North Korea
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I will listen to it later afterwork.
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The part at 2:04:17 made me stop for 10min and reflect on my own inadequacies.
So this girl goes through multiple ordeals in North Korea, then China, then Mongolia, that can barely be done justice by words, finally arrives in a tiny windowless room in Seoul in South Korea, and starts reading books all day, and finds new meaning for her life, of all books, in the novel "Siddartha", by the German author Herman Hesse, who was born just 30min from my place. I reluctantly read one book by Hesse in my life (required reading at school) and have forgotten everything about it.
Damn.
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@klaus said in North Korea:
The part at 2:04:17 made me stop for 10min and reflect on my own inadequacies.
That often happens to me when I'm watching porn.
Well, OK, it's generally at the 30 second mark, but you take my point.
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North Korean defector says 'even North Korea was not this nuts' after attending Ivy League school
As American educational institutions continue to be called into question, a North Korean defector fears the United States' future "is as bleak as North Korea" after she attended one of the country's most prestigious universities.
Yeonmi Park has experienced plenty of struggle and hardship, but she does not call herself a victim.
One of several hundred North Korean defectors settled in the United States, Park, 27, transferred to Columbia University from a South Korean university in 2016 and was deeply disturbed by what she found.
"I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think," Park said in an interview with Fox News. "I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying."
Those similarities include anti-Western sentiment, collective guilt and suffocating political correctness.
Yeonmi saw red flags immediately upon arriving at the school.
During orientation, she was scolded by a university staff member for admitting she enjoyed classic literature such as Jane Austen.
"I said ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing," recalled Park.
"Then she said, 'Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you.’"
It only got worse from there as Yeonmi realized that every one of her classes at the Ivy League school was infected with what she saw as anti-American propaganda, reminiscent to the sort she had grown up with.
"’American Bastard' was one word for North Koreans" Park was taught growing up.
"The math problems would say 'there are four American bastards, you kill two of them, how many American bastards are left to kill?'"
She was also shocked and confused by issues surrounding gender and language, with every class asking students to announce their preferred pronouns.
"English is my third language. I learned it as an adult. I sometimes still say 'he' or 'she' by mistake and now they are going to ask me to call them 'they'? How the heck do I incorporate that into my sentences?"
"It was chaos," said Yeonmi. "It felt like the regression in civilization."
"Even North Korea is not this nuts," she admitted. "North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy."
After getting into a number of arguments with professors and students, eventually Yeonmi "learned how to just shut up" in order to maintain a good GPA and graduate.
In North Korea, Yeonmi Park did not know of concepts like love or liberty.
"Because I have seen oppression, I know what it looks like," said Yeonmi, who by the age of 13 had witnessed people drop dead of starvation right before her eyes.
"These kids keep saying how they’re oppressed, how much injustice they've experienced. They don't know how hard it is to be free," she admonished.
"I literally crossed through the middle of the Gobi Desert to be free. But what I did was nothing, so many people fought harder than me and didn't make it."
Park and her mother first fled the oppressive North Korean regime in 2007, when Yeonmi was 13 years old.
After crossing into China over the frozen Yalu River, they fell into the hands of human traffickers who sold them into slavery: Yeonmi for less than $300 and her mother for roughly $100.
With the help of Christian missionaries, the pair managed to flee to Mongolia, walking across the Gobi Desert to eventually find refuge in South Korea.
In 2015 she published her memoir "In Order to Live," where she described what it took to survive in one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships and the harrowing journey to freedom.
"The people here are just dying to give their rights and power to the government. That is what scares me the most," the human right activist said.
She accused American higher education institutions of stripping people's ability to think critically.
"In North Korea I literally believed that my Dear Leader [Kim Jong-un] was starving," she recalled. "He's the fattest guy - how can anyone believe that? And then somebody showed me a photo and said 'Look at him, he's the fattest guy. Other people are all thin.' And I was like, 'Oh my God, why did I not notice that he was fat?' Because I never learned how to think critically."
"That is what is happening in America," she continued. "People see things but they've just completely lost the ability to think critically."
Witnessing the depth of American’s ignorance up close has made Yeonmi question everything about humanity.
"North Koreans, we don't have Internet, we don't have access to any of these great thinkers, we don't know anything. But here, while having everything, people choose to be brainwashed. And they deny it."
Having come to America with high hopes and expectations, Yeonmi expressed her disappointment.
"You guys have lost common sense to degree that I as a North Korean cannot even comprehend," she said.
"Where are we going from here?" she wondered. "There’s no rule of law, no morality, nothing is good or bad anymore, it's complete chaos."
"I guess that's what they want, to destroy every single thing and rebuild into a Communist paradise."
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That article is a good example why I'm not a big fan of Fox News. Peterson was interested in the person and her full story. For Fox News she's a tool they can use for their political purposes, and they cherry pick those parts of her story that support the desired domestic narrative.
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State of the news today, at least here. Sadly, I find even PBS to be slanted in their coverage, especially with political stories.
Local news is probably better. Less time for "news", so you usually get what's important, especially nationally. Face it, there simply is not enough real news for a 24-hour broadcast.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@klaus said in North Korea:
It's in part a quite emotional interview, with tears on both sides. Start listening to it; it sucks you in.
I was skeptical at first, but am 30 in and wish I could keep going. The FOX article is just apples to oranges different. Can’t wait to get back to the interview.
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@jolly said in North Korea:
Local news is probably better.
Our local TV news frequently runs 20 minutes segments on what the weather was like today. It's uncontroversial, I'll give them that!
Proud supporter of Plan 2525.
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@doctor-phibes said in North Korea:
@jolly said in North Korea:
Local news is probably better.
Our local TV news frequently runs 20 minutes segments on what the weather was like today. It's uncontroversial, I'll give them that!
Most of the guys down here split it roughly into thirds; news, weather, sports. If something is truly happening in one of them (like a hurricane in the Gulf), they'll expand that section.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@jolly said in North Korea:
@doctor-phibes said in North Korea:
@jolly said in North Korea:
Local news is probably better.
Our local TV news frequently runs 20 minutes segments on what the weather was like today. It's uncontroversial, I'll give them that!
Most of the guys down here split it roughly into thirds; news, weather, sports. If something is truly happening in one of them (like a hurricane in the Gulf), they'll expand that section.
Oh, when we get a major weather event, like a snow storm, they move over to 24 hour coverage. They have reporters moving throughout the state confirming that it's snowing there, too.
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I've followed Yeonmi Park on YouTube for a long time now. She has also written books, given Ted talks, many lectures, and is thoroughly believed by those people whose opinions matter on the issue of North Korea.
As for those taking shots at Fox News, you seriously need to open your minds more - Park can see where America is heading better than most, because she's experienced what it's like to be where we are headed in this country. Some of you won't understand that until it's too late.
