Yeonmi Park

Park was born on 4 October 1993 in Hyesan, Ryanggang, North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea – DPRK);[19] her father was Park Jin-Sik and her mother was Byeon Keum-sook.[20] Her older sister, Eun-mi, was born in 1991.[19] Her childhood was during the North Korean famine.[7]

Journalists have stated that Park's memories and descriptions of her early life are often contradictory and at odds with those of her mother, as well as descriptions of life in North Korea by other defectors, and that her story has changed depending upon the audience.[14][3][7]

Park's father was a civil servant who worked at the Hyesan town hall as a member of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea who supplemented his income by smuggling goods from China.[21] Park's mother was a nurse for the Korean People's Army. Her parents met in Kowon in 1989 during one of her father's 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 stated at the Oslo Freedom Forum when she was 21 that her childhood views of the ruling Kim family changed when she watched an illegally imported VHS of the 1997 film Titanic, which caused her to realize as a teen 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".[22]

Park left North Korea in 2007 when she was 13.[19] According to Park's account published in The Telegraph in 2014, after her father "bribe[d] his way out of jail", the family began to plan their escape to China, but Park's older sister Eunmi left for China early without notifying them.[21] The family feared that they would be punished for Eunmi's escape, so Yeonmi and her mother left North Korea by traveling through China with the help of brokers who smuggle North Koreans into China.[21] They escaped by crossing the border into Changbai Korean Autonomous County, Jilin, China,[21] on the night of 30 March 2007.[23][24]

According to the 2014 Telegraph account,[21] and an account published in 2015 by The Guardian, Park's father was sick and stayed behind in North Korea, thinking his illness would slow them down.[25] Other statements by Park in the same time frame suggested that her father had joined them in the crossing to China.[23][7] 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.[21] Park's and her mother's accounts of her father's death differ.[21][7]

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.[21]

Park states 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.[21] Park claims that they reached the Mongolian border and that afterwards the 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 Park says 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.[26] 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.[21] 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.[21]

Park in 2014

Park was automatically granted South Korean citizenship after arriving in Seoul in 2009.[27]

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 found jobs as shop assistants and waitresses. Despite arriving in South Korea with only a second-grade education, Park achieved her high school equivalency after eighteen months.[6] She was admitted to Dongguk University in Seoul.[21][28]

In 2011, Yeonmi Park was a participant on the South Korean reality television program Now On My Way to Meet You, a show which has been credited for launching Park's career as a public figure.[3] The program – broadcast on Channel A – began as an emotional dossier style documentary focusing on the reuniting of North Korean defectors with their families.[3] It later evolved into a variety show featuring young and attractive North Korean defectors, who were dubbed "defector beauties".[3][29] According to media academic Richard Murray, Park's ability to speak English, coupled with her being a young and physically attractive woman, contributed to her rise in popularity with journalists.[14]

Park became known as "the Paris Hilton of North Korea"[3][7] due to her relatively privileged upbringing in North Korea compared to her co-stars; her family had access to numerous luxury goods.[3] 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.[3]

Park claimed that, when she was nine years old, she witnessed her best friend's mother being publicly executed in a stadium in Hyesan.[3] However, fellow North Korean defectors also from Hyesan say that public executions never happened in stadiums, and that public executions had been halted several years before Park claims she witnessed one.[3][7]

According to Park, this woman was executed for 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 unlikely.[7]

Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University and an expert on North Korean politics who has 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 said that public executions in North Korea were only reserved for the most extreme crimes including murder and involvement in large scale criminal networks.[7] Following these criticisms, Park 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).[7]

Park has claimed that both her mother and father had served prison sentences for alleged crimes in North Korea but her recollection differs from her mother's.[7] Park said in an interview that she initially believed her father's sentence was seventeen to eighteen years, but that North Korean records indicated it was eleven years.[38] Park's mother stated he was initially sentenced to one year that was extended to ten.[7]

During a BBC interview, Park stated that her mother was imprisoned for six months after her father was sent to jail. However Park's mother stated only that she was 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 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.[7]

In 2014, 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."[7] 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.[7]

In a 2014 speech, Park says that she escaped North Korea by being driven in a car from Korea into China.[3] In a later speech in Ireland, Park instead claimed to have fled North Korea on foot and travelled over mountains.[3]

After escaping North Korea for China, Park and her mother then travelled to Mongolia, where according to Park they were both arrested in Mongolia where the guards stripped them naked every day.[7] Experts, 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.[39] They told journalists that they had never heard of any North Korean defectors 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?"[7]

The Telegraph account says that 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.[21] 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.[7] In one interview, Park claims her father died during her escape from North Korea and that she buried him alone. In other versions of her story, Park instead claims to have cremated her father.[7]

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. 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".[3] Park cited the incident as a catalyst for her "speaking out" and becoming "the enemy of the woke."[3][40] During the same interview with Rogan, Park recounts the event, stating: "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.'"[3] Park's retelling of the events of the robbery differ from a statement released by the Chicago Police Department, which states 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.[3] Park later acknowledged the prosecution in her book While Time Remains.[3]

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.[3] 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.[3] Political writer A.B. Abram called Park's claim "totally ludicrous" and noted the large number of love songs popular in North Korea.[41]

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.[18] 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.[13]

Further claims about North Korea made by Park were 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".[3]

A.B. Abrams criticised other claims by Park, including that North Korea has zero access to the internet and that North Korea only has a single television channel.[41] Responding to Park's claim 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.[41] Abrams also questioned Park's claims that all North Koreans above 4'10 feet tall were conscripted into the military, stating that: "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."[41]

Park believes that left-wing political ideologies are the dominant ideologies in American society.[3] She has also stated that she believes that the United States is close to becoming a "liberal dictatorship", and that "that 'cancel culture' at U.S. colleges is the first step toward North Korean-style firing squads", according to The Washington Post.[3]

Park believes the U.S. is a "tolerant country"; 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.[45]

Yeonmi Park stated in 2023 that she was paid $6,600 per month by Turning Point USA, and had engagements with numerous "conservative audiences", according to The New York Times.[1] 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.[55][14]

In 2015, Park's speaking agent told NK News that Park charged between $12,500 and $17,500 plus expenses for each speech.[56]