans. So I asked her, how do I do that? And she was saying, oh, then you got to become Christians. There were Christian, like, operation in China. If we become Christians, they were going to help us. And it was ironic for me. Oh, why? Because I couldn’t believe, like, why do we have to keep believing something to survive? In North Korea, they believe in kings.

But now, outside North Korea, we have to believe in God to survive. But the thing is, we are so desperate. Literally, if somebody took me a bone meal, asked me to believe in God, I would have believed. That is how strong we humans were to survive.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And the Christians that you became associated with in China, were those Chinese Christians or were they missionaries from Western countries?

YEONMI PARK: Both. Some of them from South Korea and some of them from China. And they would have these houses that make us to study Bible. And if we prove our faith to them, they then help us to go to South Korea. And that was a deal that we become Christians and they were going to help us.

So at 15, I became a Christian. Like, they made us to go fasting. I mean, like, we were, like, managed all our life. But they said God can do more than that. So they would go, like, fasting. We did a three-year-old child in our group, a toddler. We go fasting and make us memorize Bible verses. And they contact us, like, if we memorize it or not.

JORDAN B PETERSON: How do you view that interaction with the Christians in China in retrospect? Was there any of that that was useful? Or was it just another belief that you had to adopt to survive?

YEONMI PARK: So, truly, honestly, Dr. Peterson, until I read your book, 12 Rules for Life, I was atheist, I was so, so against religion. Because, so, right now, now I’m a Christian at 15, studying Bible. And then they found out about what I did to survive in China.

JORDAN B PETERSON: The chat rooms?

YEONMI PARK: Yes. And I remember the pastor was saying, you’re so dirty. Like, you can never be washed. And he literally, like, some Korean in some verse telling me that how some things can never be washed. And how I was so dirty for doing what I did to survive. And that was actually a lot harder in some ways to going through all that journey. Because when I was going through it, I didn’t think that was a bad thing. I thought, like, something you have to do to survive.

Because my father always told me, life was a gift. You have to fight for it, no matter how hard it is. You should never give up on life. And then I’m certainly now with this missionary telling me what I did was wrong. I should have died instead of doing something that dirty to survive. So, it was very tough to deal with. Like, keep thinking for the rest of my life, was it worth it?

JORDAN B PETERSON: Well, but also, you were at that point, too. You said that the reason that you didn’t kill yourself was because you wanted to help your mother. You had other people that were dependent on you. It wasn’t just you. And you were still looking for your sister, too. You had no idea what had happened to her at that point.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, so, yeah. But the thing is now, what I’m thinking of that, no matter what he was, he was better than those people talking about inclusion, all of that. Because he risked his life to saving lives. Those pastors, those missions to send to prison for lifetime sentence in China. No matter what people are saying, like, you’ve got to see their actions. And these people actually cared about humanity than anybody that I met having all this flowery loving language they are using. So, that’s the thing.

It’s so hard to understand humanity that even though it hurt me so long, I’m forever grateful for what he did for us. I made a name for myself. If I’m dying, people are going to know. But he never did. And he didn’t even tell me his name. If you ask him, like, tell us your name so we can at least thank you afterwards. No, it’s not. I’m doing this for making a name. I’m doing this because of love. Love for Jesus, that he loved us. That’s why I’m loving you guys this much.

So, in a way that he was the only person who showed me with the actions that humans can love another unconditionally. So, it’s just very complex.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So, it was his group that took you and your mother to Mongolia?

YEONMI PARK: They told us how to go to Mongolia. Because in the desert, there’s no way you can make it out. It’s like, it’s a random luck. It’s a pure luck. That’s why I think maybe they were more religious. They were waiting for God’s sign to send us. Because it’s not like God’s taking us. If you’re getting into the Gobi Desert, most of the chances, like, most of you are never going to be found by any human being on Earth.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So, you decided that you would just go into the desert and take your chances?

YEONMI PARK: Yeah.

JORDAN B PETERSON: That was you and your mom?

YEONMI PARK: And then we have five other people in our group, and one baby with us. So, it was an eight-people group. And then they told us, go follow north-west direction with one compass. And then if you cross eight wire fences, hopefully that’s going to be Mongolia for you. It’s a random chance of taking the luck.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And so, why was Mongolia a reasonable target? Or were you just out of options?

YEONMI PARK: Because it didn’t cost money. If we wanted to go to other countries like Thailand, we had to pay the brokers. But we didn’t have money. So, Mongolia was the, by walking, we’re crossing the walks. When you walk, you don’t pay anybody. So, now really nobody escapes through Mongolia because it’s too dangerous. Now, most of the defectors escaping through Thailand. But we were the last people who ever crossed the desert to make it to successfully.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So, what happened in Mongolia? You did run across authorities?

YEONMI PARK: Yes, we did.

JORDAN B PETERSON: After how long? How long were you in the desert?

YEONMI PARK: We were actually only there one day. But it was 2009 in February, minus 40 degrees. Yes, in desert. It’s still Siberia. So, usually guards would think like nobody’s crazy enough to cross desert right now in this temperature because you can die within a few minutes if you don’t move in desert for even 10 seconds, you’re frozen there. You are constantly moving every second.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And you said you had almost no clothing at that point because they told you to pack light. How come you didn’t freeze? I mean, minus 40. It’s unbelievably cold.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, that’s a miracle. Life is a miracle. It’s like some things you cannot explain in a human way. It’s just like people say it’s a luck. Maybe you can say it’s a luck. I don’t know. I remember like everything was frozen and we didn’t even have gloves or scarves. That’s the thing.

And now I’m complaining how cold Chicago is. No, we were wearing no snow jackets, none of that. And all I remember was we reminding each other we got to keep moving because when you are frozen, it gets very sleepy. And like you’re losing a lot of senses and maybe you want to rest. And then we were reminding each other we got to keep going, like driving each other, moving every second counts. We got to move.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And did all eight of you make it and the baby as well?

YEONMI PARK: We made it. Because initially we have to drive the baby. If the baby cries, the guards are going to hear us. So we would give him the sleeping pills to make him sleep. But sleeping in that frozen weather is so dangerous thing. So we had to constantly waking him up, like passing him around between people to keep him awake. And he made it too.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you were picked up by the authorities and you were put in a holding camp, essentially. It didn’t seem, compared to many of the other things that you had been through, it didn’t seem as awful. Is that reasonable? So tell us about that.

YEONMI PARK: So the thing was in Mongolia, it wasn’t something physical hardships we went through so much. It doesn’t matter. But the thing is, they were, this is like, later we learned like the Mongolia, they wanted to send us to North Korean side, I mean, to the Chinese side and then send us back to North Korea. So we literally brought the lasers and like poisons to just kill ourselves in front of them. And we thought like they were sending us to China side.

But later we learned that these soldiers had never intention, but they love looking at our reactions. How we would react. That’s the thing.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Jesus. It’s so unbelievable.

YEONMI PARK: I know. It’s like, literally, I remember like trying to commit with the laser to my mom, like we did everything we could to make it. And we, luckily they stopped us right before we cut our reserves. But the team who came after us, they went too far. So she didn’t swallow the poison. And then they took her to hospital and she became like mentally like lost a lot of her senses afterwards.

So it was a game for a lot of people. It’s like, it’s hitting us, you know, things don’t like. And I think that’s like the very hard to this point, like to like to make sense of like being a human, like, you know, it’s just so hard to know this is like the same life that I’m having. It was like some dream or something.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you were after that, you were reasonably treated in Mongolia, but you were also subject to a lot of interrogation. And why was that?

YEONMI PARK: Because one is they tried to screen the spies out. Because North Korea sends a lot of spies disguising as defectors and send them. So they can assassinate like me, someone who speaks South or get information who my relatives are and then send back to North Korea so they can punish the family members of the defectors. So a lot of defectors, it’s like a spy can do.

But not only that, South Korea also had a very like heavy discrimination towards North Koreans. And the country is still very, they blame the victims when it comes like the rape. You know, they like because of you got raped, not the man. So I remember like during my interrogation, he asked me, like, do you have tattoo in your body? And I’m 15 years old. And I was like, no, I don’t have tattoos. Like, are you sure?

JORDAN B PETERSON: They were looking for marks that would prove that you were engaged in prostitution.

YEONMI PARK: Exactly. So I said, no. And it’s like, I’m going to take off your clothes here. Like, are you sure? Like, yeah. And that’s when I realized, like, really, like, there was no end at all. Like, there’s nothing better country. Like, of course, there’s all degree of bad and good. And South Korea actually is another hard place for North Koreans to adjust.

And like two years ago, there was a mother and son died in the middle of Seoul, South Korea from starvation because of the ignorance from South Korean public towards them. They died from starvation in the middle of the capital of Seoul. I mean, South Korea.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you went through this lengthy interrogation process in Mongolia, and then it was decided and your mother was with you, and it was decided at that point that you were genuine refugees and you made it from there to South Korea. And was that to Seoul?

YEONMI PARK: We know from Mongolia, several months interrogation. They take us to another two months of the interrogation at the South Korean intelligence facility. Then they take us to three months of re-education program.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right. And that’s when they taught you how to be integrated to some degree into South Korean culture. So talk about that, too. That’s very interesting.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah. So they give us this three months of training periods where they introduce us to this new planet.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And that’s once they’ve identified you as genuine refugees. So then you got in that stream.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah. Once they are proven, proven. Sometimes they even go through those like lie detectors with other defectors. They really make sure that you’re not a spy and saying everything is true. Once that is proven, they process three months of training period where they tell us what bank is, right? In North Korea, we never know what bank or ATM machine is. They tell us like how to ride a bus, how to ride a subway, you know?

JORDAN B PETERSON: What did you think of all that? I mean, you’d been in China for some time. So the difference between North Korea and other countries wasn’t quite as shocking, I presume. But what was happening to you when you started to understand the massive difference between North Korea and the rest of the world and also the fact that everything that you had been taught since you were born and everything your parents had been taught, all of that was, every single bit of it was a lie. What was that doing to you?

YEONMI PARK: That was the thing, like as you said. I remember they said, oh, Koreans were studied by Kim Il-sung, by Americans. And like in North Korea, literally they tell us Americans are bastards, they are the most evil thing, right? And at that point, my reaction was, so if everything that I believe was a lie, how do I know that what you’re saying is not a lie? How do I ever trust ever, ever again? And it was the hardest thing ever trusting it.

It took many years. And when I read by George Orwell’s book, The Animal Farm, that’s when I realized, oh, what they’re telling is actually true. But until that point, I didn’t trust what South Korea was saying.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Why was George Orwell’s book so relevant to you? Why did it have that effect? Do you know?

YEONMI PARK: So I was reading The Animal Farm, not even knowing what that is. And it was, I was seeing my grandmother in the old pigs and the young pigs, when they like later when those young pigs born, didn’t even know what life was beforehand. They didn’t even know the alternative life looks like, right? Because the first pigs were afraid to speak out. And all that terror, they kept the silence.

So until I was reading that book, I was only blaming the Kim dictatorship because of the dictatorship that we suffered. But when I was reading that book, I could see all those people were voluntarily, involuntarily supporting in this dictatorship. By terror, they were silent. But it was therefore, too, that we ended up in this. Everybody did something, contribute something, make us North Korea into, you know, the perfect dystopia that we are reading in the book.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Contributing what? What do they contribute?

YEONMI PARK: By keeping silence.

JORDAN B PETERSON: But by keeping silent. When they had something to say.

YEONMI PARK: Exactly. Because when it came to me, I didn’t even know the word oppression. So if you know you’re oppressed, you’re not oppressed. But to me, like in North Korean young generation, we don’t even know we’re oppressed. What is that? But my grandmother knew. She experienced before Kim. She lived through Japanese colonialism. She lived through before Kim. But because of that, their fear of losing their life and their loved ones, I’m sure they had a reason like not to speak up.

But because of the fear and not standing up for the right, just now North Korea in a point where people don’t even know what life can be look like.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Well, Solzhenitsyn was convinced that a totalitarian state could not exist unless everyone was participating in the lie and that the most potent anti-authoritarian action is to tell the truth. And that means to say something when you have something to say, not because you’re brave, but I think because the alternative is worse. And it was Orwell. It’s so interesting to me that it was Orwell that opened your eyes to that. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but it’s still really something.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, I know. It’s like that book. I think that’s when I realized, oh, everybody was responsible. And that’s when I started thinking about speaking out.

JORDAN B PETERSON: That’s when you started thinking about speaking out. I see. I see. And so you made a conscious decision at that point. Why?

YEONMI PARK: Because I knew the price of silence. Because that was a price we were paying, not even knowing. That’s the thing. When people say, why no revolution? Because we don’t know we are slaves in North Korea. How do you fight to be free when you don’t know you’re a slave? And that’s a different thing.

The fact that people don’t even know they’re oppressed, that’s the thing. What kills me to this point about my father is, of course, I would be grateful if he ever lived in freedom, even one day. But the heartbreaking thing is, he didn’t even know life could be this free and life could be this beautiful. He didn’t even know that. Life could be so different for other human beings. I just wish he knew before he goes. So he doesn’t remember this life so hard. It’s filled with sadness, you know. And that’s the thing with North Koreans.

We are talking a different degree of oppression. You don’t even know life can be this way. And yeah, so that was my time of understanding what happened and started believing in this freedom.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you’re in the re-education process in South Korea, learning to be a South Korean, learning to some degree how to fit in the culture, learning to some degree how to be free. Did you start reading at that point? Or when were you, for example, when did you encounter Orwell? Was that when you went to university later?

YEONMI PARK: Before my university, when I was 16, I think, 16 years old.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And how did you come across the book?

YEONMI PARK: I was in this defector school because I was 15 years old, almost 16 years old. They did a placement exam for me. And as I said, I don’t even know the map of the world. My grades came out like seven years old, like intelligence.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right, so you got out of the re-education process. And then you lived, where did you live with your mother after you left the re-education process?

YEONMI PARK: Across, I mean, like public housing in the countryside, where a lot of mentally ill people were living.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And then that’s when you decided that you were going to go back to school?

YEONMI PARK: Yes, that’s where I wanted to go to school. But then if I want to go to school, there’s no way I can be going to studying with a seven year old. But even though a lot of professors do that, 24 days studying with a seven year old in the same classroom. And I wanted to take a GED. So I could catch up quickly.

And I went to a special defector school where they would help us studying in a GED. And in the bookshelf, there was this tiny book called like The Animal Farm. And I picked it up because it looked very thin. But it might be easy to read. And I never knew that was the point where my life was going to be changed.

JORDAN B PETERSON: That’s really something. So then you went to school. And you had to convince the authorities to support your desire to be educated. Your plan was to go to university. How in the world did you formulate that plan? How did you even find out about university? I mean, I guess you knew that already in North Korea. Sorry, you knew that already. But why did you decide that you needed to go to university? What was driving you?

YEONMI PARK: Oh, it was… So I remember they would ask me, what do you want to do after like kids here? After the re-education, what do you want to do? And I told them, like, I want to go study. And it’s like, why? You know, like studying in South Korea is the most competitive country when it comes to education. How are you going to compete? You know, there’s no chance for you to survive.

I wasn’t even speaking ABCD alphabet English at the time as an adult. So but I don’t know that the thing something was in me was thirst for knowledge that I always knew that I wanted to study. I wanted to learn how the world works. So I kept that and keep getting back to books. I was reading like 100 books a year. And but also the reason I was reading books is like because there’s such a high discrimination.

Nobody wanted to be friends with North Koreans anymore in South Korea. And everybody told me that I was a failure. Before I began, they said, you are never going to be competing. You’re never going to be in this competition. So only the books were the ones telling me that I could do it.

JORDAN B PETERSON: The books were?

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, only the books were telling me. Of course, every book says you can do it, right? But everybody, the human being I met was telling me I couldn’t do it. So I just keep reading books.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yes, well, you can make contact with great minds that encourage you through books. And thank God for that, right? That’s what they’re for. So and you so you got your high school equivalency. How long did that take you?

YEONMI PARK: I had to do the from elementary to high school. So it took like over just one year.

JORDAN B PETERSON: One year, you did all that one year?

YEONMI PARK: Yeah. So I went to college at 17.

JORDAN B PETERSON: At 17. So you passed your G… And you’d only had two years of education in North Korea. But most of that time, you were like working at manual labor.

YEONMI PARK: Yes, yes.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Now, how was your reading ability in North Korea? Were you already literate?

YEONMI PARK: No, a little bit. But then also their vocabularies were so different in South Korea. Like we don’t know what shopping mall is because we don’t know shopping, right? Like what is the supermarket? What is dry cleaning? So I had to like write down like, it wasn’t like English to South Korea was easier. Because I already knew the concept. But like learning about gay even. I met somebody gay and he told me, he hugged me and he told me, baby, don’t worry, I’m gay. And then like what gay is. Understanding a concept takes you way longer than learning a language. So that took longer for me.

Because it’s exactly the 1984, the George Orwell talks about double stick. Who controls the language, who controls thoughts. So North Korea purposely eliminated the words like stress. Because how can you be stressed in the socialist paradise? So they get rid of stress. They get rid of depression. They get rid of trauma. They get rid of all these concepts that people know here. We don’t have in North Korea. So I think that was very challenging than even learning a new language.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So is it fair to say that you taught yourself to read and you got your GED equivalent? You did that in one year. And so you were ready to go to university at the age of. How in the world did you do that? How much time were you spending every day studying?

YEONMI PARK: I didn’t. So that was a funny story. I ended up in the ER. And then like they were saying, you’re a minor. Because I didn’t have time to eat. I forgot to eat. So even when I was sleeping, I would turn on the like a TED talk. So NPR so I can like listen. My brain still kept working. And even when I was sleeping, I would put the books behind my pillow. So like knowledge was going to me. I was obsessed. I was crazy.

JORDAN B PETERSON: You were obsessed with.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, I was completely obsessed with learning.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And how did you manage to survive economically during this time? How did how did your mom and you make money? I know you got some money from the South Korean government, right? Was that enough to get you through that first year? What happened?

YEONMI PARK: No. They give for the six months they do. They have you to pay your staff for staff on beers and the house like the amenities, right? You pay the utility bills. But after six months, you’re on your own.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you’re completely obsessed with studying to the point where you’re not even eating. And we should also just stress here. It is definitely the case that the education process is unbelievably competitive in South Korea, as you’ve already pointed out, far and above what people in in young people in North America can imagine or in Europe, for that matter.

And so you were facing very, very heavy competition. So but you got obsessed to the point where you weren’t even eating. That’s amazing, because I would have thought that you would be more motivated to eat after what you did virtually. But you were hungrier for knowledge than for food, despite and you had been starved of both.

YEONMI PARK: Exactly. I was working at this. I don’t know. You know, something was dying. So it’s like a one dollar store in South Korea, the Japanese branch. So I was working there as a part time job and I was a minor. So my mom had to be the like authorization that she would let me work. And then I was working as a wedding horse, like serving food as a waitress. So I was working and then my mom was also doing the dishes and helping me.

And I was living in this room in Seoul because I was studying where underground. I didn’t have a window. And I still remember those times. I was so happy because I had a goal. Like I was, you know, like this tiny room where you can stretch your feet like daily. I’m like five times tiny in that room. I was like living there. All I had was books with me and a dream.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah. Well, a room full of books isn’t small.

YEONMI PARK: Exactly. It was large.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah, right. Absolutely. So you got your GED and then you applied to university for in a competitive program. And there was still trouble with you getting in, but you managed it. How did you manage it? And how did you decide what you were going to do?

YEONMI PARK: I was going to study criminal justice. It was so much injustice. And even in South Korea, so much of it. I really wanted to understand how that worked. You know, how was this thing called justice? So I’m grateful they gave me the opportunity to study that program. And but now it’s, it’s such a like, I don’t know how I was going through all of that. But somehow back then I had a drive that I never even knew I had.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And so you were at the university for how long? Four years? Was it a four year degree?

YEONMI PARK: It was four years degree, but I only did three years and a half. Before my last semester, I went to Columbia University, New York and switched my major there.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Okay, okay. Now in Korea, was that at the same time you were also working for at a Korean television station? Okay, so there’s a bit of a detour there. You were cast in some sense as the North Korean Paris Hilton. So that’s extraordinarily bizarre. So tell me about that. What happened?

YEONMI PARK: Now I’m in criminal justice, you know, top university, very competitive program, doing this physical training to become an intelligence officer later. And then I get a call from TV producers saying they are trying to make a show. Because until that point, North Korea was portrayed as very just heartbreaking documentary. You know, people with like, looks like Roberts and their dear little guys, reeling, looks very inhuman.

But they wanted to make a show, entertainment show, not a documentary, entertainment show, bring younger, they thought was pretty, putting in a beautiful designer clothes and studio, put them in makeup, and then talk about their life in a lively. It’s so their show model was a chat with beautiful ladies. And they had that people, beauties from the Russia, Poland, America, now they are going to do that with North Korean young, younger.

I didn’t want to go and I was like, no, of course I’m not. But then they told me, you know, South Korean shows are super popular in China and all of the East Asia. Because you lost your sister, you might be able to, your sister might be able to see it and then find you in South Korea. And, but because before that, I was looking for my sister on a one education program, and they saw me there and then found me how that’s how, and they knew that talking about my sister always gonna get me. So that was a thing.

That was a deal for me to go on the show and talk about my sister, and hopefully she sees it and come to me. Because I was still looking for her. But the thing is, because I told them about my father’s black market business before his arrest, they thought, you know, of course, how do I know who Paris Hilton is? I don’t know. But they needed a character for each character in the show business. That’s what they say.

You know, you cannot be complicated. You gotta be one simple thing. Everybody gotta have characters. And then they name you. So I was going into, I don’t know where to show business. It is unbelievable.

JORDAN B PETERSON: It is unbelievable. It’s also unbelievable the role that you were cast in. It’s so, it has such a, it’s such a contrast with what actually, well, with what the reality of your life in North Korea really was.

YEONMI PARK: But the thing is, in that show, I learned, actually, what I went through was nothing. Like, I was in a way of some sense of Paris Hilton because they went through, like, literally cannibalism is a weird thing in North Korea. And I would not want to, people say, oh, don’t dehumanize yourself. Why are you talking about those things?

But like, what I went through wasn’t even close to what other people went through. And what my sister went through in China, who decided to never, ever talk about ever again in her life, in that seven years, what I went through was nothing. That’s, that really, that three years of being on the show, and hearing other, how other people managed to survive, making me was like, oh my gosh, I had it so easy. I’m so grateful.

I was so grateful. Like, I still to this day, I don’t know how I got that lucky.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So you’re taking criminology, and you’re three years in, and you’re doing this TV show on the side, and you discover your sister.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah. She did come to South Korea, and she saw the show. Eventually, she did.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And you were reunited with her in South Korea?

YEONMI PARK: Yes, she did. I found her when I was 20 years old.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Do you see each other now?

YEONMI PARK: Now my sister is a teacher in South Korea, and we see each other often, but because we live in a different country. I’m in America, she’s in South Korea.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right. But you have a familial relationship. It’s just distant.

YEONMI PARK: Definitely, yes.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Okay. Now, you said that you ranked 30th, I think, out of 94 students in the program. So you were able to hold your own against the intense competition.

YEONMI PARK: Yes, I did my best.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yes, apparently. So how in the world did you end up at Columbia? Now, you don’t write about that. Do you write about that? Did I miss that?

YEONMI PARK: No, I didn’t.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So now we’re getting to the point. This is past. So I just remind everybody that we’ve gone over some of the details that characterize this autobiography, In Order to Live.

So now we’re moving a bit past it, because it was published in 2015. So there’s been six years, six intermediating years. So how in the world did you end up at Columbia? What happened?

YEONMI PARK: So one day, I have a friend in America told me, do you want to go to this conference called the Youth Leaders Gathering in Ireland? And in South Korea in 2014, I’d never even been to Europe. And I don’t even know what Ireland is. I thought it was somewhere like in the UK or something.

And then they say, if you participate, they will pay your flight and lodging for free. Every South Korean seems to dream of going backpacking in Europe. So I was like, oh, my God, I got this once in a lifetime to go to Europe for free. In my college. And then, so this is a conference called the One Young World. They bring the youth leaders from every country. So they called the North Korean embassy in the UK saying, can you send the delegation to us? And two, we just need two delegates from each country. And North Korea regime told them, no, because they have this financial issue, we can only send three.

So they said, OK, how about we sponsor two, and then you guys sponsor one, so you can bring three. And the North Koreans said, no, thank you. And the embassy said, OK, then you’re going to look for defectors, because they didn’t want to sponsor for three people. That’s how they found me through my friends.

So in that conference, I applied to become a delegate speaker, along with other 34 delegate speakers. I was a really average person. And then I did a lot of free times, like the interview with them. I selected as a speaker at the end. And a lot of many, many speakers together. And there, I shared about what was happening to my people in China, how the Chinese were all on, you know, being silenced. And still, there are a lot of human trafficking happening, right?

Like, if you see the girls captured by Taliban, like Michelle Obama, have no problem standing up for girls captured by the Boko Haram. So many people talk about these girls. But many North Koreans, nobody talks about it, because they don’t want to upset China’s regime. So my speech in that conference really became viral.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And that’s what you focused on in that speech.

YEONMI PARK: Yes, I was only focusing on my, like the women’s, what we are going through in China. And I didn’t even plan to be that speech go to viral. Nobody can plan it. It was a pure accident. I was in the middle of university attending. I had to go back to Korea too. But that speech became very viral. And then I got a book offer from a random house. And then my agent was in New York. That’s how I went to New York.

But while I was writing the book, I always loved learning. So I wanted to study. I wanted to continue my study. And they told me there was a university in New York called Columbia. So that’s how I applied there and then went there to study.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Did you finish your undergraduate there? Did you do an advanced degree? You finished your undergraduate there.

YEONMI PARK: I did undergrad four years there. So I did almost like eight years of bachelor.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Okay. So you had gone to university — and came out of North Korea. Then you went to university in South Korea. So you got to see that culture as an outsider. And then you came to the United States and you got to see Columbia University. So what did you conclude about your time in Columbia University? What were your impressions? What do you have to say to people about what you saw?

YEONMI PARK: I mean, oh my God. So that four years from 2016 to 2020, it was a complete madness. I became very pessimistic about the Western world after university. Because like, so literally in this humanity classes, even the economics, I was studying economics for two years. And later, the professor would send me the emails, oh, this class, we’re going to cover this. If it triggers you, you don’t have to come to the class or don’t even do the reading. I’m a rape survivor. I’m a slave. I’ve gone through so many things. And they say, oh, this can trigger the rape. This can trigger this.

And then before the class, they say, let’s go through what’s going to be called your pronouns. And my English is not that good. I sometimes mistakenly call him or she like, and then they started asking me to say they, and then I don’t know how to incorporate in my English that pronoun properly. And it makes me so nervous to talk in the classroom.

And one day I got into fight with my professor. She was saying, you know, the fact that you’re letting men holding door for you is you are giving in to their overpowering you. And I was like, no, it need kindness. It’s decency. I hold the door for people too. It’s not like I’m trying to signal that I’m powerful than you. And she was like, you know what I mean? You’re still brainwashed from North Korea.

Like, and I was a senior year. Of course, my GPA is going to be affected. And it’s like, okay, I got to really shut up. I got to try to do my best to get a good GPA. So that four years, I learned to censor myself all over again. And it became ridiculous. Like, I literally risked my life to say what I think is right.

And now I’m like, in a country where four years of time, try how to be creative space and be sensitive enough. So I’m like, where am I? And it gave me a lot of chaos. Like, did I become free? Like, where am I? Is there any truly free place in this world right now?

JORDAN B PETERSON: Well, okay. So you were in this university in Korea and Korean universities are intense. And so how would you contrast the quality of the education that you received? And they’re very Western influenced, the South Korean universities. So they’re a product of the Western university system. So how would you contrast your experience at the South Korean university with Columbia, which is in principle, one of the great Western American institutions, educational institutions?

YEONMI PARK: So I do think South Korea is way more technical. They are way more into trying to teach you the skill set. Like if, you know, more giving you actual knowledge. But I think Americans are very obsessed. That was my impression at Columbia. Really trying to help you how to think. But almost like you want to shape how you think. They are very into shaping your mind how you think about something.

In South Korean study program was more like, oh, this is a fact. This is what happened in history. This is what we’re gonna do. This is a model you’re gonna apply to solve this criminal case. Like, you know, this is how things work. But lately though, when it comes to sociology, it’s been very influenced by the Western, like the mainstream education. So a lot of anti-Western sentiments was definitely there.

JORDAN B PETERSON: In Korea as well.

YEONMI PARK: Oh, yes, definitely. All this like sociology and those subjects is definitely influenced. And South Korea is now becoming a communist again. Definitely. It is a sad trend to see that. Like right now, South Korean youth demand socialism. And, you know, freedom is so fragile. Like it’s never gonna be there if you don’t fight for it. And South Korea’s democracy is falling and their freedom of speech.

Right now in South Korea, like, doctor, if you send this leaflet, say you sent North Korea to free people’s minds. So we use send this leaflet about like, Kim’s a dictator, so you’re being right. And that was a freedom expression that was covered by South Korean constitution. But now that just got, became criminalized in South Korea, like last few months ago.

JORDAN B PETERSON: What exactly was criminalized?

YEONMI PARK: Advocating freedom in North Korea. But their defense is that because we, if we say we support freedom in North Korea, then North Korean regime saying we’re going to start a war over you about that. So for the protecting South Korean people’s freedom, you cannot advocate freedom for North Korean people in the South Korea.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And what do you think about?

YEONMI PARK: This is another thing. There’s gonna be a price for being silent about something like this happening, right? It’s, if they can come for this, how do we know they are not gonna go after other rights? That’s how all this cycle begins. So it is definitely dangerous what they’re taking to keep saying in the name of protection, in the name of this, we are gonna silence you. We’re gonna silence this, this, this.

And that’s what North Korea did, right? In the name of equality, pure, pure equality, you’re gonna get rid of freedom of speech, freedom of gathering, all of this. And now they’re left with nothing. Only people are allowed to do is just breathing.

JORDAN B PETERSON: So why did you stay at Columbia?

YEONMI PARK: It was my father’s dream for me to be college educated. I found it was not worth it. It was so sophisticated degree that-

JORDAN B PETERSON: It was so, sorry, it was so-

YEONMI PARK: It was a waste of time, energy and money.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Really? That’s a terrible thing. That’s terrible.

YEONMI PARK: It was. Honestly, I tell like my son, that if you wanna study humanity in one of these universities, I’m never gonna pay for it. Like, I’m so clear on that to my son.

JORDAN B PETERSON: I’m so embarrassed about that. I’m so embarrassed about that. It’s so awful to hear that. Those universities, they were great, you know? They were great. Yes, definitely. And it’s not that long ago that they were great, that they did what they said they were going to do. And if you went and got a humanities education, you got educated, you learned to write, you learned to think, you learned history, you learned to be cultured. That happened. It wasn’t that long ago.

It was when I went to university, it was still like that. When I taught at Harvard, it was still like that. There were politically correct murmurings and rumblings, but by and large, the university was still uncorrupted. And the humanities are at the core of the university. If they’re corrupted, if they go, if they’ve gone in the way that you’re already describing, there’s no way the universities can survive. They’re not technical schools. The core of the university was the humanities.

I mean, look at what Animal Farm did for you. That’s what reading great books does for people, you know? It illuminates their soul. It’s not optional. And I’m so appalled that that was your experience at Columbia. It’s so awful that you went through all that and managed to get to this great university, and that you had to shut yourself down, and that your basic conclusion was that it was a waste of time. Now, did you have courses where that wasn’t the case? Did you have courses that were worth it?

YEONMI PARK: I mean, so one class I remember in my senior year, it was called the Western Civilization, the Music Art. One of the core that Columbia had, the Western Art. And the music.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Has still, not for long.

YEONMI PARK: But then I was excited to learn about it. But at the end of the day, this is still the West. America is in the West, right? It would be funny if you want to study Eastern music at the end of the core. And the professor was like, who has a problem with calling the Western Civilization like art? And everything was all in their hands because they were saying there are so many artists who are greater than Beethoven and Mozart. We silence them, erase them all. And that’s why we have now end up studying these biggest, you know, who are racist.

And I’m like… And then they were like looking at me, why are you not putting your hands up? Somebody who doesn’t have the problem with talking about Western Civilization. So that is like, I was like, do I even have to do this to graduate? And that was, of course, necessary to do that course to graduate. So every, every class had an element of being politically correct and shaping you how you think.

And I learned how to center myself so well at the Columbia. And then I was freaked out one day, like, what am I doing? This is now I escape, you know, it is.

JORDAN B PETERSON: And I’m so, I’m so ashamed of that. That’s so awful. I can’t believe it. You know, it’s no, it’s no picnic to watch these great institutions hang themselves.

YEONMI PARK: I literally felt like it’s a suicide of civilization. Like we are killing ourselves here. And, and that’s why, like, what? I mean, that’s what scares me that when I was so grateful to going to South Korea was after North Korea was at least a place that was left to be free. And all these people of satisfying for, you know climate change, animals rights, gender equality, transgender, whatever, all these things people are fighting for. Wonderful.

But then imagine when nobody’s free in this world who’s going to fight for us. And that’s like what terror for me is like, imagine all of us became slaves like North Koreans. All of us did in that system. There’s no one can stand up for any of us. And I guess because I’ve always I always knew that it was guaranteed. Like when I go camping with my friends, my friends somehow always the confidence that they’re going to find food even though when they’re going to the remote area not me, I always packing this like energy bars blah, blah, blah. Always using me because I know like you can end up not having ever our food.

So maybe this is a mentality in the West freedom was always there. Some of people think it’s going to be miraculous. They’re going to be always there. And for me, like, no, it can be not there.

JORDAN B PETERSON: That’s why we were supposed to be educating young people. We were supposed to be teaching them that no, it’s not always there. It’s fragile and you better take care of it because the default condition is authoritarian: starvation. And if that isn’t happening, it’s a bloody miracle.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, that is. And that’s, that’s where I am at right now with North Korea while of course I’m fighting for my people’s freedom but there’s so much interest like in Hollywood they do not want to stand up anything behind the thing challenging Chinese communist party. No mainstream, no Hollywood stars. Not nobody in America want to be behind the movement that challenges Chinese communist party.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Well, I’ve seen this over and over in the universities too. You know, it was often the case that it was my psychology classes where the students learned about what happened in Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China. They hadn’t been taught at all. They hadn’t been taught that tens of millions of people died in China. They hadn’t been taught about what happened in North Korea. They hadn’t been taught about what happened in Russia. It was like that never existed even though the cold war was all about that.

And it was, it’s appalling. It’s, and I think you see exactly the same thing while you’re pointing out exactly the same thing. How blind can we possibly be?

YEONMI PARK: I know, it’s like the people say like, oh Hitler killed so many people but do you know actually Mao killed the most human beings on earth? He killed like 50 to 60 million people. So Chinese communism killed more people than anybody ever did in our human history.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yes, and the Chinese Communist Party still controls China. And the only reason people aren’t starving to death there now is because they adopted, because they had no choice essentially because people did start to rebel to some degree. They introduced free market transformations. It’s the only reason that China has emerged as powerful economically as it is.

So what’s next for you? You’ve graduated from Columbia. When did you graduate?

YEONMI PARK: January of —

JORDAN B PETERSON: I got to ask you again. I got to ask you again. Wasn’t there at least one course that you took there taught by someone that taught you what you wanted to learn? You should know. Like if there was, you’d know.

YEONMI PARK: I knew, I liked about the evolution class about how the humans we became who we are. You know, going through homoeroticism, homoecatalyst or the humanity journey. But then of course, they always had a political correctness element always in the textbook, everywhere.

So I liked the economic classes a lot because it really helped me understand how the world worked in some other ways. But then of course, it’s all about like the payments, gender inequality payments, blah, blah, blah. All that like macroeconomics has that thing. So I mean, I think it figured it out. It was good. But I don’t think it was worth of that amount of money, especially and the effort to go. You can take them on like online.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Look, I had professors. I had lots of professors who were great. Like I went to this little college when I was 18, at 17, I guess, because that’s when I went to college. And it was just an adventure for me. You know, I got the people who taught me. I had an English professor. His name escapes me at the moment, unfortunately. Dennis Wheeler was my political science professor. I remember that from 30 years ago. I can’t remember my English professor’s name, unfortunately. I had a philosophy professor named Longenbach, like six or seven professors. And it was a small college.

It wasn’t an elite institution. And they loved to teach. And I had a group of friends that loved to learn. And it was great. It was great. I learned a tremendous amount. I learned that I didn’t know how to write. And they taught me. Robin, Robin Burke, that was the English professor’s name. He gave me a D on my first paper. It shocked me to death because I’d got good marks in high school. And I didn’t know what I was doing.

And he pointed it out and helped me learn to write. And these people were very serious. We walked through Plato and Aristotle and Hobbes and Rousseau and the full breadth of Western philosophy. And it was exciting. And there was no politically correct nonsense. And that doesn’t mean that it didn’t cover the political spectrum. A lot of my professors were democratic socialists, not all of them, but plenty of them were.

So they covered the political spectrum. And I would say, too, when I was at Harvard and at the University of Toronto, for that matter, that there were no shortage of professors who were providing genuine education that wasn’t contaminated with propagandistic nonsense. And so I’m stunned to hear that you can’t bring to mind a single example from your four years where you got…

See, you should have been exposed to people that had the same effect on you as George Orwell’s Animal Farm, at least people who walked you through literature of that caliber and who had respect for it. At minimum, you should have got that.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, but they said to me not to read Jane or Jane here because they had a colonial mindset that’s going to brainwash you, you know, without you knowing it. So the problems of reading the Western classics, they were all like bigots and racists and believe in slavery.

So it was, I’m going to…

JORDAN B PETERSON: It’s an amazing, it’s amazingly, it’s a lie that’s so profound that it’s absolutely staggering. It’s staggering to me to hear again, even though I’ve been watching this for the last 20 years, watching it develop. It’s staggering to me that this can actually be the case, that that’s what’s taught about this tradition that actually produced the first emergence from slavery that’s ever existed anywhere.

YEONMI PARK: I know, it’s just, like we, in North Korea, history was forgotten. Like we, our story begins when King Il-sung was born. And everything before, we don’t even know what Big Bang was. We don’t even know who Shakespeare is. Like we don’t know who Romeo and Juliet is. And everything was forgotten other than Kim’s revolutionary history.

And when I came out, what I loved about was the continuation of life, the life before Kim. That was amazing. There was things beforehand, way, way beforehand. It was very humbling to those people who thought through things. And you were talking about Plato. I read Plato’s On Love and how he brings his people talk about discussing what love means for them. And he gave me so much like just insights, to understanding humanity.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah, well, that was kind of the point.

YEONMI PARK: I know, but going to Columbia, the first thing is like, who loves Jane? And I said, like, yes, but do you know the problem? And they’re like, no. Do you know that she believed in all those like ideas back then of colonialized people, countries, and how that’s embedded in her literature work?

And that was like, whoa. I mean, so they expect everyone in the history to think the same way they do right now at this point, exact same time. And if they don’t-

JORDAN B PETERSON: Which is to basically memorize, you know, 20 platitudes that anyone intelligent can memorize in 15 minutes, and then to dismiss the entire world of knowledge. These books, when you were reading Orwell, and when you were in that little room in North Korea or in South Korea, and you had all those books, what were you reading? So Orwell affected you. Who else? You’ve read now. Who’s affected you?

YEONMI PARK: It’s been a lot of ways. I remember the [Fick’s Arta], the novel. It’s a fictional novel. Yeah, Hesse. That book really gave me a lot of comfort into how to think of my own journey and what kind of things I need to focus on. I couldn’t be focusing on, oh my God, what I went through. That was very hard. Or what could I be focusing on?

So I read a lot of classical books, actually. And I think now I’m thinking it was actually a good thing. I didn’t pick up this political crime as books, but rather going way before then, like 18th century, a lot of literature. So I think a lot of books shaped me in many, many different ways. And now to this day, I was just saying like reading your book was, of course, you heard that many million times, but it was, you know, people say like you read to know that you are not alone.

And that’s the thing when I was reading your book, it just reminds me of that, the struggle, the shared struggle that we have on Earth. Regardless, you’re born in North Korea, in America. There are still people who kill themselves in America. Life is unbearable for anyone. It gave me a lot of compassion because after coming from North Korea to go to New York, like right, all my 70% of my friends going to therapy. And they tell me, you gotta go to therapy. And I was like, what is therapy?

And of course, coming from North Korea, what do I, what do you know what trauma is even? And back then I was like, the word, the fact that you know what trauma is, that you are so privileged, you don’t need the therapy. That’s how harsh I was. And I wasn’t able to empathize with my friends in New York. Like they would go in line for two hours to get into this delicious restaurant. And food to me was always quantity. It was not about quality.

Like why would I be sitting here with you for two hours and get in the line, right? And just understanding all of those layers of emotions. And that’s why I’m very grateful for your book and how you shaped me.

JORDAN B PETERSON: What’s next for you? What do you want to have happen now? What are you aiming at?

YEONMI PARK: So I’m on the target list of Kim Jong-un. I’m on the killing list. It’s been a while. But I mean, we know Kim Jong-un killed his half-brother in Malaysia. He doesn’t absolutely care about killing dissidents. Like even Saudis killed their Jamal Khashoggi in their consulate in Turkey and chopped him off. So there’s no consequences.

The world has way no accountability for this bad guy killing people now. And I think that’s why the justice only keep always in my mind. Where if I’m lucky enough not to get killed, I definitely, I want to do everything I can to raise awareness about Chinese role on enabling this dictatorship. People often think Kim Jong-un is the one who to blame to running the biggest concentration camp on earth. But it is not. There is an enabler behind, that is China.

Without China, North Korean regime cannot even alive even one day. And when North Korea-

JORDAN B PETERSON: Right, and so we can say with no hesitation whatsoever that there’s absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the Chinese Communist Party’s support of the North Korean regime.

YEONMI PARK: Yes, it’s a crime against humanity. It is a crime against humanity. And we have every international community with their sense is they have to come together to tell China that. But now everybody’s bought by China. I mean, they own Africa. They own so many countries. If America loses their ground with China and they give in and do not stand up for what we believe in in this country, we might lose a chance to be ever free and win with China.

This is a very serious battle that we are in. It’s not a joke that like, and I think that the thing, America is the last chance. The Western, these democracy countries have the last chance to battle with China. But because until in the past, we thought the democracy was gonna prevail.

But the thing, look at China. Free market didn’t have the free politics. They are developing these AI machines to facial recognition, to control people in a degree where we never even imagined before. It is truly 1984 by George Orwell where they can even look at cameras to see who’s there.

North Korea started in their management state, they are buying these AI machines, putting on the town to see who’s a stranger in this town or not. Putting these like facial recognition cameras on the border and make sure everybody who’s in the place right there. So either we become forever enslaved to this totalitarianism or we break off the cycle. And I don’t know, like I can never be that person recklessly say we’re gonna win in this battle. And to me, this is a very dangerous state. We are all in collectively, everyone is worried that we are not safe from this devil in our communism.

JORDAN B PETERSON: That’s a good place to stop.

YEONMI PARK: Yeah, sorry, that was very intense interview.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Thank you. You’re quite the creature. I really wish you would have had better professors. You deserve them.

YEONMI PARK: Thank you for everything you do. You have no idea how it touches so many, us and you especially, and reminding me of like how good humans are and really helping me not to lose my hope. So thanks for everything you do.

JORDAN B PETERSON: Yeah, you too, kiddo. You’re booked deadly and so are you. Keep it up. Keep it up.

For Further Reading:

Jordan Peterson Lecture: Reality and the Sacred (Transcript)

Jocko Podcast: Facing your Inner Darkness. Breaking Your Wretched Loop (Transcript)

The Downfall of the Ivy League: Victor Davis Hanson (Transcript)

Jordan Peterson on 12 Rules for Life (Transcript)

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