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Yeonmi Park

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In this Korean name, the family name is Park.
The native form of this personal name is Park Yeon-mi. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Yeonmi Park
Park in 2023
Born (1993-10-04) 4 October 1993 (age 31)
Hyesan, Ryanggang Province, North Korea
CitizenshipUnited States (naturalized)
South Korea
North Korea (until 2007)
EducationColumbia University (BA)
Occupations
  • Conservative Activist
  • Author
  • speaker
  • YouTuber
MovementConservatism
Spouse
Ezekiel
​
​
(m. 2017; div. 2020)​
Children1
RelativesEun-mi (sister)
Korean name
Hangul
박연미
Hanja
朴研美
Revised RomanizationBak Yeon(-)mi
McCune–ReischauerPak Yŏnmi
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2017 – present
Subscribers1.13 million[1]
Total views110 million[1]
Last updated: 11 July 2023
Websiteyeonmi.com
Signature

Yeonmi Park (Korean: 박연미; born 4 October 1993) is a North Korean defector, YouTuber, author, and American conservative activist, described as being "one of the most famous North Korean defectors in the world".[2] Alongside her mother she fled from North Korea to China in 2007 before moving to South Korea and then to the United States. Park's made her media debut in 2011 on the show Now On My Way to Meet You where she was dubbed "Paris Hilton" due to her stories of her family's wealthy lifestyle.[2] Park came to wider global attention following her speech at the 2014 One Young World Summit in Dublin, Ireland,[3][4] after which her stories about North Korea radically changed.[2] During the 2020's Park saw a sharp rise notability after rebranding herself as a voice for American conservatism.[2] Park's memoir In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom was published in September 2015,[5] and as of 2023 has sold over 100,000 copies.[2]

The authenticity of Park's claims about life in North Korea, many of which have been proven false or contradictory to her earlier stories, have been the subject of widespread skepticism. In 2014 an investigation by The Diplomat led by Mary Ann Jolley, an SBS journalist who had previously worked with Yeonmi Park to create a documentary on Park's life, uncovered numerous inconsistencies in Park's stories of life in Korea.[6] Park attributed these discrepancies to her imperfect memory and language skills,[2][6][7] while the co-author of Park's auto-biography claimed Park was the victim of a smear campaign.[8] Many political commentators, as well as numerous fellow North Korean defectors, journalists, and professors of Korean studies, and Park's own mother, have criticized Park's stories of life in North Korea for having various inconsistencies,[9][10][7] contradictory claims, and exaggerated accounts.[11][12] [13] In early 2023, screenshots of Park's 2021 interview with Joe Rogan became the center of memes accusing her of embellishing her stories.[14][7][15][16] In July 2023 The Washington Post ran an investigation which found that Park had embellished and fabricated many of her claims about North Korea.[2]

Park runs the YouTube channel "Voice of North Korea by Yeonmi Park",[17] which as of July 2023 has over one million subscribers.[2] Her political views have been characterized as "American conservative",[2] and she has criticized the concepts of political correctness and woke culture in the United States,[2] drawing parallels between political correctness in the U.S. and North Korea.[2][18]

Early life (1993-2009)

See also: Human rights in North Korea and Liberty in North Korea

Many aspects of Park's early life are the subject of scepticism, with Park radically changing her story over the years and giving contradictory accounts of her early life.[2] Some journalists have noted that she changes to different versions of her story depending upon the audience.[2] Her account is also radically different from her mother's account of Yeonmi Park's childhood.[2][6]

Park was born on 4 October 1993 in Hyesan, Ryanggang, North Korea. Her older sister, Eun-mi, was born in 1991.[19][20] Her father, Park Jin-Sik, was a civil servant who worked at the Hyesan town hall as a member of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, and her mother, Byeon Keum-sook, was a nurse for the Korean People's Army.

Her father, after finding employment at a foundry, decided to supplement his income by smuggling Chinese cigarettes, clothes, and rice. He met Byeon in Kowon in 1989 during one of his smuggling runs. He later established a metal smuggling operation in the capital, Pyongyang, where he spent most of the year with his mistress Wan Sun while his wife and daughters remained in Hyesan. Her family was wealthy by North Korean standards during most of her childhood. However, the family later struggled after her father's imprisonment in November 2002 for illegally trading salt, sugar, and other spices.

Park alleges that her father was sentenced to hard labor at the Chungsan reeducation camp in a show trial in 2004. Park claims that her views of the ruling Kim family changed when she watched an illegally imported VHS of the 1997 film Titanic, which reportedly caused her to realize the "oppressive nature" of the North Korean government. She states that the movie taught her the true meaning of love and gave her "a taste of freedom".[21]

When reunited with his family, Park's father urged the family to plan their escape to China. However, Park's older sister Eunmi left for China early without notifying them.[22] Park and her family feared that they would be punished for Eunmi's escape, so they escaped North Korea by traveling through China with the help of brokers who smuggle North Koreans into China.[22]

Leaving North Korea for China (2009)

Park and her family escaped North Korea by crossing the border into Changbai Korean Autonomous County, Jilin, China. On the night of 30 March 2007, with the aid of human traffickers, Park and her mother crossed into China. According to The Guardian and The Telegraph, Park's father was sick and stayed behind in North Korea, thinking his illness would slow them down.[23][22] Several other speeches from Park suggested, however, that her father had joined them in the crossing to China.[24][6] After crossing the border, Park and her mother headed for Jilin. They unsuccessfully tried to find Park's sister, Eunmi, asking the traffickers about her whereabouts. Park and her mother assumed that Eunmi had died.[22]

According to The Telegraph, in January 2008, while the family was living in secret, her father died. The family was unable to formally mourn him, fearing that they would be discovered by Chinese authorities, and buried his cremated remains in the ground of a nearby mountain.[22] Park's mother told The Diplomat in 2014 that they had paid two people to help carry his body up the mountain for burial instead.[6]

Park and her mother found a Christian shelter headed by Chinese and South Korean missionaries in Qingdao. Due to the city's large ethnic Korean population, they were able to evade the attention of authorities. With the help of the missionaries, they fled to South Korea through Mongolia.[22]

Claiming asylum in Mongolia

Park claims that in February 2009, after spending two days at a Christian shelter in Qingdao, she and her mother travelled through the Gobi Desert to Mongolia to seek asylum from South Korean diplomats.[22]

When they reached the Mongolian border, General Authority for Border Protection guards stopped them and threatened to deport the pair back to China. Park recalls that at this point she and her mother pledged to kill themselves with their own razors, stating, "I thought it was the end of my life. We were saying goodbye to one another." Their actions persuaded the guards to let them through, but they were placed under arrest and kept in custody at a detention center at Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Park later said in a podcast interview with Jordan Peterson that she believed the guards were toying with them since Mongolia's official policy on North Korean refugees is to deport them to South Korea.[25] On 1 April 2009, Park and her mother were sent to Ulaanbaatar's Chinggis Khaan Airport to fly them to Seoul Incheon International Airport. She later told The Telegraph that she felt relieved when Mongolian customs officials waved her through.[22] Many years later the South Korean National Intelligence Service informed Park that her sister, Eunmi, had escaped to South Korea via China and Thailand. Park and her mother eventually reunited with Eunmi.[22]

Life in South Korea (2009-2014)

See also: List of North Korean defectors in South Korea § 2000s
Park in 2014

Park was automatically granted South Korean citizenship after arriving in Seoul in 2009,[26] later becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen.[18] She was married to an American man named Ezekiel from 2017 to 2020, with whom she had a son.[26]

After receiving training at the South Korean Ministry of Unification's Hanawon Resettlement Center, Park and her mother settled in Asan. They had difficulty adjusting to their new lives in South Korea, but they managed to find jobs as shop assistants and waitresses. Despite arriving in South Korea with only a second-grade education, Park managed to achieve her high school equivalency after eighteen months of studying.[5] She was admitted to Dongguk University in Seoul.[22][27]

Now On My Way to Meet You (2011)

See also: Now On My Way to Meet You

In 2011 Yeonmi Park was for the a South Korean reality television program titled Now On My Way to Meet You, a show which has been credited for launching Park's career as a public figure due to her popularity on the show.[2] This program, which was broadcast on Channel A, initially began as an emotional dossier style documentary focusing on the reuniting of North Korean defectors with their families.[2] However the show later evolved into a variety show featuring young and attractive North Korean defectors, who had been dubbed "defector beauties".[2][28] According to media academic Richard Murray, Park being a young and physically attractive woman, coupled with her ability to speak English, were all factors which contributed to her rise in popularity with journalists.[29]

Following her appearance on the show, Park became known as "the Paris Hilton of North Korea"[2][6] due to her relatively privileged upbringing in North Korea relative to her fellow co-stars, describing her family having access to numerous luxury goods.[2] Park's mother who also appeared on the show, remarked that Park could not comprehend that her less privileged co-stars had come from the same country.[2] Following the publication of her memoirs In Order To Life in 2015, Park began to present a far more negative portrayal of life in North Korea than she had shared to South Korean audiences.[2] Many experts on North Korea noted that Park had radically shifted the tone of her portrayal of life in North Korea following her jump from reality television to speaking at human rights conferences, going from claiming to have lived a life of luxury before later claiming to have never seen eggs or indoor toilets.[2]

Life in the United States (2014-present)

Park moved to New York City in 2014 to complete her memoir while continuing to work as an activist. She published her memoir in 2015, where she shared her journey from defection to higher education. Park attended classes at Barnard College and then applied and was accepted to the Columbia University School of General Studies, starting there in the Fall 2016 semester. She majored in economics and graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts.[30]

Park has written and spoken publicly about her life in North Korea, has written for the Washington Post, and has been interviewed by The Guardian and for the Australian public affairs show Dateline.[31][32][33] Later in 2023 The Washington Post would publish an investigation into many of Park's stories of life in North Korea, finding that many of her stories were either fabricated or heavily embellished.[2] Park volunteers for such programs as the Freedom Factory Corporation.[31] She is also a member of the Helena Group think tank.[34]

Park is outspoken against tourism to North Korea, as visitors are encouraged to bow to statues of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, which she sees as "[aiding] the regime's propaganda by allowing themselves to be portrayed as if they too love and obey the leader."[35]

In 2014, Park was selected as one of the BBC 100 Women.[36]

Park worked as a co-host for Casey Lartigue, a talk show host of the podcast-show North Korea Today, which focuses on North Korean topics and the lives of refugees after their escapes. Together, Lartigue and Park hosted five episodes of the podcast.[37]

Park has told the story of her defection at several well-known events, including TEDx in Bath, the One Young World summit in Dublin,[3] and the Oslo Freedom Forum.[3]

At an 26 April 2021 speaking engagement at Texas Tech University,[38] Park claimed that speech criticizing the North Korean Supreme Leader had become a crime in South Korea, possibly referring to South Korea's passing of an amendment to the "Inter-Korean Relations Development Act" prohibiting South Koreans from sending, amongst other things, anti-Pyongyang leaflets, auxiliary storage devices (e.g., USB drives), and money or other monetary benefits to North Korea.[39][40][41]

In June 2021 Park was a guest on the podcast of YouTuber Tim Pool.[2]

In August 2021, Park was a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast.[2]

In November 2021, made an appearance as a guest on a talk show belonging to American conservative Candace Owens.[2]

According to the conservative media outlet Campus Reform, in 2023 students at Syracuse University tore down posters advertising a speech by Park, and used online platforms to accuse her of lying.[42]

In February 2023, Park appeared on a podcast belonging to Fox News presenter Megyn Kelly, who acknowledged that many aspects of Park's stories had shifted, before telling her audiences that she had verified Park's stories about Korea.[2] In this same month she also appeared on a show belonging to comedian Andrew Schulz.[2]

Veracity of claims

As early as 2014, journalists based in Seoul began questing the validity of Park's stories.[29] In December 2014, Mary Ann Jolley of The Diplomat, who had previously worked with Yeonmi Park for a documentary, wrote of problems in Yeonmi Park's retellings of her story, ranging from inconsistencies to contradictory refutations on several occasions.[6][2] The Diplomat also published a response from Park to Jolley's article, saying that the discrepancies in her stories came from her limited English skills in the past, adding that her "childhood memories were not perfect."[6]

Between 2014-2015, John Powel, a journalist based in Seoul, wrote two articles criticising Park's claims about North Korea, questioning the inconsistencies in her stories.[29] In 2016 he recalled that both himself and his employer "got into a load of shit" with right-wing political activists both online and off-line following the publication of his articles questioning the validity of Park's stories.[29]

In 2023 The Washington Post, whom Park had previously written for, published an investigation into Park's claims about life in North Korea which similarly found that Park had either embellished or fabricated many of her claims about North Korea:

"But while Park’s moral authority as political pundit rests on her experience as a refugee from an authoritarian pariah state, she has been dogged for years by accusations that some of her more lurid tales of state vengeance and extreme societal decay don’t add up. Scholars on North Korea who are skeptical of Park say she’s symptomatic of a booming market for horror stories from the cloistered nation that they believe encourages some “celebrity” defectors to spin increasingly outlandish claims."[2]

38 North, a website dedicated to news on North Korea, has noted that some critics, including other North Korean refugees, have accused Park of embellishing her accounts or appropriating elements from others' escape stories.[43] John Lee, a journalist focusing on South Korean foreign policy and relations with the U.S., criticized Park in an opinion piece in NK News for "muddl[ing] her message with... nakedly partisan punditry" in favor of conservative causes and media in the United States and South Korea.[44] Many stories told by Park concerning life in North Korea were mocked by writers for Dazed, including Park's claims that ice cream does not exist in North Korea, that North Korea only has a single train that only runs once a month which passengers have to push to move, and that children in North Korea eat mud.[15] This sentiment was shared by a writer for Britain's oldest socialist newspaper, the Morning Star, who accused Park of fabricating stories for financial incentives:

Park Yeonmi said that there were no words for "love" and "I" in North Korea when they speak the same Korean language as South Korea. She claimed to have crossed the entire Gobi Desert on foot, with six people including a baby, in temperatures of minus 40 degrees, without any winter clothing and without a guide in a single day, and when asked how she achieved this impossible feat, replied that it was a miracle. Perhaps her $12,500 fee per speech is a miracle too?[45]

Park's claims of human corpses floating down North Korean rivers being a common occurrence were criticised by Swiss businessman Felix Abt who had lived and worked in the DPRK for seven years.[12] In the face of the scepticism and criticism that Park's stories have garnered, the co-author of Park's auto-biography, Maryanne Vollers, has stated that she believes that Park is the victim of a targeted smear campaign by the North Korean government.[8] Vollers backs this up by citing past cases where the North Korean government has attempted to silence critics of their government.[8]

Political writer A.B. Abrams while accusing Park of fabricating her stories of life in North Korea, compared Park's life story to both the Nayirah testimony and Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council.[46]

North Korean political analyst Michael Bassett, who had spent several years in the demilitarised zone as a member of the United States military, accused Yeonmi Park of fabricating her stories about North Korea, criticising her use of the word "holocaust" to describe the situation in North Korea, and accusing her of working on behalf of free-market think tanks to support economic sanctions against North Korea.[12]

The reliability of Park's stories about North Korea has also been questioned by the political commentator and journalist Hasan Piker.[2]

Washington Post journalist Will Sommer has noted parallels between Park's exaggerated and inconsistent stories with that testimony of Shin Dong-hyuk, who amid pressure from fellow North Korean defectors admitted that he had lied about key aspects of his life story,[2]

Jay Song, a professor of Korean Studies at the University of Melbourne, has expressed scepticism over the validity of Park's account of life in North Korea, accusing Park of misrepresenting the Korean expat community and alleging that her stories were undermining the reputation of fellow North Korean defectors.[2]

Christine Hong, a professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz, an expert in North Korean defectors and a member of the Korea Policy Institute, also criticised Park stories, noting that Park's testimonies did not match with her mothers accounts of life in North Korea.[2]

Execution for watching foreign movies

Yeonmi Park claims that when she was nine years old she witnessed her best friend's mother being publicly executed in a stadium in Hyesan.[2] However, fellow North Korean defectors also from Hyesan say that public executions in North Korea never happened in stadiums, and that public executions had been halted several years before Park claims she witnessed one.[2][6]

According to Park, the reason this woman was allegedly executed for was because she was caught watching a film produced outside of North Korea. However, Park's account of which movie this was has changed depending on her audience. When speaking in Hong Kong, she claimed the woman was executed for watching South Korean movies; however, when speaking to audiences in Ireland she claimed this woman was executed for watching a James Bond movie. Park's claims that people in North Korea were executed for watching foreign movies was mocked and criticised by multiple North Korean defectors, who told journalists that Park's story was false.[6]

Additionally Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University and one of the world's leading experts on North Korean politics, who had also interviewed hundreds of defectors from North Korea, said that he was "skeptical whether watching a Western movie would lead to an execution", and that he felt it would not even be likely for one to be arrested for it. He also said that public executions in North Korea were only reserved for the most extreme crimes including murder and involvement in large scale criminal networks.[6] Following these criticisms, Park later changed her story:

I have only learned English in the last year or so, and I'm trying hard to improve every day to be a better advocate for my people. I apologize for any misunderstandings. For example, I never said that I saw executions in Hyesan. My friends' mother was executed in a small city in central North Korea where my mother still has relatives (which is why I don't want to name it).[6]

Park's claims that North Koreans are publicly executed for watching foreign movies is further contradicted by the existence of the Pyongyang International Film Festival, a biennial cultural exhibition in Pyongyang which has featured movies either produced or made in the United States, United Kingdom, Egypt, Sweden, China, and Germany.

Inconsistencies between Park and her family

Yeonmi Park has claimed that both her mother and father had served prison sentences for alleged crimes in North Korea. However, Park's details about these events are vastly different from her mother's testimony. Park claims she believed her father was sentenced for initially 17 years but North Korean records later shown her 11 years,[47] however Park's mother claimed he was initially sentenced to 1 year in prison but was subsequently extended to 10 years.[6]

During a BBC interview, Park claims her mother was imprisoned for 6 months after her father was sent to jail. However Park's mother claimed that she was merely interrogated sporadically over the course of a year and was not detained. In some interviews, Park claims she and her sister were left alone to live in the mountains after both their mother and father were jailed, and that they both survived by eating grass. However during a BBC interview, Park changed her story and then claimed that during this time she lived with her aunt and her sister lived with her uncle. Park's mother also contradicted Park's claims that she was starving, telling the host of Now On My Way To Meet You that Park and her family never faced starvation. In an interview with the libertarian for-profit organisation called the Freedom Factory, Park recalls her upbringing in Korea, never mentioning starvation, and said she was given two meals daily.[6]

Escape from North Korea

In 2014, journalist Mary Ann Jolley questioned Park's claim that during the night of her escape from North Korea, she crossed several mountains. Jolley noted that there are no mountains between Park's hometown of Hyesan and China, and that the two countries are instead separated by a river. In response, Park wrote, "And there are mountains you can even see on Google Earth – maybe you call them big hills in English – outside of Hyesan that we crossed to escape."[6] In multiple interviews Park says she escaped North Korea with both her mother and father, however during the One Young World Summit in Dublin, Park claimed that only her mother had accompanied her and that she watched her being raped by a Chinese man.[6]

In a 2014 speech, Park says that she escaped North Korea by being driven in a car from Korea into China.[2] In a later speech in Ireland, Park instead claimed to have fled North Korea on foot and travelled over mountains.[2]

After escaping North Korea for China, Park and her mother then travelled to Mongolia, where according to Yeonmi Park they were both arrested in Mongolia where the guards stripped them naked every day.[6] However experts in North Korean defectors, including professor Shi-eun Yu who worked with North Korean defectors for many years and Professor Kim Hyun-ah, were both highly skeptical of this story.[48] They told journalists that they had never heard of any North Korean defectors ever being stripped naked in Mongolia. According to professor Yu:

"In the past, the South Korean government has sent counselors over to Mongolia to help North Korean defectors in detention… so how can defectors be stripped naked everyday?"[6]

In one interview, Park claims her father died during her escape from North Korea and that she buried him alone. However, Park's mother claims that she paid two men to help Park bury her father. In other versions of her story, Park instead claims to have cremated her father.[6]

Kim Jong Un orchestra mass execution story

In a video posted to her YouTube channel in 2021, Park shared a report from South Korean conservative newspaper The Dong-a Ilbo which claimed Kim Jong Un personally ordered the execution of an orchestra conductor by being shot 90 times with Kalashnikov rifles before a crowd who were then forced to march past the corpse.[49][50][51] However, multiple news sources such as Newsweek and the music magazine Slippedisc have pointed out that the story cannot be independently verified.[51][52]

2020 George Floyd protest mugging story

During a 2021 interview with Joe Rogan, Park claimed that in August 2020 during the George Floyd protests in Chicago, she and her son were attacked and robbed by three African-American women.[53] Park claimed that when she attempted to call the police following the robbery, a crowd of approximately 20 white bystanders accused her of being racist,[2] and prevented Park from calling for help.[53] Park cited the incident as a catalyst for her "speaking out" and becoming "the enemy of the woke."[2][53][54] During the same interview with Rogan, Park recounts the event:

"There’s so much crime in Chicago, they are not going to prosecute somebody who robs. And that’s when I was thinking, ‘This country lost it.’"[2]

However, Park's retelling of the events of the robbery differ from a statement released by the Chicago Police Department, who say that Park had been robbed by two people, one man and one woman, and that the female suspect had pleaded guilty to a crime and was sentenced to prison.[2] Park later acknowledged the prosecution in her book While Time Remains.[2]

Claims about romance in North Korea

During an interview with podcaster Tim Pool, Park claimed that North Koreans do not have words to describe romantic love outside of admiration for the ruling Kim family.[2] Professors Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University and Jay Song of the University of Melbourne, both denied Park's claim that romantic love does not exist in North Korea.[2] Political writer A.B. Abram called Park's claim "totally ludicrous" and noted the large number of love songs popular in North Korea.[55]

Further false claims about North Korea made by Park were also debunked by Professor Andrei Lankov, including Park's claims that North Koreans do not have access to world maps, and that North Koreans are not taught basic maths including "1+1=2".[2]

A.B. Abrams also criticised many more misleading claims by Park, including Park's claims that North Korea has zero access to the internet and that North Korea only has a single television channel.[55] Responding to Park's false claims that North Koreans are unaware of the existence of Africa, Abrams points out that almost every middle and senior school in North Korea has a world map which includes Africa, that performing arts students from multiple African countries including Uganda, Zimbabwe, Senegal, and Nigeria, have all put on shows in Pyongyang.[55] Abrams also questioned Park's claims that all North Koreans above 4'10 feet tall were conscripted into the military:

"Of hundreds of North Koreans the writer has met and the dozens to whom he has spoken about the military, none recalled ever being conscripted and all were over five foot."[55]

Beliefs

Park believes that there are positive and negative possibilities for North Korea to be reunified with South Korea. She believes that there are neither northerners nor southerners in Korea, just Koreans themselves.[3]

According to the National Review, Park presumes that "the regime adjusts, as the Chinese Communists and the Vietnamese Communists have done. That would allow the North Korean Communists to hang on for untold years longer."[27] Therefore, the Kims would be able to focus on their people, and then, they would be able to become more open to the world. Park also believes that the Jangmadang, the black market of North Korea, will transform or develop the country's society because it provides wide access to outside news media and information. According to Park, "If I ever return to a reformed North Korea, I will be thrilled to meet my peers as we attempt to bring wealth and freedom to people who were forced into poverty by the Kim family dynasty."[56] Park considers Kim Jong Un to be a "cruel" leader and has made various claims about him personally ordering the executions of dissidents.[57]

Political views

Yeonmi Park believes that left-wing political ideologies are the dominant ideologies in American society.[2]

Park described her education at Columbia University as "forcing you to think the way they want you to think", claiming that she was scolded by a professor for enjoying literature by Jane Austen.[58][59][60] Columbia University declined to comment on this anecdote.[2] Park criticized political correctness at Columbia University, saying, "I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying," and added that "America is not free". She also said that "our education system is brainwashing our children to make them think that this country is racist and make them believe that they are victims. It's time for us to fight back. Otherwise, it might be too late for us to bring the glory of this country back."[61] She has also stated that she believes that the United States is close to becoming a 'liberal dictatorship', and that 'cancel culture' on U.S. College campuses will eventually lead to firing squads.[2]

She believes the U.S. is a "tolerant country" and she criticized African-American track and field athlete Gwen Berry for turning away from the national anthem at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in protest of racial and social injustices.[62]

In early 2023, a screenshot of Yeonmi Park's interview with Joe Rogan became prominent as an internet meme.[14][7][15][16] The format of the meme is that the screenshot is accompanied by a caption detailing an unbelievable story.[2] May 2023, the YouTube channel of the website Know Your Meme published a video describing Park's prominence as a internet meme, comparing the format to In Soviet Russia jokes.[63] According to the editor of Know Your Meme, Don Caldwell, “The joke is that she’ll say anything that’s just wildly outlandish, and Joe will just accept it as true,”.[2]

Finances

According to Yeonmi Park, she is paid $6,600 per month by Turning Point USA, an American conservative organisation active across college campuses primarily in the United States and with many ties to far-right extremists.[2][64] Park has also received support from the Atlas Network, a conservative organisation which has received funding from the US State Department and the United States Congress.[65] Park's links to Atlas were uncovered during an investigation by The Diplomat.[29]

In 2015 Park's speaking agent, Carlton S. Sedgeley, told NK News that Park charged between $12,500 and $17,500 plus expenses and accommodation for each speech that she performed, and that the fees were payable to Royce Carlton Inc.[66]

Books written by Yeonmi Park

In Order to Live (2015)

Yeonmi Park's first book was her memoirs titled In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom (2015), which was published in the United States by Penguin Press. This book was created as a collaboration between Park and the veteran ghost writer Maryanne Vollers, who had previously worked with notable public figures including Hillary Clinton and Ashley Judd.[2] As of July 2023 In Order to Live has sold over 100,000 copies.[2]

While Time Remains (2023)

Park's second book While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America (2023), was published in the United States by a conservative imprint of the publishing house Simon & Schuster, and included a forward written by the conservative commentator Jordan Peterson.[2] The theme of the book focuses on allegations of censorship and "cancel culture "on American college campuses, warning that the United States was on the verge of becoming a 'liberal dictatorship.[2] According to NPD BookScan, While Time Remains has sold over 35,000 copies between February 2023 when the book was published, and July of 2023.[2]

In the acknowledgements, Park thanks a variety of American conservative media personalities, including the YouTuber Dave Rubin, and Emma-Jo Morris who is the editor for the far-right conspiracy theory website, Breitbart News.[2] Park's spokesperson and literary agent, Jonathan Bronitsky, is the former chief speech writer for William P. Barr, the 2016-2020 Trump administration's attorney general.[2]

Bibliography

  • Park, Yeonmi; Vollers, Maryanne (29 September 2015). In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0-698-40936-1. OCLC 921419691.
  • Park, Yeonmi (14 February 2023). While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-668-00333-6.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "About Voice of North Korea by Yeonmi Park". YouTube.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg Sommer, Will (16 July 2023). "A North Korean defector captivated U.S. media. Some question her story". The Washington Post. Retrieved 21 July 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d Gupta, Priyanka. "Escaping North Korea: one refugee's story". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 25 September 2015.
  4. ^ Abrams, A.B. (2023). Atrocity Fabrication and its Consequences. Atlanta, United States: Clarity Press. p. 314. ISBN 978-1-949762-70-9.
  5. ^ a b Park, Yeonmi; Vollers, Maryanne (29 September 2015). In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0-698-40936-1. OCLC 921419691.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Jolley, Mary Ann (10 December 2014). "The Strange Tale of Yeonmi Park". The Diplomat. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
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