#54 Yeonmi Park - Escaping the Horrors of North Korea & the Kim Dynasty

Yeonmi Park is an activist and author who fled to the United States after being a victim of sex trafficking. Park recounts her oppressive childhood in North Korea, starved and without electricity. She remembers how the lights of neighboring countries gave her hope for a better life. She spares no detail when explaining what a society under a ruthless dictator, mass killings, and delusional propaganda looks like. Yeonmi takes us through her harrowing journey being smuggled out of North Korea only to meet a new terrifying reality - the Chinese sex trade. Park speaks frankly about the realities of survival in captivity and the pain she carries with her still today. We wrap up with her rescue by missionaries and her first brush with freedom in Times Square. Yeonmi illuminates some hard truths and warns of the signs of communism seeping into the United States. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://hvmn.com - USE CODE "SHAWN" https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://mudwtr.com/shawn - USE CODE "SHAWN" https://mypatriotsupply.com https://blackbuffalo.com - USE CODE "SRS" Yeonmi Park Links: While Time Remains Book - https://amzn.to/3UxPUat Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/yeonmi_park/ Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

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  On October 2nd.

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• 0:43Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

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  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

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  With great power comes great deniability.

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  I'm not the first then.

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  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, everybody. My next guest has one of the most horrific stories from one of the most horrific places on the planet. And that's North Korea. She escaped North Korea. She was sold into the Chinese sex trade. Escaped that, then came to America. Now, she's spreading the word on what it's like living in communism and showing us the signs that we need to be aware of in case it winds up on our doorstep. So pay attention. Please like, subscribe, comment below. Head over to Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

• 1:45Shawn Ryan?

  Leave us a review. And ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome Yeonmi Park to the Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeonmi Park, welcome to the Sean Ryan Show.

• 2:02Speaker 06

  I'm happy to be here.

• 2:03Shawn Ryan?

  It is an honor to have you here. I've spent a lot of time listening to a lot of your different interviews and man, you have so many phenomenal interviews. I think the one that sticks out the most with, for me, is Megyn Kelly's. I listened to Megyn Kelly's recently.

• 2:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, I see, okay.

• 2:24Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, man, you guys had a very good, in-depth conversation and I can't wait to have that conversation here. So, just a little bit about you. You fled the most oppressive, isolated, controlled country in the entire world in 2007, that country being North Korea. You've offered two books, In Order to Live and the latest one, While Time Remains, which While Time Remains seems like it's maybe a warning to the Americans on what might be coming.

• 3:00Shawn Ryan?

  And now you bring awareness and educate people all over the world about the oppression that happens in North Korea in your journey to the United States. And you're also a YouTuber who just hit 1 million subscribers. Congratulations.

• 3:15Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 3:15Shawn Ryan?

  I know that's no easy task.

• 3:18Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, yeah, so every guest starts out with a gift, so.

• 3:23Speaker 06

  Oh, wow.

• 3:24Shawn Ryan?

  There you go.

• 3:26Speaker 06

  Thank you so much. Oh, gummy bears.

• 3:29Shawn Ryan?

  Little something for the ride home.

• 3:30Speaker 06

  Oh, thank you, I love those.

• 3:32Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome, you're welcome.

• 3:34Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 3:36Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, your story, there's just, there are so many different parts to it, from your upbringing and how you grew up in North Korea. It sounds like you grew up in a wealthy family in North Korea, which I can't wait to dive into what a wealthy family looks like compared to here in the US. But I'd kind of like to start with your upbringing and obviously talk about the oppression and how the regime in North Korea controls the people.

• 4:07Shawn Ryan?

  And then I would really like to get in detail in the trafficking portion and what you dealt with in China. And then kind of wrap it up with. With the similarities that you see here in the United States, maybe they're starting to happen, or maybe they've been happening for a while, compared to some of the stuff that you saw in North Korea. Does that sound good?

• 4:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:33Shawn Ryan?

  All right. So, let's just start with your upbringing. What is a wealthy family in North Korea? What is daily life for a wealthy family?

• 4:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a... How do we begin? So, even though North Korea started in the idea of complete equality of outcomes, right? Nobody will be poor, nobody will be rich. But regime, based on that idea initially, and eventually divided people into fifty-one different classes. And a lot of times, we kind of assume, like, are we in the middle, or in the bottom, or in the top? But I was maybe born in the, like, somewhere upper-middle class.

• 5:17Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:18Speaker 07

  Because my father was a party member. But the thing is, there are like six million party members in North Korea, and in the population of twenty-one, twenty-two million at the time. So it wasn't the most like special thing, but still, like, better than other people. And this is where I think... Sorry, I don't know.

• 5:46Speaker 07

  So, lifestyle, right? It's a... I never saw a shower in my life.

• 5:53Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 5:53Speaker 07

  Because we don't even have the world for a shower. We don't have a technology to heat up the water. We don't have running water. So we still had to go in the river, bring the oil in the well, or, you know, stream water home. And we don't have indoor bathroom. We have to go outside to do the business. We don't have, you know, machine to wash the clothes. So it was my job to go to the river, and my sister to wash our clothes. And, but, you know, the fact that we were not dying from starvation in the nineties, that means wealthy.

• 6:30Shawn Ryan?

  That means wealthy.

• 6:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, though all the actual poor ones died in the nineties. It was...

• 6:36Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, so, what, so what is the... Let's go back to the fifty-one classes.

• 6:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 6:43Shawn Ryan?

  How are those fifty-one classes broken up? Is it poor to rich? Or is it, is it, is it race? How, what is it?

• 6:51Speaker 07

  So, North Korea is a homogeneous country. We are like same genetics, same people, same culture, same language. There's not, no diversity in that.

• 7:01Shawn Ryan?

  No tribes, no different areas, everybody's just?

• 7:04Speaker 07

  Korean.

• 7:05Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, we were the same Korean, we the South Korean. We had a five thousand years of shared history, same country, as a same country. So that's unique.

• 7:14Speaker 07

  What was based upon of from that division was, I think something similar to right now, America, is what your ancestors did. That their loyalty towards the party's ideology.

• 7:27Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:27Speaker 07

  So it's not about individual's choice, you cannot join another class. Basically, when Kim Il-sung came into power in the middle forties and the nineteen fifties, that's when he came and then realized, okay, who was a landowner? Who was a capitalist? Who was an intellectual? You know, who was a, oh, farmer? And based on their status, their children's status get determined forever. And that's how they say when I was born, the country, my great-great-grandfather had some land in his yard. And they said I had oppressor genes. And my blood was tainted because of his actions.

• 8:12Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 8:12Speaker 07

  So that's how your status get determined. So in a way that America, we divide people based on race. In North Korea, they do that based on the, I think, ideology. What people back then believed in.

• 8:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. So your, so your grandpa owned land, did they just take the land from him?

• 8:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, so that was my mother's side.

• 8:32Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 8:33Speaker 07

  And my father's side was better. So that's why my father was becoming a part, became a party member. And my mother's side, I think they weren't.

• 8:43Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 8:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 8:44Shawn Ryan?

  How did they confiscate? Do you know how they confiscate the land? Do you remember, or were you too young?

• 8:50Speaker 07

  So it was just stories we hear, right? It's a in the 50s, they had a land reform. And that was when the regime was promising to North Korean people that we are going to abolish poverty and inequality in any forms. We are going to be all equally doing well. Everything is going to be taken care of by the government. Everything will be free. Healthcare is going to be free. Housing is going to be free. The food is going to be free. Everything is going to be free. Nobody can ever trade anything, but nobody can ever own anything. They abolished private property. So nobody can own a home. They can own a cow. They can own a car. They can own a house. They can own anything.

• 9:34Speaker 07

  So but the thing is, at the time, North Koreans actually believes that that was a paradise, so it was paradise, right? Is we are equally doing all well. So for that little, people gave everything to the regime. At the time, and there was not much of battle between the people giving that to the regime. And the people, some people who did not disagree, they get executed, obviously. There are three generations get executed along with the people who rebel against the.

• 10:02Shawn Ryan?

  I read this. I saw this in a so also in my research, I watched some documentaries on North Korea. That way, some of your story was still surprising to me. So one of the things that I saw was that if you go against the state or if you commit a crime or if you vote the wrong way, then you'll be imprisoned. What I what I then what came was that there the three generation punishment. So if I voted against the state.

• 10:35Shawn Ryan?

  I would go to prison, my son would go to prison. And if he had a son or a daughter, then they would be born in prison and spend the li- the rest of their life in prison because their blood is guilty blood. Is that, is that, is that across the board over there? No matter what the crime is, or is there a severity, or?

• 10:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, so you know, wait, there's no way you can vote wrong way because North Korea election only has one person on the ballot. And it's a open, like, guards standing there watching you. And there's only one choice on the ballot, so it's, you cannot wrong, like, you cannot vote for a different person.

• 11:15Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 11:16Speaker 07

  It's a joke, right? It's like, oh, like, sure, it is a show. But if you use that something against a party, like, okay, I don't believe in communism. Then you, of course, get carried. You get executed, obviously, for that, but then your parents, your sisters, brothers, your children, your grandchildren, and up to sometimes eight generations.

• 11:38Shawn Ryan?

  Eight generations?

• 11:39Speaker 07

  So even the in-laws gets arrested. So your wife's, their family, the in-laws get, go together with you.

• 11:49Shawn Ryan?

  Just for disagreeing with the, with the, with the state?

• 11:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, so, uh, one person that I know in South Korea, he was born, I mean, he went to P- Pukkum Prison Camp when he was eight years old. And the very first thing when you arrest and go to Pukkum Prison Camp is that you cannot ask why you're there.

• 12:10Shawn Ryan?

  You cannot ask why you're there?

• 12:11Speaker 07

  Then that you, that's you get executed. So, nobody knows why they end up in the prison. And then for him, he learned many years later that his grandfather, uh, long time before, one day, he was drink, getting drinks with his friend. And then, under the alcohol influence, he somehow showed a disagreement with the party's line.

• 12:38Speaker 07

  But later that friend remembered that saying and then reported to the police. That's why he started during while they were getting a drink. So he ended in prison camp, but he could not ask the regime, why did I get here? So most people don't know why they ended in the prison camp.

• 12:55Shawn Ryan?

  Is there any way to get out of it?

• 12:57Speaker 07

  No.

• 12:58Shawn Ryan?

  You're in there for life. There's one sentence and that's a life sentence.

• 13:02Speaker 07

  And most of them don't last more than three months. Usually you die from the exhaustion and torture. So, because they, nursery region needs these people. They do a lot of chemical tests on them because they are developing bio weapons. And then they doing so much nuclear tests. They need to help people, need the people to clean those debris. So they need this labor.

• 13:28Shawn Ryan?

  So they use the, they use the prison labor?

• 13:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:31Shawn Ryan?

  So they're doing, so they're torturing. They're doing experiments and they're using them to clean up nuclear waste, which is huge exposure to radiation, which will obviously kill you.

• 13:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:46Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of experiments are they, are they?

• 13:51Speaker 07

  Many different experiments. A, like even during the Nazi Germany, they test on different gas. Uh, they test on different like injections, because they develop a lot of poisons, because that they commit a lot of uh assassin attempts, right? They killed their brother in Malaysia with those poisons. So they test on different poison, how it cares or not. And they even just cut off their organs and like body tissues to check, you know, how to study some medicines so they can make the dictator, their leader live forever. So there is more than 10,000 doctors dedicated nursery to find a way to make Kim's live forever. So in this study, they need a lot of inmates.

• 14:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh my gosh.

• 14:38Speaker 07

  They take them and play with their organs and see what helps to make their dictator live forever.

• 14:45Shawn Ryan?

  He wants to live forever?

• 14:47Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 14:48Shawn Ryan?

  So that's the, that's the big experiment?

• 14:50Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's called like Manse Muang Yon Goo So, it's like the eternal life uh research institute. They has like 10,000 doctors. Just all day long, they are studying that, how they can make the dictator live forever.

• 15:04Shawn Ryan?

  What are the doctors? What do the doctors think about the dictator?

• 15:08Speaker 07

  You cannot think about it. In North Korea, even you are a doctor, you don't get paid a one-dollar salary each month. You're a slave. You don't choose to become a doctor. They tell you to become a doctor.

• 15:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 07

  So it's, there's no way you can have an opinion for anything there.

• 15:23Shawn Ryan?

  What, so, so back to the prison camps, they have a three-month life expectancy?

• 15:28Speaker 07

  On average, yeah.

• 15:29Shawn Ryan?

  If they're going to, let's say you get a sentence where they're gonna execute you and you, you don't even know what you're being executed for.

• 15:37Speaker 07

  Right, yeah.

• 15:38Shawn Ryan?

  How long are you, is it like America where you're on death row, or do they just get it done immediately?

• 15:45Speaker 07

  It's, it depends. When they wanna make a case out of you, like, uh, wanna create a fear to the people. So when Kim Jong-un killed his own uncle, Zhang Songtaek. Remember when he came into power and then he one day harassed his uncle publicly? Basically, what he did was a, he made sure all the officials in Pyongyang come and put him in the center, and then you use an aircraft gun to shoot him, not just guns. So when you shoot somebody like that, you become little like pieces of meat. Your body just gets exploded. And then he would let the dogs to eat his body. And officials would like faint and pee in their pants.

• 16:30Speaker 07

  And that's how he touched them. This is what happens if you do not be loyal to you, to me. So, some executions are just throwing stones. So they put their family members, put them in the first row, and then like throw the rock at your family, your wife, your child. So the last thing you see leaving this world is seeing your child, your husband throwing rock at you and to kill you.

• 16:56Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 16:57Speaker 07

  They, they make sure the families denounce the person first.

• 17:03Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, are these public executions?

• 17:07Speaker 07

  Uh, I never seen the throwing the rock, but I heard that's what they did inside the concentration camp. So they, inside the concentration camp, they make sure the son and mother, they stand in the front row and do that. And other people should throw the rock because Kim Jong-il said, even the bullets are too precious to kill these people. So you should just use rocks to kill them.

• 17:31Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 17:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, and then, but shooting is usually the public execution that general public goes to watch.

• 17:37Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, does the general public enjoy this?

• 17:40Speaker 07

  No, it's mandatory.

• 17:42Shawn Ryan?

  It's mandatory?

• 17:43Speaker 07

  Children needs to go watch it, like even you're two years old. If you're, when you go see the public execution, the seating is based upon how young you are. As in, if you're the youngest, you sit in the front row because you're the shortest. So adults goes to back row, but those adults have seen this when they're kid. So they put the children in the front and then bigger children the behind and adults in the back. And then they see people getting executed.

• 18:11Shawn Ryan?

  How often does this happen?

• 18:13Speaker 07

  It's, there's some seasonal, it's like, uh, several times a year, I'm sure, minimum. But sometimes, like very often, because those are times where they say showcase time. Where they, it's like tightening the bear, like really trying to raise the field level as much as they can. So those times are constantly shooting and then sometimes like off and then we just think, okay, we need to do this again and come and shoot more.

• 18:41Shawn Ryan?

  How many executions per session?

• 18:45Speaker 07

  It's sometimes, uh, sometimes one, sometimes three, sometimes eight, depending on the case.

• 18:53Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 18:54Speaker 07

  So sometimes like the cases were like these people were hung. So one of the execution my mom saw was a, this young man in a collective farm who was dying from TB, tuberculosis, right? And then he, uh, butchered the collective farm's cow. And then he ate the cow because he was dying from the malnutrition anyway. So they were executing him in the marketplace, just him.

• 19:22Speaker 07

  And one of the executions I saw was a, my friend, actually mother. She distributed a Hollywood movie. So she watched the Hollywood movie and then gave it to her friends. And in North Korea, that's a crime. You cannot watch Hollywood movies.

• 19:39Shawn Ryan?

  You cannot watch a Hollywood, that's an executable offense.

• 19:42Speaker 07

  If you ever read a Bible, that's execution. You, if you ever watch a porn, that's execution. If you ever watched a Hollywood movie and distributed, that's execution. And, I mean, the executions is like this, there's a, every front page of North Korean paper has a Kim's portraits. And then you didn't see the page, you saw backwards, you ripped it. That's how you go to prison camp.

• 20:08Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 20:09Speaker 07

  Those are the crimes that we talk about in North Korea as a crime.

• 20:13Shawn Ryan?

  Even if you, I saw, even if you fold a paper and you fold.

• 20:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:18Shawn Ryan?

  You fold the photo of.

• 20:21Speaker 07

  You cannot, you cannot put other things on top of it either. You need to, you need to pretend this photo is the actual, the leader, right? And every home in North Korea, we have the portraits of dictators. So when the, if the fire caught in the house, the fathers, first thing they have to protect is the portraits. Not their children, not their for wife. Because if the portrait gets damaged, then the third generation is going to be punished in that family. So there are so many heroes that we learn, like who, somebody was like die with his own body protecting the portrait. And that is the most honorable death you can do in North Korea. Like dying for the leader is the honorable death. They teach you to do that.

• 21:06Shawn Ryan?

  Speaking of religion, since we're on the, on the topic of um, the concentration camps. Would, you can go to prison for your religion there as well, correct?

• 21:18Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:19Shawn Ryan?

  So they round up Christians.

• 21:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:21Shawn Ryan?

  Is Christianity, is that?

• 21:25Shawn Ryan?

  A common underground religion there?

• 21:28Speaker 07

  You don't even, it's the most persecuted like religion in the world, I mean in in North Korea, yes. So I did not even know, like know the word Jesus or like I did not know what that was until I got out.

• 21:41Shawn Ryan?

  Are you religious now?

• 21:42Speaker 07

  I am now.

• 21:43Shawn Ryan?

  You are?

• 21:43Speaker 07

  But in, I think I later met the other fellow North Korean defectors who were Christians, who were in the underground. So I was really uh surprising to me because none of these people can own a Bible, right? So if there are two people in a team, then they say, okay, you remember Psalms, you remember this part of Bible. And his grandma taught him all the entire one part of Bible to him verbally. So that knowledge wouldn't get lost, because that is the only way you can maintain the Bible in North Korea. So he was reciting entire thing word by word. And I was like, how is that possible? This is my grandma told me.

• 22:29Speaker 07

  So I, that's how Christians are believing their faith, by just memorizing, because there's no way you can have the Bible, basically.

• 22:37Shawn Ryan?

  And if you get caught?

• 22:38Speaker 07

  Death.

• 22:39Shawn Ryan?

  It's a death penalty?

• 22:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 22:41Shawn Ryan?

  Is every death, if you get caught doing anything, is it automatically three generations that are gonna be punished?

• 22:49Speaker 07

  It's a political crime. So my father's crime was economic crime. Because he was selling metals, he was trading. He was not committing anything political, he was not saying the party is bad, right? He was not doing anything like that. So that's why I didn't go to prison with my father.

• 23:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 23:08Speaker 07

  He was only sentenced by himself for like ten years, but still my now cast went lower. I could not marry somebody who was in a better class, I could not imagine going to university, I couldn't do that. But uh political crimes, then your family do go with you for sure.

• 23:25Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 23:26Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:26Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is horrible. What about, let's talk about some of the child labor that's happening over there.

• 23:34Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:34Shawn Ryan?

  What age are kids, are kids forced to work?

• 23:39Speaker 07

  Any age, like as even two, three, four, uh, even pre, preschool. That they, they teach you that you are revolutionaries, you are not child. So when we go to school, that we pack our work clothes with us.

• 24:03Speaker 07

  So I was even five years old, we pack our work clothes. And then we go to school, we learn about, okay, we need to do five hundred hours of each dictator about their, how great they are. The propaganda, right? How amazing the leaders are, how great our party is. And those lessons are in the morning. And then lunchtime, they don't feed you, of course. If, if the family couldn't afford to make you a bento box, then the child gonna just not eating lunch that day. And then that lunch period is over, then that's when you have to work. So they say depending on the season, they send you a collective farm to plant the seed in the spring.

• 24:44Speaker 07

  The summertime, uh, we don't have machines, like if the farm, there is a lot of other plants grow that takes the crop away, right? So we have to ourselves take those like other plant away. And then the fall, we need to help the farmers to do harvest. That's what we need to do. And then in the winter, we need to help the farmers collect feces as a fertilizer. So entire winter time, my job was looking for like literally poop everywhere.

• 25:14Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:15Speaker 07

  Cause we have a quota to submit, otherwise we get punished.

• 25:20Shawn Ryan?

  I read that the, the, the food shortage, the starvation that's happening over there, it's so bad.

• 25:27Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:28Shawn Ryan?

  That it, that they are now using, now they're using human feces to fertilize the soil for.

• 25:37Speaker 07

  But it was always that way.

• 25:38Shawn Ryan?

  It was always that way.

• 25:40Speaker 07

  That's why North Koreans always have tons of a, like worms inside them. So, one of the defector soldier was crossing D N G. And then the South Korean doctors opened him up. I mean, they could not believe like meters, you can see on CNN. Meters of meters of worms in North Korean people's body. It's very com- I mean, I had tons of worms there because the food grows from this. So, that's our children's job and adult's job.

• 26:08Shawn Ryan?

  What are you eating over there?

• 26:11Speaker 07

  We eat, depends, right? Like, uh, in the summertime, we do eat more plants. But the thing is, after June first, like end of May, a lot of plants become poisonous. So until then, poison level is not as high, so we can pretty much eat any plants if we want. Even tree leaves are fine. But after June first, we have to be a lot careful what mushroom that we pick up, you know, what plants we eat. Uh, we eat a lot of, in the fall, we eat a lot of grasshoppers and a lot of bugs. And then, in the winter is the time when we a lot of eat frozen, you know, potatoes.

• 26:54Speaker 07

  Or a dried cabbage like that. And spring is where we die. We call spring is the season of death.

• 27:03Shawn Ryan?

  It is.

• 27:04Speaker 07

  Because right before the anything grows in nature. And wintertime, all our stock's gone. And it's hard to find even any one single rat to eat in the spring.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped growing? You starve, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 28:16Shawn Ryan?

  Does any... It sounds like all of the food comes from what you grow or what you catch. Talk about eating insects.

• 28:24Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:25Shawn Ryan?

  Does the state provide any food?

• 28:28Speaker 07

  Right. You cannot grow them because we cannot own our land. The land is a country's, right? The regimes is a collective farm. So we are forced to work in a collective farm all year, like 10 hours a day minimum. Then when the harvest comes, what they do? They come and take all the harvest away. They don't give it to the farmers. They give you maybe a little bit of, like, potatoes. And then what they do is like, this is a royalty grain. So you need to submit this grain to the government to show your royalty. Otherwise, you get punished. So this is thing called the royalty grain that we always have to give it to the regime, despite we don't have anything.

• 29:13Speaker 07

  And the regime determines that. They decided somehow it's easy to do socialism when there are less people. And it's easy to control the population when they are starving.

• 29:24Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 29:25Speaker 07

  Because as a North Korean, all day you are thinking about this. How I'm gonna find the next meal? If you make one day, you're gonna, you're not knowing if you're gonna make it tomorrow. Right? So you're constantly just thinking about only finding food and surviving. Then regime knows that they don't need to worry about us. Cause we are not gonna be thinking about starting revolution.

• 29:46Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Moving into, we'll get back to the ways of life. Um, but moving into how they control the people, since you brought it up, you know? Starvation was number one on my list. I thought that was very obvious. I, I read that the population of North Korea is so malnourished that they have basically changed their genetic code. And they are now five inches on average shorter than South Koreans. Is that, is that true?

• 30:17Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's like, North Koreans, even now, I come to America, like, I cannot gain weight. Cause just our systems didn't fully develop, right? When you need to eat the proper nutrients to develop and develop your organs to process things, we didn't get to do that. So it's interesting, in South Korea, like, their grandchildren are much taller than their grandparents. North Korea is a complete opposite. Each generation, we get shorter and shorter.

• 30:48Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 30:49Speaker 07

  And it's a, that's why you carry the mark of starvation for the rest of your life. It doesn't just like, oh, now you're not starving, you can become a normal person. It doesn't happen that way. Most of North Koreans carry that scar.

• 31:05Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about, we talked about starvation. We've talked about the prison camps, the three generations. These are all ways to control the population and oppress them. Let's talk about the propaganda portion.

• 31:18Speaker 07

  Right.

• 31:19Shawn Ryan?

  How many, what's your internet like? What is your TV stations like? Let's start with internet.

• 31:26Speaker 07

  We don't know what internet is. And we don't have electricity. So even I'm sure the internet, we cannot use it, right? Without electricity. We have one channel on TV. And even that channel is not free broadcasting. It's all government propaganda. But even if there's one channel, we cannot watch without electricity anyway. So there's no other information. People are not even free to move to next town. You cannot do a sleepover in North Korea. You need to go tell the authority and get authorization to sleep in your friend's house. In the middle of night, the regime, you know, guard and just like open your door and come in. See if somebody outside your family is sleeping in there. If there is, then that's a crime.

• 32:10Speaker 07

  You get punished for that. No freedom of movement, no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion or anything. So we are completely isolated. That's why I was saying when I was in North Korea, I did not know that I was oppressed. You know, I did not know I was living in a hermit kingdom. Because not knowing is actually to oppression. And I I wrote about this in my new book. It's like there are two types of dictatorships. One is physical dictatorship. As I said, you know, physically you are not like a lot to wear jeans. A lot to have certain haircut or listen to music, watch TV. But second one is what North Korea and Nazi Germany did is like dictatorship of the mind. You could, they control what you think.

• 32:56Speaker 07

  And I think that's why North Korea did such a perfect job than any other countries ever have ever done in in human history. That they brainwashed me to the point where I thought that my dear leader could read my mind. I was afraid to think. I could not think that in even in my mind that he was make, he was not a god. And how they did that was that they copied the Bible. So they said, you know, God would give give your son love us so much. He gave us his son Kim Jong-un. His body dies, but his spirit with us forever. How, that's how he can read my thoughts, knows how much hair I own my head.

• 33:40Speaker 07

  And when we die, we join him in this paradise for the rest of our lives.

• 33:45Speaker 07

  So North Korea is one of the ten religions in the world is a religious cult. It's not just a normal dictatorship.

• 33:52Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, and, and, and everybody believes that?

• 33:57Speaker 07

  That is another thing, you know, so you cannot do a public survey. You cannot go, do you believe the propaganda? I mean, if you, nobody gonna say that. So it's like living in North Korea is like living a true man show. Nobody is telling you what's happening. The only truth you know is who you are. Cause nobody even, I mean, the first thing my mom told me young, as a young girl was like, "Don't even whisper," because the birds and mice could hear me. They said, "Do not even trust your own back." Cause we never knew who, who was a spy was. There was always spy listening somewhere. So it was just better not to even say anything and even better not to think. That's how you survive North Korea.

• 34:42Shawn Ryan?

  How do you control your thoughts? How do you keep, how do you keep the, the thoughts that you think you're gonna be punished for out of your head?

• 34:51Speaker 07

  That's interesting thing is like, you think somehow humans are capable of thinking by themselves. But we don't learn how to think in North Korea. Like, thinking was exhausting. I remember going to South Korea for the first time that I had to think for myself. Like, even what I'm gonna wear that day. It gave me so much headache because in North Korea, that was decided for me. What, what clothes I can wear, what haircut I can get, it was decided. So in North Korea, we don't know what critical thinking is. Nobody learned the concept that you can think other way. So in some sense, we are just all numb. I think I just remember being in North Korea, just being numb. It wasn't, it wasn't hard.

• 35:36Speaker 07

  I think for the first time, thinking was very exhausting for me at least.

• 35:41Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. So in this, it's, it's, it's, I've been a lot of places throughout my career and I've never seen anything like what you're describing. And it's, I think, if it's hard for me to understand, I think it's extremely hard for anybody who's, who's not well-traveled or, or, or, you know what I'm getting at, but just... So what you're describing is a country that's encompassed with...

• 36:13Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody, nobody has any idea what is outside of that border. So they,

• 36:21Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's no clues, there's no nothing, like, about how Americans live, or how Europeans live, or Canadians, or or Australians, or anywhere in the free world. There's no sign, like, people have no idea that that even exists.

• 36:38Speaker 07

  Right, so it's like a, like in North Korea, for instance, I never knew the map, I did not see the map of the world. They did not even teach me that I'm Asian. They said I'm Kim Il-sung race, my dear leader's race. The North Korean calendar begins when Kim Il-sung was born. We have our own time zone. And it's like, I keep saying that, like, I come from different planets. We actually know more about Mars and the other planets. But we cannot even imagine what in the faraway galaxy land, there's some planet. We cannot even fathom what life would be like there. It's like, because we don't know the name, we've never seen it, we've never heard about it.

• 37:23Speaker 07

  Like, for North Koreans, I mean, what is Tennessee? I mean, right, what's white? You know, what is the internet? It's a, they don't have the vocabulary, they've never seen it. The only pictures that I saw about Americans were the school posters that propaganda department drew about Americans who are cold-blooded reptiles who have horns, who are monsters eating our children, torturing our women. That is the only my image of America, because I cannot go into and look up what America looks like. So, in North Korea, could do that because they completely isolated the country.

• 38:04Speaker 07

  I mean, you can go to, I think we might be able to go to moon before we be able to go to North Korea. Nobody is allowed to go there and explore, right? Nobody in North Korea can come out. It is the most isolated country in the world right now. So, I think that's why they were able to do that.

• 38:26Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of stuff do they display on the TV?

• 38:29Speaker 07

  TV is, uh, the good thing is the regime is very poor. They cannot make the new propaganda materials. So the same revolutionary TVs of under Japanese, under like American imperialism, how our great soldiers under the leadership of Kim Il-sung, that we are fighting our enemies and bringing the liberation to our people. That kind of things, every day we watch, you know, and keep reminding it. What an amazing thing that socialist revolution was. When there were times of greedy, greedy capitalists, they would like torture our children. Now look at us, anybody who can't go to school. Even though we, when you go to school, we get brainwashing, we get like forced labor,

• 39:14Speaker 07

  you know, forced to work. They still say that's better than living under the capitalists and landlords.

• 39:22Shawn Ryan?

  Oh my gosh. What, um...

• 39:29Shawn Ryan?

  When it comes to controlling the people, there's also, you kind of, you touched on it, where they control emotions. How do they control your emotions? You're not allowed to smile, you're not allowed to laugh. What else are you not allowed to do?

• 39:49Speaker 07

  It's, that was the thing I still, I try to understand.

• 39:54Speaker 07

  Whenever I, even my escape, even the beginning of my time when I came to America, even though in my head so fully logically understood that Kim Il-sung was a bad dictator. He was merciless man who was killing people. But whenever there's a this beautiful propaganda portrait of him in a gigantic smile, where his most beloved leader, only thing he does is are loving his people. And our father, our god, right? Then just automatically your heart just warms up. But then the logic has kicked in afterwards, like, oh my god, like, what am I even thinking? This is like all fake drawing, obviously, he doesn't smile like that. It's a try to make you feel that way.

• 40:38Speaker 07

  And then whenever we see this portrait, there was always music. Somebody was most dramatic way of, you know, saying how their leader is so selfless being that all he does is trying to fight for the good of the people. And so it really happens, first thing we do is like, so we need to say how to thank the dictator. Before we eat, we need to go by in front of our portrait. Dear leader, thank you so much for the food, you know? And the schoolteachers say at school, the most important thing to you is not your parents, not your biological parents, is your, our, our father, with Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-un.

• 41:23Speaker 07

  So a child, as a child, you learn, like, the first thing teacher teach you that that's the most important thing in the world. And like dying for the regime is the best thing you can ever do. And they keep showing these hero movies, how they give their own body and take the bullets for the revolution of our country. And then making us to recite those poem and the songs, like, songs like nothing to envy. Because we live in the social paradise, we have nothing to envy, right? Then eventually you somehow believe it. Even though your real life is seeing people dead on the streets, you know, every day that's what you see in North Korea. But you still somehow have this pride and gratitude for the dictator.

• 42:09Shawn Ryan?

  It is mind control to the fullest capacity.

• 42:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 42:14Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of, so just dead bodies, just everywhere.

• 42:18Speaker 07

  Not just dead bodies, it's a...

• 42:22Speaker 07

  I mean, when people die from starvation, they go through many phases. They don't, you just don't die, just like, oh, I'm starving, I'm gonna die, you know? There's a phase of hallucination, there is a phases of crazy. They just lost their mind, they started laughing, you know, it's just, just like laugh. They don't recognize their sons, they're not taking like their mothers, they just, like, just lost everything. And then, the last phase is, eh?

• 42:55Speaker 07

  Everything opens up your body, like here, just everything opens up. And your organs comes out, because nothing can hold it together. And then, just you make this sounds that like, some ghosts would make. And, but till that moment, you still beg for food. And these are the sounds, you hear everything. But, when you live in the country, you don't feel anything for that, because it's every day. You know, every corner, there's children who does that, a father who does that, and your family who does that. So, this is like daily life.

• 43:37Speaker 07

  But at school, we still have to sing songs like, we have nothing to envy, because we live in the best country.

• 43:44Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man, you've seen a lot of that, haven't you?

• 43:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a, it's just phase, and you just all casually say, oh, no, he's in the phase two. Okay, you're still far away, you're just still in the phase one. You know, like, we, we seen the phase of a lot of death from starvation, but I could just, just can't tell. And it's, it's not like we say out of any sympathy, it's just, you become just numb, you know?

• 44:13Shawn Ryan?

  Do you, did you ever reach any of those phases?

• 44:17Speaker 07

  I think for me, among all these things, there are a few things that I remember was about the young boy or men's, all the organs just come out of his back and the dog was just waiting for him to die and eat his organ, right? And all the flies all over him.

• 44:38Speaker 07

  But he was still making this noise, and I was wondering, how can he make any sounds? And the last person I remember seeing was right before my escape was a, in the hospital. There was like piles of human bodies and the hospital just like put them there and there's a bathroom right next to it. I had to go through there to go to bathroom every day. And there's on top of all these human bodies is a woman was laying there in some flower pattern pants. But when you're dead, you're not a human, it's just, you're just empty beyond anything, you know, just empty.

• 45:17Speaker 07

  But she looked way more empty because her eyes just out, her mouth was open because the rats ate her eyes first. And I was just looking at that, I, you know, it's like, what it means even human? It just means nothing.

• 45:38Speaker 07

  I think somehow that scene keep comes back to my dream. Maybe that's the last thing I saw in North Korea, maybe that's why I cannot forget. But it's a, yeah, there's a lot of those. Say, the human life means nothing there.

• 45:56Shawn Ryan?

  What's the family?

• 45:59Shawn Ryan?

  I'll get to that in a minute.

• 46:02Shawn Ryan?

  So as far as controlling the people, we have starvation, propaganda, punishment, which is the prisons, controlling emotions, executions.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  On October 2nd.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Tom Cruise is.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 46:58Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 47:13Shawn Ryan?

  Have we missed anything?

• 47:15Speaker 07

  Uh...

• 47:16Shawn Ryan?

  Any strategies to control the people?

• 47:18Speaker 07

  As I said about making people criticize each other. So it's like a... Making people distrust each other. Breaking the tru... The tru... Bond of trust between your family, between your children. So first thing that they read, the regime did, they got rid of the word "love" or romance. That we cannot live for love. We have to live for the Revolutionary Party. So the parents cannot tell their children that they love their children. We don't tell our parents that we love them. Spouses don't tell each other they love each other. It's not a concept. We don't have the word for friend. I call my classmate comrade.

• 48:01Speaker 07

  Comradeship and friendship is a very different thing. Because when you're a comrade, you fight for the revolution. You're not being two individual friends.

• 48:10Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:12Speaker 07

  And then even at nine years old, every Saturday, if you are artist or somebody adult, you have to do it every two days. We have to come, entire class come together, and then we have to repent our sin for that week. Say, you know, I was not better revolutionary, I was being selfish, I was being individualistic, I did not fight better. And I will do better. Thank you, you know, dear leader, for forgiving me for my sin. And at the end, we have to do something called criticizing another person. This is a must. You cannot skip that part. So every classmates have to stand up and denounce somebody for their fault. Imagine you do that every week to human psychology.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 48:57Speaker 07

  Then you have to watch out for everybody, cause you don't know who's gonna criticize you. At the end of Saturday, if that criticism is bad, then your family get punished together with you. It's a life, life and death situation. So that makes sure that you're never going to trust anybody. And of course, you cannot start revolution if you don't trust anybody. And then also, you completely isolated. And it, that's how you watch out, even, you know, mice and birds and afraid. Nobody knows who's gonna watch you, and it happens with your parents. There are many cases that children will report on their parents.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Really?

• 49:39Speaker 07

  Because um, they reason promises, that's how you become a good revolutionary. But not only that, sometimes they tell children, I'm gonna give you food. If you report on anybody who's betraying our party, I'm gonna give you food. So some children are so starving. They, they go tell authority, like, I heard my mom was saying this, and then.

• 50:04Speaker 07

  The mom get executed.

• 50:06Shawn Ryan?

  How many people do you think get executed a year there?

• 50:09Speaker 07

  It's, nobody knows because now that the North Korean regime knows that we can watch it from satellites. And there's a lot of execution videos from satellite footage, so they do on inside the stadiums. So that's the hide, but at least there are several hundred thousand of them in the concentration camps. That the UN calculated based on those camp numbers and they can see even human body images now and parasites. So these are all visible now with the satellites.

• 50:42Shawn Ryan?

  What is a, what is something that? You're talking about it at school, they would force you to denounce a comrade. What is, what is an example of something you would denounce somebody for or criticize somebody for?

• 51:00Speaker 07

  It can be anything, say you can be, oh, that person, you know, said that maybe the, what, you know, the school material was not good. Or maybe like silly, you know, because there are so many propaganda materials. Or, oh, he, I went to his house one day, I saw his parents were watching foreign TV. Or I heard him one day that he was singing some foreign song. Or I saw him someday in a wrong outfit, like it can be anything.

• 51:34Shawn Ryan?

  So is, is everybody punished? When, if you denounce somebody, are they?

• 51:40Speaker 07

  Their family get punished along with that person.

• 51:42Shawn Ryan?

  So everybody gets punished?

• 51:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 51:44Shawn Ryan?

  All the time?

• 51:45Speaker 07

  Yeah. So you have to be paranoid, you have to be, you have to be so paranoid.

• 51:52Shawn Ryan?

  So what if somebody didn't see anything? Do you have to make something up?

• 51:58Speaker 07

  You have to see something, that's a thing. So that's why entire week, you watch your behavior, but you have to find the fault in others. Because you are forced to denounce. And I mean, imagine if you just lied, I mean, that person gonna say it's lie, right? So you have to find something all the time, who does wrong.

• 52:19Shawn Ryan?

  Have you been denounced?

• 52:20Speaker 07

  I have to be, I had to be, everybody had to be denounced and everybody had to be a. So things that I was denounced was like I was so little. So they give you quotas, like if we work in the farm, we have to sit in, right? And they say in one hour, you have to finish this much. So if one person fails to finish their quota on time, the teachers would beat entire children in the class. Because it's something called the collective guilt. They teach you that you're not an individual. They, the first thing in North Korea does to you is that you're not an individual, we don't have the word I. What matters is we, the collective.

• 53:04Speaker 07

  So if one person does wrong, it's not that person's fault, it's your fault, all of you. So that's how it's all about the collective guilt. Because you are not one single unit ever. And so I was, there are times that I couldn't finish the, all my quota on time. Then, of course, that was the subject of criticism.

• 53:26Shawn Ryan?

  What was the punishment?

• 53:28Speaker 07

  Beating.

• 53:29Shawn Ryan?

  Beating?

• 53:29Speaker 07

  And then, uh, make us to run and crawl on our school ground as much as you can and into midnight and give us extra work until like two AM in the morning. So a lot of beatings, a lot of punishing.

• 53:44Shawn Ryan?

  How would they beat you?

• 53:46Speaker 07

  Anything, because there is no human rights, so teachers, some of them are even sometimes come like drunk. They get, they are so starving, right? So they have this anger, then they are some psychopath, like literally bring these leather belts or like medals and there's very common, they break your bones and take your eyesight away. Like they throw anything, they have this medal, uh, like where you put those cigarettes in.

• 54:16Shawn Ryan?

  Aster.

• 54:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, asteroids, they can throw that at you, rocks at you, they can, they can kill you. And there's no accountability on anybody. So it's a.

• 54:27Speaker 07

  They do that, children. Constant beating, everyday beating. And that's the thing, they think somehow you need to train your children and your wife through beating. That's the saying.

• 54:41Speaker 07

  So if you're gonna train children and women, you have to beat them.

• 54:44Shawn Ryan?

  When, what age does it start, the denouncing?

• 54:48Speaker 07

  Around eight.

• 54:49Shawn Ryan?

  Eight years old?

• 54:50Speaker 07

  Yeah. It starts around eight. And beating starts as soon as one or two, even three months old. Because they never learn how to respect life.

• 55:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 07

  So throwing, literally a infant away, like when North Korean women get, I mean, we are gonna go back later, but they get raped in North Korea, send back, they, they kill the baby, right? So it's, killing a baby is not a big deal there.

• 55:17Shawn Ryan?

  It's not.

• 55:18Speaker 07

  No, killing a life is not, doesn't mean anything in this society.

• 55:22Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 55:25Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, um, that's some heavy stuff. Let's take a quick break.

• 55:30Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 55:30Shawn Ryan?

  And when we come back, let's talk about your journey on how you got out of there.

• 55:35Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:36Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 55:39Shawn Ryan?

  I want to take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Patron support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one-of-a-kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and support The Sean Ryan Show today.

• 56:01Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Yomi, we're back from the break. And I'm really, I am very curious about how you got out of North Korea. I know you got trafficked into China.

• 56:12Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:14Shawn Ryan?

  How did that happen?

• 56:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a... So it's like escaping from North Korea is very different than how other um immigrants escape. You know, we don't have a phone, we don't have a map, we don't have any idea. And the only clue I had about the outside world was seeing these lights, like coming out of China at nighttime, because I was living in the border town of North Korea. And that's my family and I had some clue that maybe they are better off over there. And if we go where the lights are, then we might find some bowl of rice.

• 56:55Shawn Ryan?

  So you actually had no idea that it might be better there? You were just, you saw electricity?

• 57:01Speaker 07

  We just guessed it.

• 57:02Shawn Ryan?

  And you thought, well, if they have electricity over there, then it must be better?

• 57:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 57:07Shawn Ryan?

  I saw on a documentary that one of the the satellites, if you look at North Korea over satellite, it's a big black

• 57:14Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 57:15Shawn Ryan?

  spot at nighttime.

• 57:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 57:17Shawn Ryan?

  Where you see South Korea has energy, China has energy, and then North Korea is just a black, it's just darkness.

• 57:25Speaker 07

  It's

• 57:25Shawn Ryan?

  Cause there is no electricity at night.

• 57:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's the darkest place in the world right now.

• 57:30Shawn Ryan?

  So you you saw electricity on the other side of the river?

• 57:34Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 57:34Shawn Ryan?

  And and that's all you had to go off of?

• 57:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, just go, let's go where the lights are, let's go, maybe if they we go there, we can find something to eat. And I was thirteen years old, I was something around fifty pounds, like very tiny, literally, you know, about to die from starvation. And my sister escaped first, and she left me a note saying that, go find this lady, she will help you to escape. And I went to to to her and she said she could help me to go to China. And she said, once you go to China, you will find your sister and everything will be okay. But we didn't really ask follow questions.

• 58:20Speaker 07

  And also at the time, it really didn't matter, cause if we didn't escape, you're not, you're going to die anyway. So there was no point of even asking, you know, why are you helping me for free?

• 58:31Shawn Ryan?

  So was there any fear at all, knowing you knowing now that the complete mind control, you had mentioned earlier that you thought that the state could actually read your mind?

• 58:41Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 58:42Shawn Ryan?

  That's how brainwashed you were?

• 58:43Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 58:44Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 58:46Shawn Ryan?

  Was there any fear knowing that? Or was it, I'm gonna die? So this, I'm either gonna die here and I'll chance it there?

• 58:55Speaker 07

  So this is the thing about like you, people having hard time to understand North Koreans, right? In some way, we are the most bizarrely innocent people. Because in North Korea, like, uh, we are never seen the bad news. Our news is all about victorious, better than our army is doing and how our modern nation is thriving under the communism and everything is wonderful. There is no news about rape. I did not even know the word rape. There's no word, like, news about, you know, escaping or anything bad. Right? So I was completely not understanding the bad things happening in the world. That if I were born here, I will understand.

• 59:41Speaker 07

  So just not knowing that how bad things can go wrong. That was not a concept for us. Cause we just did not, I mean, even though we were seeing executions, those things was not on the news, right? So we just did not understand that selling another human being was a thing. It was not a concept for me and we didn't even have the vocabulary for like human trafficking or even freedom was there, right? So I think that was the thing, just we did not understand anything at the time.

• 1:00:18Shawn Ryan?

  How fast did this situation develop?

• 1:00:21Speaker 07

  That morning, I found the lady and she said I could go that night.

• 1:00:25Shawn Ryan?

  It was that quick?

• 1:00:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, the same day.

• 1:00:27Shawn Ryan?

  So we're looking at twelve hours.

• 1:00:28Speaker 07

  And then my mother wanted to go home to tell my father that we are escaping. And that time, we didn't even the word escaping. It was not, we were just like going somewhere to find sister and... We knew that it was dangerous to get caught, but I did not even know the word escape was there. We were like, okay, we cannot get caught because the guards are gonna shoot us if they see us. Then I told my mom, we're gonna come back. I thought, I saw, oh, somehow going back there. I thought it was like temporarily, we go to China, we find the sister, we find food and come back home. So I told my mom, like, if you tell him, he's not gonna let us go, like, you cannot tell him that.

• 1:01:11Speaker 07

  And my mom was like, then I cannot go, I cannot leave him alone. I was like, I just had a feeling if I left my mom there that she's die from starvation. It's like, no, you have to come with me. So she so much trust me, who's thirteen years old, like younger, and she came with me. So we found, she introduced us to another guy, who was going to actually take us through that journey of crossing the river, because that journey is very dangerous and she couldn't do it herself. And we had to climb a lot of different like path of rocky mountains, and then found a spot that was least seen by the people. And I think they bribed the guard on that post of the guard.

• 1:01:57Speaker 07

  And we crossed the river through there.

• 1:01:59Shawn Ryan?

  Is the woman that helped you escape, is she North Korean?

• 1:02:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, she was North Korean.

• 1:02:04Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any idea how she made the connections to traffic people out?

• 1:02:09Speaker 07

  I heard that she initially sold her own daughters. And you would think it's a crazy thing to do as a mother. And if I were in North Korea, I would have done the same thing. Because that was the only way that I would ensure my child not dying from starvation, like. She, I heard she sold two twelve of her daughters to China. And then, at the time, she was pregnant. And I think at this point,

• 1:02:44Speaker 07

  she was, she rescued me. If she didn't sell me that, they'll be dead. And she, I heard she got executed after we left, and she got caught and authority executed her for that. So.

• 1:02:59Speaker 07

  Of course, the regime executes anybody, let them escape.

• 1:03:02Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:03Speaker 07

  But uh, that's how she got into the job. Cause she couldn't feed her children anymore. She had to find a way to make sure that her daughter lives. And that was the way she found that they, she had to send her daughter to China.

• 1:03:17Shawn Ryan?

  How did she make, how did she make the connections in China to sell her children?

• 1:03:22Speaker 07

  That I'm not sure, quite sure. But a lot of them now is impossible, but back then, the regime did not crack down on escaping as much. In the nineties, there's so many people dying from starvation. Even authorities could not track down who is dead, where. Like in North Korea, when we said goodbye to my mom when I was younger, like there's no guarantee I'm gonna see her again. Cause there's no call, there's no letter you can write, there's no email. If she goes out and she didn't find food that then died, that was it. Nobody, I will never ever see her again. So, so many people were lost like that, that regime just didn't care at the time. And Kim Jong-un thought,

• 1:04:07Speaker 07

  he did not think the defectors gonna escape and go to South Korea and then speaking out and exposing the regime that way. So he was like, yeah, if they wanna go, let them go, that's fine. And then they realized by the early two thousand, all the defectors go and then become spokesperson.

• 1:04:26Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:26Speaker 07

  Then they expose what's happening in, inside us. That's when they realized we need to crack down on the escaping.

• 1:04:32Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:33Speaker 07

  So that's why it became harder by two thousand, I think, three and I escaped two thousand seven.

• 1:04:39Shawn Ryan?

  What um, what did they, what measures did they take to make it harder to escape?

• 1:04:43Speaker 07

  Each year was different, like in the beginning, they would do, uh, build these fences. And then they add a high electrified wire fence. Right, like po- political prison camps, there's electrified wire fences.

• 1:04:56Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:56Speaker 07

  And then they would give the shoot to kill order for the guards with the machine guns. Like if you see anybody, just shoot them, don't like, like, you know, bother to catch them. And then they were asking China to help. China would install the facial recognition cameras. We'd electrify the wire fences again. Everywhere the cameras and Chinese guards on the other side. And then that was not enough, so burying the landmines entire through the border. And then they evacuated citizens out of the older border towns inside now. So they are bringing new measures now, there's completely facial recognition cameras, landmines, electrified fences, both China, both North Korea side,

• 1:05:40Speaker 07

  that it just became impossible to escape now.

• 1:05:43Shawn Ryan?

  So it's damn near impossible to get out of there now?

• 1:05:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, now nobody can escape.

• 1:05:49Speaker 07

  Nobody can get out of North Korea right now.

• 1:05:50Shawn Ryan?

  What does the border to South Korea look like?

• 1:05:53Speaker 07

  That's DMZ, that's mostly heavily militarized zone in the world.

• 1:05:58Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:05:59Speaker 07

  They buried, I mean, tons of landmines. I mean, there is any single thing gonna cause a war between, I mean, the war never ended, right? If they are taking a break. So, anything is a mini invasion, so that unless you're the guard that knows the path of invading the electrified wire fences and what time the electricity goes down, what time the post changing, and where the landmines are, unless you were there for like years, you not know that path. So the one soldier who was the border guard at DMZ and escaping, he got shot like something six times. So almost nobody can escape through that border.

• 1:06:44Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:06:47Shawn Ryan?

  So back to you, back to your story. So you're thirteen years old, correct?

• 1:06:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Shawn Ryan?

  And you get sold into...

• 1:06:56Speaker 07

  Sex slave.

• 1:06:56Shawn Ryan?

  Sex slavery.

• 1:06:57Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:06:59Shawn Ryan?

  Is it only women that escape?

• 1:07:02Speaker 07

  Most of them are women, because a, women are more in demand.

• 1:07:09Speaker 07

  They are men, men are sold for as a forced labor, so they are like livestock. They let them sleep with their pigs and cows and horses in the barn. And give them bare minimum food. And then they make them to do the most dangerous labor, like, you know, cutting the big woods. Like the mining and those kind of wood and then they use the men's labor like that. But women's is more lucrative because they can sell us more higher price. And a lot of organ harvesting, they buy us for our organs.

• 1:07:46Shawn Ryan?

  China buys you for organ harvesting?

• 1:07:49Speaker 07

  And they buy us as a prostitute, so they put us in a brothels, in a room. There's no rights and they just put you in the room and get you raped like sometimes, I heard like five hundred times. And they eventually, you eventually die after six months, you cannot take it anymore and you die, then they buy a new girl. And let her be raped and die. And some of them like me are being sold to another trafficker and my mom was sold for a man. In a farming town who was like mentally not stable. And they buy them as fake wives, as sex slaves. And if you are lucky, you get only raped by your supposedly husband.

• 1:08:34Speaker 07

  But a lot of times, your cousins, fathers, father-in-law, then the whole town men rape you around.

• 1:08:41Shawn Ryan?

  The whole town?

• 1:08:43Speaker 07

  A whole town, they raise money and buy one girl and then rape around and if she dies, they bring another girl. Or like entire family, brothers buy the girl and then share. It's just sex toy they buy.

• 1:08:59Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, that is really, um.

• 1:09:04Shawn Ryan?

  How did you get trafficked?

• 1:09:08Speaker 07

  In some sense, uh, they sold my mother first. And she gave, charged her for sixty-five dollars.

• 1:09:19Shawn Ryan?

  They, they, your, they sold your mother for sixty-five dollars?

• 1:09:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, in the twenty-first century. And, I mean, they were negotiating our, like, price right in front of us. Like, they make us to turn around and check our bodies and, and they realized I was a virgin. So, that was valuable, because I was some perverted man love child virginity. So, they sold me over, like, twenty dollars, separate from my mom. And then, uh, there's a human trafficker rings, right? Each trafficker makes more money on top of you, make the margins on you. So, North Korean traffickers sold me, and this Chinese first trafficker selling me to the second trafficker. And that trafficker was a Han Chinese who bought me, his name is Hongwei.

• 1:10:08Speaker 07

  He decided to kill me, he wanted me for himself, for his mistress. And these traffickers are like, in some sense, like kings, right? They have a lot of mistresses, because they can afford it. I mean, if you can afford money to buy these girls, you can have, like, literally theoretically even ten thousand of them if you want to. So, he had a lot of mistress before me, and he have sex with them, and he get bored, and he sell them to a guy. Right, like, that was the thing, it's like, okay, he buys a girl, he gets sick, then he sells her to another farmer or another bother, whoever give them the most money.

• 1:10:50Speaker 07

  And then he wanted to do that with me, so initially, he wanted to play with me and keep me as his mistress. And, and he somehow, that was very...

• 1:11:03Speaker 07

  Very knew that by the time of this is by the time the North Korean uh trafficker that guy and Chinese trafficker, then by that time is a third line of trafficking. So a lot of them do not keep virginity. By then, they are all get raped.

• 1:11:19Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:11:19Speaker 07

  And they do not keep that virginity. So he was amused, like this is actually for the first time I got somebody who kept their virginity to this line. Like, how did you do that? And luckily, I was with my mom, with a Chinese broker. And when he was trying to rape me, my mother offered her. And then after that, the guy trying to rape me, I I felt like hell. I don't know what strength came out of me, I felt like hell. Cause I was ready to die, I was gonna kill myself if he raped me. And he thought, okay, if she kills herself, and literally she's crazy right now, then I cannot make any money out of her. So for him, okay, then I I need to make money out of her.

• 1:11:59Shawn Ryan?

  This is this, this is the third iteration?

• 1:12:02Speaker 07

  This is a.

• 1:12:03Shawn Ryan?

  For the first iteration?

• 1:12:04Speaker 07

  This is a Chinese broker.

• 1:12:06Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:12:07Shawn Ryan?

  The fir- so you went to, so you were sold to one trafficker.

• 1:12:10Speaker 07

  So from North Korea to.

• 1:12:10Shawn Ryan?

  Then that trafficker sold you to the next.

• 1:12:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Shawn Ryan?

  He decided to keep you as a mistress.

• 1:12:15Speaker 07

  So there's a North Korean trafficker, there's a woman. And then the guy who crossing the river for us, that's North Korean too. And then from there, the first trafficker was Chinese, uh Korean ethnic Chinese. And then he sold to, sold to another broker, with my mother at the time. And he sold my mom separately, and he kept me to rape me.

• 1:12:36Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:37Speaker 07

  And there I was, I lost my mind, I was so fighting hard. And then he sold me to another trafficker, that was the third guy, that was Han Chinese. That's when uh he, he decided to keep me. And then I was kill myself, I was gonna try to kill myself. And he said, if you become my mistress, I'm gonna help you to find your family. Cause he was on sort of my mother to a Chinese farmer. So he knew where my mom was, like this is one day.

• 1:13:08Speaker 07

  It's a miracle, like he bought me and then he showed me like this thing called a phone. Like I've never seen a cellphone in my life. And he was like, do you have ever seen a phone? I was like, of course, I've never seen a phone. But he was saying things in Chinese. And then like he's like this thing can take pictures. So he was taking pictures and then showed me on the album like, do you see this thing can do a lot of things more than like speaking? And in the pictures, I see my mom's photo.

• 1:13:39Speaker 07

  And then I was like, this is mama, mama, it's like my, my mother, my mama. And then that's when he knew the woman that he just saw was my mother. And uh, yeah, so it's, it, and obviously he related to my mom too. And then he wanted Mina. So he said, if I become his mistress, he was going to buy my mom back from the farmer that he just sawed. And then he was going to help me find my sister and help me get my sick father out of North Korea. So I made a deal with this devil. And with some miracle, he kept his promise.

• 1:14:23Speaker 07

  He did bring my mom back to me. And then he brought my sick father to me, to China.

• 1:14:29Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think he fell in love with you?

• 1:14:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think he did. I think he did, yeah.

• 1:14:34Shawn Ryan?

  Let's backtrack for just a second. So when you get trafficked, or when you get sold to the, the Chinese farmer or the next trafficker?

• 1:14:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, true.

• 1:14:43Shawn Ryan?

  How many, what does that setting look like?

• 1:14:48Speaker 07

  It's a, uh, from the, when we get to Chinese side of riverbank. This guy brought the blankets.

• 1:15:00Speaker 07

  And then asking me to take off your clothes, cause I'm gonna like have sex with you. And like I've never knew what the world of sex, and this is a dark in the river bank. And there might be guards going around, and these guys like animals, right? And my mom was like, what are you talking about? She just had a surgery, like. And so you know I have to have her, like then, so you could then take me. So that's when she got raped. And then, there was a car was waiting on the, this is a riverbank and up is a road somewhere. So he, I think, called somebody and then some car came. So we went up that riverbank up and we got into this a car truck.

• 1:15:44Speaker 07

  So, and then in truck, I was, I was not, I never been in a car, had a seat car like that. I been in a car a few times that was a, where like there's no roof. Where like all the, the car like coming out, you know, not like modern car. So I was having this massive car sick. But my mother would asking me to look at North Korea, cause North Korea is completely dark. And I could see the apartment that my father was in that night. And she told me, look at, look at it, it, it might be the last time you see your hometown again. And it was the my last time see my hometown again.

• 1:16:25Speaker 07

  And then that car would take to the apartment that he was in. And then we go inside this apartment.

• 1:16:36Speaker 07

  I remember a floor, but in North Korea it's all cement floor. That broken, but his home actually had a wooden floor. I've never seen that in my life, like that, like it's a wooden floor and had electricity. It's at nighttime, his home had electricity. And then there was a lady in the bed. And she was telling us that in China, we had to be sold as slaves. And if you don't want, you can go back to North Korea. But like, how do you go back to North Korea? I mean, even the guard don't catch us. That means we still dying from starvation. There's no way going back. Mm hmm. But we still have to stay in China.

• 1:17:18Speaker 07

  Then they called somebody and the second trafficker came, really his mistress. And she was another North Korean woman like me. So she was came like me, but that man kept her to become his mistress. And then, uh, that was a guy was checking our bodies. And to negotiating the price with this guy. You know, how much he would willing to give for my mom and myself.

• 1:17:49Speaker 07

  And then from that house, uh, we cannot stay in the border time long because the authorities keep going by. Around, it was a lot of snow. It was, uh, March twenty sixth. No, March thirty. That's the my, they my sister sister escaped, March twenty sixth and March thirtieth, we are escaping. And, uh, that day was a lot of snow. And then five, around five AM, he wanted to take us to, the second broker wanted to take us his car. So he was asking us to come down from the building and meet him in the car. And then when we go go down from the stairs.

• 1:18:31Speaker 07

  This trafficker, trafficker would stop my mom in the hallway. And he took her pants off and he just raping her there. Oh, man. And, and I think, I was like mixed up. I think somehow I blocked that off. And later, my mom, when I was writing my first book, she was saying that was like two separate events. And that's actually when I really saw it. Because in the riverbank, I couldn't see much and I just heard it. And that's when my mom was asking me to turn around and cover my ears. And, and then, well, after that rape, they, we they would press in the car again, another car.

• 1:19:13Speaker 07

  And there, uh, another lady joined, three of us in the back. And then. The car was going all the way to Changchun, like, inside China. So it's a lot of hiding in car and just moving as fast as you can because we can get caught.

• 1:19:34Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is...

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 1:19:48Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:19:54Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what...

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:20:01Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 1:20:08Shawn Ryan?

  How are you dealing with all this now?

• 1:20:11Speaker 07

  Oh, well, I feel like I had many different lives, you know, at this point. Lived through a lot of lives, but I think I'm just grateful, you know? None of that killed me, and I was able to see the world that was a lot more than this. So I think because I saw it, I can be a lot be more grateful now. That I can be a lot happier with the little things these days.

• 1:20:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Speaker 07

  So in some ways, I guess it's a blessing.

• 1:20:47Speaker 07

  I mean, how I look at it is a blessing. At least for me, that's how I decided to look at it.

• 1:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go back to when you became this trafficker's mistress.

• 1:20:58Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:20:59Shawn Ryan?

  The guy who... How were you treated at that point?

• 1:21:04Speaker 07

  A lot of beating because I was fighting to be. Even after initial rape, it was very painful. It was really painful, and I thought my body was getting split out of it. And then I felt the shame. I felt so dirty. I was like... Like, you know, rub myself till I was a little bit like constantly in the shower afterwards, it was so shameful. So, he, he would beat me to get out of that. And I was constantly like, how can I just die, you know, I cannot end this.

• 1:21:47Speaker 07

  But the only thing was, he was saying, I'm gonna bring your mom. But like, bring my mom was not gonna happen in one day. Even after the first rape, he had to go back and negotiate the price with my mom. Because he sold my mom. And this farmer's not gonna sell my mom for the same price. They wanna try make more money out of it. Uh huh. So they had to negotiate the price and it took several months. And I think during that time was very hard because and then during that time, he had to go buy other girls to sell them. So during that time, he would lock me in the apartment.

• 1:22:27Speaker 07

  And I cannot go outside, the door is locked from the outside, many doors. And even the window is has a gates in. And I was in apartment for, I don't know, fifteen days by myself. Like, I don't even know how many days, because there's no clock. And only thing I see is the sunrise and goes down. But I cannot even turn the lights on, because other people can see and police can come in. So

• 1:22:56Speaker 07

  I, I don't know how many days I was in the apartment alone. A lot of times, he would lock the door and go and come back. But he would buy me some food. And he'd go and, and sometimes his travel gets delayed. Then he did not buy enough food for me to eat. So, uh, I always have some days. I think he, he only thought he was gonna be gone for like a, a week. But that time he was gone for many, many days, because he had to send this girl to Shandong is a different, different, um, state. And Shandong is a very poor town, so a lot of farmers cannot find wife. They buy North Korean girls. So he had to take these girls, takes almost like several days get there.

• 1:23:40Speaker 07

  And then negotiating the price, looking for the man. And it takes many days, so.

• 1:23:48Speaker 06

  I ate the food quickly, because I thought it's me seven days. And I had to be hungry many, many days afterwards. So afterwards, I was always like still be very conservative how I split the food until it comes.

• 1:24:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's so interesting. I completely forgot a lot, a lot about this.

• 1:24:12Speaker 06

  But eventually my mom came and

• 1:24:17Speaker 06

  I think that was like hope for me, like I listened to got one percent of it. And I had my father to save and my sister safe, so.

• 1:24:27Speaker 06

  After my mom came, that was much better, I think.

• 1:24:32Shawn Ryan?

  How was that when you're, well, describe that, that exact moment when you

• 1:24:38Speaker 06

  See my mom?

• 1:24:38Shawn Ryan?

  were reunited with your mother?

• 1:24:40Speaker 06

  Oh, we, I saw in a cornfield by then it was, I was really with her by like uh April first, right? This is now in almost the harvest time or maybe hot, hot summer day. They, I met her in the middle of the cornfield because we couldn't see the authority and she was sort of this farmer, so I had to go there. And she saw away from, she saw me far away, but she did not think that was me because I became a different person. She thought like I just became adult.

• 1:25:19Speaker 06

  So until it came close, she didn't say my name. She just thought like someone was strange woman standing there. And she saw me like few meters and then she just broke in tears. And the first thing she did was give me a pee back because until that moment I was her baby. So she was like, how much my baby has grown and she was give me pee back. I was like, I'm not a baby anymore. I've been raped. You know, I'm not a kid.

• 1:25:55Speaker 06

  And I feel so awkward that she was treating me like a kid out of nowhere. For her, like, a few months ago, I was a little kid in North Korea, sitting on that. And in North Korea, we don't have separate rooms. I was always sleeping next to her at nighttime. And she was just, she couldn't believe it, how much changed in a few months of time for both of us.

• 1:26:22Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:26:23Speaker 06

  And I think from that point, I became her husband. Cause I was speaking Chinese and she didn't. So she had to rely on literally everything on me. Cause she couldn't even say, I want water, I wanna go to bathroom. So I had to translate everything for her.

• 1:26:45Speaker 06

  And to this day, I'm like, almost like her husband that she lost. It's a, our dynamic forever changed from that point on.

• 1:26:55Shawn Ryan?

  How did the, what was the, what was the man's name who purchased you, the trafficker?

• 1:27:02Speaker 06

  Hongmi.

• 1:27:04Shawn Ryan?

  How did he treat your mother when he, when he purchased her again?

• 1:27:10Speaker 06

  I think it was awkward because he raped her a lot.

• 1:27:16Speaker 06

  And

• 1:27:19Speaker 06

  um

• 1:27:22Speaker 06

  it, I mean, how do you deal with that?

• 1:27:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:26Speaker 06

  But

• 1:27:29Speaker 06

  he

• 1:27:29Shawn Ryan?

  Did he allow you and your mother to communicate on a regular basis? Were you guys together a lot, or did he have to keep you separated?

• 1:27:37Speaker 06

  I mean, the days he wanted to rape me, he would take me away. And he was sleeping with all these girls that he was buying. So it was like, in a way, I was lucky, he didn't need me every day, you know? And he was going on these trips for a month that he had to go sell these girls. But that's when he also raped all these girls, like every one of them. Like, literally, that's a ceremony, you know, whenever you get a new girl. That's the day you rape these girls. And you, on the other broker buys you, that's the day you get raped. Like, every single person buys you, that's when you get raped many, many times. And they just rape in the car, they rape you on the street.

• 1:28:20Speaker 06

  Even the farmland, they take you to the cornfield and they rape you there.

• 1:28:24Speaker 07

  It's, I never knew it was that many ways you could rape somebody, like. There's no dignity, there's no like privacy, like if they. At least I was this law bonds, like he's called law bond, the boss's wife. But these girls who gone and there's no dignity if this guy's wanna rape you, he's rape you in front of everybody. Like there's nothing they do to protect you in any way. And so, at least he becoming more respectful towards me. Initially, he was hitting me.

• 1:29:05Speaker 07

  And he was treating me like all other girls that he's been treating. And somehow, by some miracle, he was falling more in love with me every day. And he was looking for ways to divorce his Chinese wife, who he had two children with. His just daughter was one year younger than me and he wanted to actually marry me and wanna have a child with me. So, he became more protective of me in that way. So, he became more uh, becoming nice to my mother.

• 1:29:45Speaker 07

  But then, after one year passes, he becoming addicted to gambling. And, and then when he brought my father, that's when my father was very sick. And by then, he had enough of me, right, like, so the beating starts again. And threatening starts again. And my father passes away and one less burden for him. And then, he would not even give enough money to buy any food from my mom anymore. Like, in China, I couldn't even buy her like water. Because in the apartment, if you don't pay the like money, the water stops.

• 1:30:27Speaker 07

  So before the water cut off, I learned the way to turn the tap just a little bit. So, one tap, tap, tap drops entire night and we get the one bucket of water for that week. And the meter stops before we stop, cuz he stopped paying for the money. And eventually, I had to sell my mom because I could find her any, any food in China.

• 1:30:51Speaker 06

  So I sold her to another farmer. And then with that money, he spent just one evening for gambling. He spent all that money.

• 1:31:03Speaker 06

  And I had to run away from him because he was couldn't feed me. And then I got kidnapped by another gangster. And this gangster was a lot darker than Hongmei. He, this gangster actually kills people.

• 1:31:20Speaker 06

  He, that's his job, like killing people and. Uh, I eventually got, like ran away from him too.

• 1:31:29Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go back for just a minute.

• 1:31:31Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:31:31Shawn Ryan?

  Your dad passed away.

• 1:31:32Speaker 06

  Um, two thousand eight, he passed away in February.

• 1:31:38Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about that. How did he pass?

• 1:31:41Speaker 06

  He got to China on my birthday, October tenth of two thousand seven. And then he was already very, very sick. Because he was tortured so much in the prison camp. He had a colon cancer. Because he was eating rocks. I mean, he was eating soap. I mean, he was eating the things that human beings should never eat. And that was the only way he could survive. So. He, uh, he passed away a few months later in China.

• 1:32:12Speaker 06

  So.

• 1:32:14Shawn Ryan?

  Did you get to have a funeral?

• 1:32:17Speaker 06

  No, I think. The way I keep trying to push this thing is that.

• 1:32:25Speaker 06

  Because even though he's my hero to this day, but. It was so hard to take care of him in China that. We were in some sense waiting for him to die. Because.

• 1:32:40Speaker 06

  He was becoming, becoming more delirious as the time goes by and the pain is so much. And he sometimes forgets that even in China and he wants to keep going to back North Korea. He wants to keep, I'm only buried in North Korea next to my father and my homeland.

• 1:33:00Speaker 06

  And I couldn't do that for him. I could not take him to North Korea. There's no way I could do that. And then, uh, Hongmei was very frustrated because my father, he thought if we bring him, he could make my father as a forced labor and make money out of him.

• 1:33:18Speaker 06

  But he was too sick to do any work. So, um, he was, he was tired feeding him and taking care of him. So, a lot of just beating on me, just getting it out of me.

• 1:33:34Shawn Ryan?

  He was frustrated with him, so he would take it out on you?

• 1:33:37Speaker 06

  So, I couldn't mourn his death. I couldn't even feel anything for him. I was just, I was barely surviving. So, he, when he passed away, doctors said he was going to live six months. I'm like, oh my god, take care of me for six months. You know, I cannot even do one day a day. And he passed away just four months afterwards. And in some sense, I heard, when I was not there,

• 1:34:10Speaker 06

  my mom had to give him a lot of pills to accelerate the process. And my mom's, my dad's mom didn't wanna die. Unlike me, he did not wanna die. He thought life was a gift, that you have to keep fighting for it. And I could understand, like, how do you fight for life when your life is, means this little, you know? Time was so much easier that time, so I couldn't get it, but somehow he still thought life was gift.

• 1:34:42Speaker 06

  And he passed away and buried ashes in the middle of night when everybody was sleeping. And that was the end of his life.

• 1:34:52Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry to hear that. You had to, you had to hide the, the funeral, the ceremony?

• 1:34:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's no, no such a thing. It's a, we are fugitives. We cannot, we can't even cry because we cannot, other people see us, hearing us. So, we had to be as discreet as possible.

• 1:35:16Shawn Ryan?

  So moving forward.

• 1:35:17Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:18Shawn Ryan?

  You're with the new trafficker who murders people.

• 1:35:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:35:23Shawn Ryan?

  What happened there?

• 1:35:26Speaker 07

  A lot of beating and a lot of threatening. He had like nine harams with him. And.

• 1:35:35Shawn Ryan?

  Nine what?

• 1:35:36Speaker 07

  Nine girl harams. They were Chinese actually and this guy was so. It was in fifties or sixties guy. I'm like fourteen years old. He somehow has so much money and that's why he was having this nine Chinese mistresses, right? That means he's really wealthy. I mean, most Chinese guy can't even find one girl for them. He got nine of them were these teenage girls.

• 1:36:06Speaker 07

  And these girls were so happy to be with him even. Uh, he somehow, none of them could give him a son. And he took me to this fortune teller who was blind old man in a man, like some elderly home. He took me there. And then like, do you see a future, like a son in her future? And he says, yes. I mean, so apparently I have my son now in America, but maybe that's the son he saw, right?

• 1:36:37Speaker 07

  Life is so crazy. So he sees my son in his future. It's like, yeah, I totally see a very healthy young boy in her life. And he says, you should definitely keep her. She's gonna give you a son.

• 1:36:54Speaker 07

  And then this guy becomes obsessed. He demands that I give him a son. And

• 1:37:04Speaker 07

  it's, it's scary. It's, it, it, every day he says, you, you are less valuable than a pig. You know, I can kill you in this part and nobody gonna do anything to me. So you better do whatever I say, tell you. And I was, I started from my mom again. She was now the farmer that I sold her to. I want to see my mom and he would not let me. So. At the time, Hongwei was fighting to get me back. And then Hongwei was said, I'm gonna give my life for this. Like, are you willing to die for Yeonmi? And he's like, no, why are you talking about? Why would you die for a girl? You know, they are so, you can just buy them. They are so replaceable.

• 1:37:48Speaker 07

  And this gangster eventually realized, I'm just not, it's just not worth of me to fight this much to keep her. So he's, he's so much, and then I told him, if you just let me go see my mom, I'm gonna come back to you. Like, just let me go see my mom once. And he got convinced, so he had enough trust with me. At the time that I was faking it, like, just trust me, I'm gonna see, come back to, to see my mom and come back to you. Why would I not wanna be with you? You're this powerful man, like, every woman wanna be with you, you know? And he said, okay, that logically makes sense, because all these girls wanna give a child to him, because he was gonna buy them the most expensive apartment and life secured for them.

• 1:38:31Speaker 07

  So when he let me go, I took that bus and go see my mom. I threw that phone away, because I knew that he planted, you know, he was working with the police to track all these girls. The police is corrupt. So I threw the phone and I ran away with my mom. And I found the Hongwei bag. And then there, we found a lady told us that there's a way we can get a shelter, which means we had to join a sex chat room. Where is, it's not actual prostitution, no man comes there, rape you, but you are in front of a cam and computer, and you show your body.

• 1:39:16Speaker 07

  But if you do that, then they're going to give you a place to sleep and eat.

• 1:39:22Speaker 07

  And we, I was begging to go, like, washing dishes in the restaurants during that time. I was like, just let me work, like, I can wash dishes, I can do anything, just give me a job, like, I don't even need to get paid, just give us some place to sleep and eat. And they wouldn't give us any of that job in China. So, only place we can go for is another, this kind of dark world.

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:39:48Speaker 07

  And that's how we joined the chatroom.

• 1:39:51Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 1:39:56Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, how did you get out of that?

• 1:39:59Speaker 07

  Uh, in this chatroom,

• 1:40:03Speaker 07

  the clients were South Koreans. Because South Koreans were worthier than Chinese. So they would, for them to spend like, five dollar membership to see a live person performing any sex, sex acts they want is much more thrilling than watching a just boring porn. So a lot of South Korean men would just pay money to come and chat with these girls and ask them to show their body. And, and because the economic power is very different. So for them, this was not a lot of money for them. And then, in this chatroom, we met another North Korean woman.

• 1:40:45Speaker 07

  And she somehow got in touch with some missionaries from South Korea who are rescuing North Koreans. And she said she was too afraid to go herself because the chance of making was one percent. Because the path was walking across Gobi Desert into Mongolia. And most of people die there, you don't make it. So she was just too afraid to make that decision by herself. So she was asking, would you come with us? Because it was my mom and myself and her, three of us now. Because it's better than going alone. And we spoke with the missionaries over the phone and that was for the first time. Somebody felt bad for us.

• 1:41:29Speaker 07

  We told them about like how we lost our sister. And they said, I'm so sorry to hear that, I'm gonna pray for her. And we thought maybe we can trust these people. Like, you know, like there was never, nobody ever prayed for us. Nobody ever said like, I'm so sorry you're going through this. And this missionary who never met us, who doesn't even know, know our name, said, I'm so sorry that you're going through it. And if you believe in God, he will take care of it. And you can come out of this. So, we decided to join the missionaries from there.

• 1:42:08Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know what God was?

• 1:42:10Speaker 07

  No, I did not know, I did not, I actually... I was, I just laughed because as a North Korean who believed that having no problem that Kim Myeong Son was my god, it was just bizarre to me that they were believing exact same thing that I believe, just the names were different. You know, just they switched Kim Myeong Son to god and Kim Jong Un to Jesus. Literally same ten commitments there. Like, I just thought it's another weird world that I was in. The only difference was that these people were not rapists. Were not trying to make money out of us. They were just doing it to glorifying their god.

• 1:42:52Speaker 07

  They thought that god wanted to North Korean people to know who he was. And that's what they were giving their life to. So, I thought, what these weird people. You know, you believe something you don't see and come to this dangerous land and rescuing people like us for, in the name of god. And, and then at the time, it's honestly, it didn't matter if they asked me to believe in a rock, I would have believed in. Because I was that desperate, you know. It was, it wasn't even me trying to pretend. When you desperate, you can believe in an air. You can believe in a hair, like,

• 1:43:32Speaker 07

  if somebody tells you, if you believe in this thing, you're gonna be safe, you're gonna believe that as, as hard as you can. So, I became a believer. That my mom became a believer and we studied the bible for several months there.

• 1:43:48Shawn Ryan?

  Immediately.

• 1:43:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, the first day, they asked us to repeat and the prayer that to be saved by Jesus. His, his sacrifice and they said, now you're Christians, that now you are god's people and you are saved. And now your life is on him and he's gonna take care of you.

• 1:44:09Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting that you found faith that quickly, especially considering everything that you had been through in North Korea and in China and...

• 1:44:18Speaker 07

  I lost it in South Korea. I think in China was just out of desperation.

• 1:44:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:24Speaker 07

  It's, you know, at the time, that was the only option for me to be saved.

• 1:44:29Shawn Ryan?

  How many, if you had an estimation, how many times do you think you were raped?

• 1:44:41Speaker 06

  Not, not count.

• 1:44:42Shawn Ryan?

  Hundreds?

• 1:44:47Speaker 06

  I've not a lot of count.

• 1:44:48Shawn Ryan?

  I understand.

• 1:44:49Speaker 06

  Definitely a lot, definitely it's not something that I can count, but

• 1:44:56Speaker 06

  a lot. But I don't know, it's just, as a rape victim, you keep saying, I'm not dirty, you know? It's like, I'm not dirty, but you always feel that you feel like dirty. And I think it's a lot of times, North Korea, we cannot come out with their stories because of this.

• 1:45:17Shawn Ryan?

  Because?

• 1:45:17Speaker 06

  This process somehow that you are the fourth, that you can never be like somebody else that was pure and clean and

• 1:45:29Speaker 06

  I just even thinking about it, if my son sees this someday, he's gonna think of me dirty, that's makes me afraid.

• 1:45:38Shawn Ryan?

  I think he would be very proud of you.

• 1:45:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, I hope so.

• 1:45:41Shawn Ryan?

  I think he would be extremely proud of his mom.

• 1:45:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:45Shawn Ryan?

  For everything that you've been through and what you're doing now and, and it's, you are a walking miracle.

• 1:45:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, I am.

• 1:45:54Shawn Ryan?

  Do you realize that?

• 1:45:55Speaker 06

  I do, I'm very lucky.

• 1:45:57Shawn Ryan?

  The only reason I asked that question is I wanted to show the severity of what you'd been through. And, and in the miracle on how fast you were able to find some sort of faith in, in a higher power or God.

• 1:46:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a

• 1:46:18Speaker 06

  it's a lot. You, it's not

• 1:46:24Speaker 06

  they just treat you like a toy, so it's, they need to go through a lot and one thing I am grateful is that I was bought by the boss, so I didn't get thrown around like most of people do.

• 1:46:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 06

  That if you get just bought by even a normal farmer, you, it's not just one person that'll do that to you. Everybody can do that to you.

• 1:46:50Shawn Ryan?

  How did?

• 1:46:53Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it sounds like so when you went to South Korea, you felt compassion and love and a lot of good emotions that probably you've never felt

• 1:47:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:04Shawn Ryan?

  ever in your entire life. What I mean, what did that?

• 1:47:10Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel to you?

• 1:47:13Shawn Ryan?

  It being able to express your emotions and and I don't know if you felt happiness yet, or I don't know if you felt love yet, but

• 1:47:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:23Shawn Ryan?

  what did it feel like to?

• 1:47:27Shawn Ryan?

  I mean,

• 1:47:29Shawn Ryan?

  to have compassion towards you, did it? Did it? I mean, you'd never experienced any compassion towards you whatsoever up until this point.

• 1:47:38Speaker 06

  Hmm, I think I only felt that in America.

• 1:47:42Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't feel it in South Korea?

• 1:47:43Speaker 06

  No, because South Korea was very not forgiving country. I could not talk about my human trafficking experience there because no sane man would marry me and who would have a child with me. And no, no more mother in law is not accept me as their, you know, South Korea is very traditional conservative society. And my dream was always being a mother. I always as a child, I don't know, I always want to be a mother. And I, I couldn't, in South Korea, there's no chance of me ever being married to some normal respectable man if I had a past. So I couldn't talk about that.

• 1:48:26Speaker 06

  And also, life in South Korea wasn't that easy because when we get there, they say like we are very competitive country. And North Koreans don't have a scared side. We don't speak English. We don't know what computer is like. We don't know, we don't have any education. And we cannot even work as the waitress because our accent is from north. So they don't even give you a job at the bakery. You cannot even serve dishes at the restaurant. It's hard to find a job. Like in my North Korean girlfriends, they come to America, they find job easily. They work in the elder care. They work in the nail salon. They don't care you speak the broken English as long as you wanna work hard, they give you a job.

• 1:49:12Speaker 06

  Not in South Korea.

• 1:49:15Speaker 07

  They they don't rape you because police gonna come after you but because we have accent. And we are, as you can see, a lot smaller than them and so they don't give us jobs easily and it's very hard to find any job there.

• 1:49:31Shawn Ryan?

  Who was teaching religion then?

• 1:49:35Shawn Ryan?

  The Bible?

• 1:49:36Speaker 07

  In South Korea, they, a lot of them are Christians, but the country are not like America is multicultural, they are not used to outsiders and the only people they respect are the wealthy white people, you know, it's like French Americans who are come, then they're fine, but if you come from Vietnam, Laos, or North Korea, good countries are poorer than them, they definitely discriminate.

• 1:50:02Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:50:03Speaker 07

  So it's definitely based on economic power they do.

• 1:50:08Shawn Ryan?

  Well, when you got there, so missionaries saved you from South Korea. So what, what, where did they put you when you got to South Korea?

• 1:50:19Speaker 07

  No, so they don't put us in, missionaries would put us in the shelter in Qingdao region in China. And then after we study Bible for several months, then they send us to walk across the desert.

• 1:50:33Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:50:34Speaker 07

  So we cross the desert ourselves, they don't come with us, it's too dangerous, the chance of making so low, so they would say give us a compass, like you go and cross like eight wire fences, you might reach Chin- I mean, North Mongolia. Then if you get discovered by a Mongolian guards, tell them that you are North Korean and wanna go to South Korea.

• 1:50:58Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:50:58Speaker 07

  But chance of you get discovered by Mong- Chinese soldiers is very high. There are wire fences, electrified fences, and wild animals, and it's minus forty degrees cold. It's, most of them don't make it, that's why they don't cross the Mongolia path, usually they all go through Taiwan, Thailand.

• 1:51:19Shawn Ryan?

  How did you make it across?

• 1:51:21Speaker 07

  Walking. We walked.

• 1:51:23Shawn Ryan?

  How long?

• 1:51:24Speaker 07

  Uh, just one day because it, some summer month, they walk even month or days, but usually we picked the most coldest time. So guards wouldn't think that somebody would be this crazy enough to cross the border right now.

• 1:51:39Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:51:40Speaker 07

  So it was like minus forty degrees and like even, you breathe becomes ice cream, so cold.

• 1:51:46Shawn Ryan?

  So you wait for the worst weather conditions?

• 1:51:48Speaker 07

  Because that's the least Thai security. Otherwise, if it's the summertime, this border hanging out everywhere, they're gonna shoot you. They're not gonna let you cross the border. So we chose a time and we crossed that, that, uh, distance was the shortest distance between the Gobi Desert.

• 1:52:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Well, let's take a, let's take another short break and then when we come back, we'll talk about your journey to the United States.

• 1:52:16Speaker 07

  Great.

• 1:52:16Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 1:52:20Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 1:52:42Shawn Ryan?

  All right, we're back from the break. You have

• 1:52:48Shawn Ryan?

  seen probably more trauma than anybody that's sat in that chair. And I don't know how much you know about this show, but it's a lot of combat veterans and a lot of special operations guys. And we talk about, we talk a lot about healing after the traumas of war. I've not heard anything that comes close to what you've experienced.

• 1:53:14Shawn Ryan?

  So before we get into, um, come into the United States, how, how, I'm curious, because I don't want to run out of time on this portion. How are you, how are you processing all this? How are you, are you going to therapy? Have you looked at psychedelics? Have you looked at, I mean, how do you get through it all?

• 1:53:36Speaker 07

  I think mental strength is a

• 1:53:44Speaker 07

  it can be exercised, so even like just not talking about it was very hard cuz I know I'm traumatized, right? cuz like it's irrational that I'm gonna worry about my son is going to not think of me as a good person, but I think my strength is always coming from I'm in a position can't talk about this, but there are people actually living through what I went through.

• 1:54:12Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:54:13Speaker 07

  And sometimes even a lot worse. And I think that knowledge give me strength to keep speaking up.

• 1:54:21Shawn Ryan?

  So you're finding your strength for speaking for the oppressed?

• 1:54:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, for those speakers, I know what it feels to go through that terror, like

• 1:54:32Speaker 07

  I'm in a place that people are so good, they talk about trauma, you know? Like in North Korea, we don't even have that as a concept. And I'm in a place, there's therapy, but

• 1:54:45Speaker 07

  actual people who go through this darkness, they don't even know what that is. It's just every day is a torture and terror, so yeah, if I can't even talk about it, I mean, what can I do in the world? And I also believe, like you said, I'm lucky that there's a reason why I got saved. There is only two hundred nine defectors made it to America over the last eighty years.

• 1:55:07Shawn Ryan?

  There's only two hundred and nine?

• 1:55:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:55:09Shawn Ryan?

  In the past, did you say eighty?

• 1:55:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:55:11Shawn Ryan?

  Years?

• 1:55:12Speaker 07

  Uh huh. So, of course, I'm lucky. Despite everything I've gone through, I'm the luckiest person that I know of. So, I think keeping that perspective is very important and I don't go to therapy, I don't do any drugs, I am not on any anxiety pills, I never took one. I have done one, like psychedelic therapy, but

• 1:55:35Shawn Ryan?

  You did?

• 1:55:37Speaker 07

  Once, but

• 1:55:38Shawn Ryan?

  What was it?

• 1:55:41Speaker 06

  I think it was.

• 1:55:46Speaker 06

  Let's put it that way, it was helpful, but I don't think I thought I needed one again. It wasn't a something that I had to do it again. To me was, it's more important for me to make a decision on why I survived. Like, I survived to tell this story, I survived that to sh- shine the light in the darkness. And it's bigger than me, right, my story is a lot bigger than me. Like, there are three hundred thousand of North screen girls. Mm-hmm. Their organs are harvested out of them. I didn't get that. I'm so, so lucky.

• 1:56:26Speaker 06

  So, I do sometimes worry though, like, American culture is sometimes overly com- compassionate. They almost expect you to become a victim. They almost expect you to not to function very well. A lot of people keep asking me, like, how are you so high functional? How are you so positive? Like, why are you so normal? And there's kind of some expectation that if you've gone through certain trauma, you're almost obligated to feel not as good. And I don't know, it's, it's weird, like, even being a mother, the most honorable, beautiful thing that I've ever done,

• 1:57:10Speaker 06

  doctors keep asking, you know, the, like, the postpartum depression is a normal thing. Do you feel depressed? Every doctor's visitor keep asking you, are you depressed? I'm like, you are making me depressed now by asking that, right? So, I try not to get into this culture mindset where become less resilient. That I know that we are a lot stronger than we are. And I try not let to become less strong. You know, it's, I'm, I'm not in a survivor mode in any way, but strength is a good thing. Resilience is a great thing if you can keep that, so.

• 1:57:51Speaker 07

  I just decided that I can manage. I mean, if I survive that in real life, of course I can survive the memory of it.

• 1:57:58Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I was not expecting you to say that. And I think that it is amazing that you're saying you refuse to victimize yourself after everything you've been through. And I think that that is an enormous problem that we're facing in the United States with people victimizing themselves. And to listen to somebody like you with your story, who's not victimizing themselves, and to watch the people in the United States who

• 1:58:34Shawn Ryan?

  have all these opportunities, you know, to improve whatever portion of their life they think needs to be improved.

• 1:58:44Shawn Ryan?

  And they just, they victimize themselves. It's the common theme now, and it's becoming more and more common.

• 1:58:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's really sad to see that people are... I mean, it's... Even today, I was driving here. Like, even trees are shining here. And the roads, I mean, every the house, the peace. And this is the most building ever there seen in my life. And if you cannot have a pride to be a member of this country, I mean, what can you ever be proud of in the world? Like, we built this country, we have this country, and it's a miracle.

• 1:59:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:25Speaker 07

  Of course, it has problems to fix, but everything is. But losing that perspective and losing that gratitude, I think that's very hard. And if you lose gratitude, you're never gonna be ever happy. You know, when you're only grateful, you can be happy.

• 1:59:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:43Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's talk about your your journey to the United States and how that happened. Where did that start?

• 1:59:48Speaker 07

  So, two thousand fourteen, I was a junior year in University of South Korea studying criminal justice. And I had opportunity to speak at a conference in Dublin, Ireland. And that was my really first public speech. And I don't know if you've ever seen me in the handbook, with a Korean traditional pink dress and giving a speech.

• 2:00:12Shawn Ryan?

  That was an amazing speech.

• 2:00:14Speaker 07

  That was my very, very first speech and.

• 2:00:17Shawn Ryan?

  That was the first speech you ever gave?

• 2:00:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:00:20Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, very impressive.

• 2:00:22Speaker 07

  I was just turned twenty one on that that like few days before that podium. And I had no idea I was gonna come to America because I don't have money. I don't have connections, I cannot buy the plane, I mean, I don't have visa money to come here. Uh, but I did a visit America in twenty thirteen as a mission group in Tyler, Texas, to study Bible and do an outreach program for a discipline like program. I came here twelve weeks and then back to Korea and studied in the university again.

• 2:00:53Speaker 07

  But uh, this time, after my speech, I had a book offer from Penguin Random House to write my first book. And then my agent was in New York City. So I went to meet my agent in New York and then they said, let's write a book. But while I was writing the book, I wanted to continue my university education because I didn't finish it. And they said, oh, there's a great school in New York, which called Columbia University.

• 2:01:22Speaker 07

  So, just like that, though, great, I mean, I I I love learning. It's what I live for, like, understanding how the world works and how the human history formed. It's this most fascinating thing, right? So I applied to Columbia and I got in. So how that's how I moved to America in twenty fifteen to publish my first book and starting at Columbia University in twenty sixteen, January. So I came here eight years ago. Yeah.

• 2:01:55Shawn Ryan?

  What is the first thing, I mean, what is the first thing that you noticed when, when you settled in here?

• 2:02:02Speaker 07

  To New York City?

• 2:02:03Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. I mean, that's, that's a lot, that is a lot of freedom to take in at once.

• 2:02:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think it was a lot. I mean, I, I, first place I got to was Times Square. Because they, from DC, they, the cheapest ticket they could get in Chinese bus, they, they booked me and they sent me in a bus from DC to New York and it gets off somewhere, Port Authority, near Times Square thing. And then, uh, I got in taxi and got out was at Times Square and I, I, literally first thing I remember was it was brighter than daytime, it's nighttime. And then in North Korea as a child, you always remember because the North Korean propaganda television says we are going to make America sea of lights by bombing them with a nuclear weapon.

• 2:02:54Speaker 07

  I was like, yeah, they don't need our help. It's already sea of lights here. It's like it literally brighter than daytime. And then, you know, it's, what made me awe of New York City was if you give freedom to individuals, like what they are capable of building with it. What is the potential of humanity was just first scary in New York City that looking at this Empire State Building, you know, Rockefeller Center, like all these buildings would have competed each other and try to leave a mark in the world. And I think that one thing my ma, my father told me as a younger was

• 2:03:38Speaker 07

  when tigers die, they leave their skin, but when people die, they leave their names. That's why he told me to make my name long and lasting. And in America, you can do that. Not only dictator can do that. In North Korea, everything is about dictator. Every statue, we don't have ad, because you cannot compete with dictator. We don't have advertisement.

• 2:04:01Speaker 07

  But in America, I mean, these people trying to make their name lasting and building the buildings out of their name, libraries, the symphony halls, everything. And I was just amazed that this is a land of individuals, that the individual matters in this land and they celebrate being an individual. And you are no longer about this collective thing. You get judged for who you are, what you are, what you are trying to do. And I just felt that was so empowering. Because you know, you cannot choose your ancestor. I mean, can you choose your ancestor?

• 2:04:38Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:04:38Speaker 07

  You cannot choose your birthplace. I think that was the greatest, I mean, injustice I've ever seen, that people get punished for something they didn't choose. That is why racism is wrong. That's why punishing people for their birthplace is wrong, right? But in America, they only judge you for who you are right now. And that was America that I thought was getting into for sure. Initially, that's what my impression was.

• 2:05:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. That's a man, that's gotta be a lot to, I'm, I'm just trying to wrap my head around all the oppression. You know, how old were you when you got to the US?

• 2:05:17Speaker 07

  Twenty-one.

• 2:05:18Shawn Ryan?

  Twenty-one years of oppression.

• 2:05:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:05:21Shawn Ryan?

  And then you get here and literally any door you wanna walk through is open.

• 2:05:26Speaker 07

  Yeah. It was, and I mean, there are so many funny things, like in, I heard like New York City people are busy and I go to Central Park, everybody just keep running. And I thought like they are running for work, but they were trying to burn off their calories. So in North Korea, we had to conserve our energies to survive. We don't know what gym is, we don't know what exercise is, every day is a hard labor. And you come to America, their problem is burning off calories. They pay money to burn off their calories, right? My girlfriends would go to like Equinox Gym.

• 2:06:03Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:06:03Speaker 07

  And they have membership, they go to group classes to burn like, oh, showing off, I burned like five hundred calories today. I'm like, you pay money for that?

• 2:06:12Shawn Ryan?

  (laughing)

• 2:06:15Speaker 07

  Like it just, it's crazy to me, like, why would you pay money off to kill your own calorie, right?

• 2:06:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:23Shawn Ryan?

  Oh my gosh.

• 2:06:24Speaker 07

  And like, my girlfriends would show me their like dating apps, you know? Their Tinder like left or right thing and there's any guy you wanna date, any woman that you wanna date, there's nothing about your class, your sangbun or caste. Anybody is a total freedom, like who you marry, who you wanna be with is free. And, I mean, literally, you get any food at nighttime in Uber Eats, right? Just every food is available anywhere. And in North Korea, I've never seen a cookbook. Because how can we afford, you know, five kilogram of like pork and garlic like butter? We don't have those ingredients. There's no cookbook, there's no recipe, we just find whatever we can gather that day.

• 2:07:10Speaker 07

  And I never heard like, cook was a job. And I mean, there were so many jobs that I never knew. There were people like wedding planners. Like in North Korea, there's nobody plans your wedding, you know?

• 2:07:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:22Speaker 07

  It's like party approval, that's it. And so many jobs, different jobs, and of course, understanding hedge fund for the first time. It was just completely new, new planet.

• 2:07:36Shawn Ryan?

  Man, it's, um, so what's your favorite food? What was your favorite food coming to the US?

• 2:07:42Speaker 07

  Steak.

• 2:07:43Shawn Ryan?

  Steak?

• 2:07:43Speaker 07

  Because I mean, it's in, it's in North Korea, I think I had a thing, because the cows had more rights than us. So coming to America, eating beef and not getting executed, it was like giving a middle finger to Kim Jong-un every day, you know?

• 2:07:56Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:07:57Speaker 07

  I was like, I'm like determined to eat as much steak as I can.

• 2:08:01Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you.

• 2:08:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:08:03Shawn Ryan?

  What about, so the dating scene, that's something that I didn't, I didn't even, I never even thought about it until you just brought it up, so. I mean, in North Korea, you're not allowed to date, you're not allowed, you're not allowed to think.

• 2:08:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:08:16Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, what, how did you start dating?

• 2:08:22Speaker 07

  That was hard, I didn't date anybody in South Korea, because they, maybe this is, the trauma comes with it, I never wanted to date Asian men.

• 2:08:31Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:08:32Speaker 07

  Like, I was never attracted to it. And I never kissed Asian man, like, it's a...

• 2:08:40Speaker 07

  I think because of all my rapist was Asian man, I was I guess maybe associating that with it.

• 2:08:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:45Speaker 07

  So in some sense coming to be completely honest, I have nothing to against Asian, my son is Asian, people believe me, I can not that. But maybe it was easier to come into America, people did not speak any Korean or Chinese, it was they were speaking English, they looked different and I was able to start that dating at twenty one again and I dated the Russian Jew who escaped from Soviet Union as a child, as a Jew, they were also persecuted. So there was a lot of connection to understand oppression.

• 2:09:22Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:09:23Speaker 07

  And then and then it was weird because in New York City, I was at twenty one in a very conservative committed relationship and all my friends were like, what are you doing, you're twenty one, you need to supposed to test the water? Like you need to have fun, you need to, you know, self actualize by getting a lot of people see what you like. So they were like keep saying I'm doing wrong by being in a committed relationship, that is my first relationship. So there was a lot of social pressure being in college and telling me that it's not okay to be that serious at twenty one.

• 2:09:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's a lot of influence.

• 2:10:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, and everybody, literally the people that I really admired were telling me that you know, you you are a woman, you need to enjoy your sexuality and it's it was shocking.

• 2:10:14Shawn Ryan?

  Did you find it, did you get enjoyment out of dating and getting to know different men or?

• 2:10:20Speaker 07

  I did not date casually ever, so first person I was dating for a year, very seriously.

• 2:10:26Shawn Ryan?

  The very first date wound up being a year long relationship.

• 2:10:30Speaker 07

  And second man that I met was my husband.

• 2:10:33Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:10:33Speaker 07

  So I don't think I ever got into American dating scene like that. And also it was interesting because uh, they are all lovely people, but from North Korea, I thought big, fat, bald men were attractive because you were very starving in North Korea. And in America, like I was just attracted a lot of people that my fi- my friends did not find attractive.

• 2:10:59Speaker 07

  So my girlfriends were just so amazed, like you have very odd taste.

• 2:11:06Shawn Ryan?

  Well, when you articulate it, it definitely makes a lot of sense.

• 2:11:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, because I did not know the conventional American beauty standard. And so I did not know what it was for very confused a long time. And so, yeah, dating was very, uh, but Americans were not just mental at all. They knew my story. None of them ever judged me for my, what I had to do to survive. I'm very grateful for that. And, yeah, they made me feel like a woman who's, who's worthy of desire. And I'm very grateful for that.

• 2:11:44Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, very interesting. Let's, let's move into some of the similarities that you see today, which, your book.

• 2:11:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:11:54Shawn Ryan?

  Is what, you know, the message that you're sending out. What are, what are some of the first similarities? What comes your, your mind first? What, what are you seeing that resembles maybe the beginning of what happened in North Korea? Here in the United States?

• 2:12:09Speaker 07

  There are too many, but let's begin with a few. Uh, one is attacking individuality. It's now America becoming more of attacking that. You know, it's all about collective guilt in America. As I said, my son is half white. They say he's privileged and he's guilty. He did not just be a white. Nobody in America today alive own a slave. Nobody ever should feel guilty and nobody is privileged because of their ancestors. America using race to divide people and making each other hate each other. And I think that's very heartbreaking. They are using exact same tactic to divide North Korean people.

• 2:12:54Speaker 07

  They are using the same tactic here. Second is meritocracy.

• 2:12:59Speaker 07

  In North Korea, it doesn't matter how good you are. It doesn't matter how hard you wanna work. It's all about, you know, America is here equity, right? Are you a person of color? Are you a sexual minority? And they, companies have quotas, universities have quotas.

• 2:13:17Speaker 07

  Literally, university is the place where you try to train you to be competent.

• 2:13:23Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:13:23Speaker 07

  Giving you the best skill you can. It's not about that, it's your skin color. They have different skin colors on Harvard, Columbia. Based on just, based on test scores, more than seventy percent people at Harvard should be Asians. But no, they only uh accepted over eleven percent of them Asians each year because of skin color. So, that's heartbreaking because how we get better as a society, promoting competition and competence.

• 2:13:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:55Speaker 07

  We do not, we need to appreciate that people's hard work. When somebody told me about justice in South Korea, I never heard about justice was. I asked them like, what is justice? And this person said to me, in South Korea, if you work hard, you're going to get rewarded for that in South Korea. Cause that is justice. That's why I work so hard. Now in America, hard work becomes, that means less and less. Because it's all about the diversity of inclusion, the color equity. And that destroys civilization. We have tried that.

• 2:14:34Speaker 07

  And nobody knows how to build anything. In North Korea, if your father is a king, like Kim Jong-un, he becomes a leader. If your father was a farmer, you become a farmer, right? And you can arise. And I don't think discriminating merits is any good thing. It's a very dangerous path that we are digging into.

• 2:14:57Speaker 07

  And people do that, like, and not only that, like, at Columbia, they attack science. They said that math is racist.

• 2:15:06Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:15:08Speaker 07

  And this is the very first lesson that I learned in North Korean classroom. My teacher asked me one day, what is one plus one? I said two, and she said wrong. Because my dear literally discovered at a young age, adding one drop of water to another drop of water, it becomes bigger one. It doesn't become two. That's how he proved that math was made up by white men.

• 2:15:30Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 2:15:31Speaker 07

  Now in America, they say same thing, the math is made up, gender is made up. This is a, gender is a social construct that was made up by white men to control the minority. And I'm a woman, like, I'm never, I can never be a man. Like, woman is a woman. You have a uterus, you have, like, you make eggs, you have different ge- genetics. And now, me saying this, that I argued with my professor one day, I can never be a man, and she said, you are brainwashed.

• 2:16:04Speaker 07

  And if it's a science, you gotta debate that. You cannot question the science in current America right now. Then that's end of progress. If you cannot challenge the science, then there's no progress. And if no progress means you are getting destroyed. That's a very scary path that we're getting into.

• 2:16:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:24Speaker 07

  So, all these attacks, and also about the same thing that I was, my teachers were telling me how the most important thing is my dear leader, not my parents. Now, our children at school learning that our parents are not safe. Cause they are bigots, they're never gonna understand you. Right? They tell you that your parents are not safe space. If they don't accept who you are, legitimize everything that you feel you gotta run away from them. We try to destroy families, get that tie away, and destroy the state, destroy the institutions that does not have your best interest. And seeing those family bond is getting destroyed in America every day.

• 2:17:08Speaker 07

  And your child is not yours anymore, right? They go to school, they learn that the older problems in the world right now we have is because of white men, because of greedy capitalism. And I asked them, like, without capitalism, this kid at Columbia, wearing like three hundred dollars yoga pants, on their green juice detox, because they are eating too much good food. In their hand MacBook, and internet on that MacBook, telling me how horrible capitalism is. I mean, without capitalism, they would not have any of that. They would not be able to sit in the room where there's air conditioning in, there's electricity, there's internet to learn the material. And they learn to hate capitalism.

• 2:17:53Speaker 07

  And the professor said that the o- only solution to all these problems that we have is a communist revolution.

• 2:18:02Shawn Ryan?

  What is it like for you to sit there and listen to that shit?

• 2:18:06Speaker 07

  I was, I initially thought like, did I go back to North Korean classroom? Because it was identical. How on earth? After all that my journey to be free, I come to sit in the classroom and learn the same thing that I learned in North Korean classroom. How is this possible?

• 2:18:25Speaker 07

  And how are we okay with that?

• 2:18:28Speaker 07

  Because we know what happens. If we follow those ideologies, we're gonna become like North Korea. That ideology drove North Korea, China, I mean Soviet Union. Every country tried to work with that ideology. It brought death to millions of human beings. Nothing has been more dangerous than this ideology of collectivism and communism equity. And our politicians, I mean our vice president, our president, talk about how important to fight for equity every day. And equity is evil ideology. This is a complete evil. And if you say that now you're a white wing like a bigot. I'm a CIA agent.

• 2:19:13Speaker 07

  They tell me I am trained by CIA to tell this. I'm like, where is the CIA? Why are they not calling me, right like? And they say, oh, you are brainwashed by Fox News. I'm like, I came here in America to not knowing what Fox News is. I did not know what conservative or like liberal was when I was escaping. I had no agenda. I had no idea what the world was. Just I come here, I recognize the patterns that I see now. I'm pointing that out now that I'm I'm the spy. And that's how they show you down and kill your character.

• 2:19:50Shawn Ryan?

  It's very interesting how many different nationalities or different immigrants are coming here and they're starting to see the writing on the wall. You hear it from Venezuelans.

• 2:20:00Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:00Shawn Ryan?

  You hear it from Cubans. You hear it from Chinese.

• 2:20:03Speaker 07

  Iranians.

• 2:20:04Shawn Ryan?

  You hear it from Iranians.

• 2:20:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:20:06Shawn Ryan?

  You hear it from North Koreans.

• 2:20:08Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:09Shawn Ryan?

  And...

• 2:20:11Shawn Ryan?

  It's, I mean, it's, do you feel like you're making headway in your mission statement? By bringing this stuff to light? Do you think people are paying attention?

• 2:20:25Speaker 07

  To me is, when I do this work, um, I was very shocked during the pandemic. Um, I thought I brought my son. The best thing I have done too was giving him the American passport, giving him this free country. Unfortunately, pandemic just began as soon as he became, he becomes a toddler learning how to walk. Pandemic sets in in Chicago. I cannot like afford, I have to send him to daycare to work. At daycare, he was forced to wear a mask eight hours day up here.

• 2:21:00Speaker 07

  And they let the street clubs open next door. Adults can get, go get drugs and high and do whatever thing they want in the street clubs. Toddler who just barely had to walk at two, have to wear a mask up here eight hours a day. There's nothing I could do about that. And then, people saw me, some mothers in the playgroup, in his playgroup saw me that I was, I guess, classical liberal. Told to their nanny that don't play with my son because of me.

• 2:21:34Speaker 07

  And to me, it's not about people are making or not, I have no option. Because this country is not that truly free anymore. During the pandemic, it was not a science, it was madness. I was, uh, I was robbed on the street in Chicago in front of my son by black women. The daylight, broad daylight, people, this girl was punching me and took my wallet out. And I was trying to call the cop on these thieves. And people surrounding me, looking at me, screaming at me. Why are you doing this? You're racist. Why are you doing this? Why are you like? Because I was trying to call the cops on these thieves.

• 2:22:16Speaker 07

  They are the problem, because they can never be oppressed, right, because of their skin color. I don't deserve justice. I don't deserve compassion because of my skin color in America. I mean, this is another side of madness. This is another side of injustice. Because I'm not a black, I don't deserve to be protected by the public. I don't deserve to call the cops and get help from them.

• 2:22:43Speaker 07

  And I think this is a thing like people don't understand what the world would be like without America. When I was escaping from North Korea, even that darkness, I had a place to run to. I had a hope, I can escape to freedom. I mean, if America falls down, where do we escape? No place to go.

• 2:23:04Shawn Ryan?

  We don't.

• 2:23:05Speaker 07

  This is the last hope for humanity. This is the last hope for me. And this is the only hope for my son. No matter, people don't let go, but it doesn't matter, I have to fight. Cause I know if we keep going this path of this equity bullshit, we are gonna end up like North Korea. And and already, like, it was so shocking to me, Americans were asking me, are North Koreans are stupid or something? Why don't they just start revolution? Right? And I'm like, so let me ask you, like, currently now in America, you stand up is costing your job, your livelihood. And you, your reputation, but in North Korea, it costs three generations of your children's, your family's life.

• 2:23:50Shawn Ryan?

  Your life, your kid's life.

• 2:23:52Speaker 07

  Your parents' life.

• 2:23:53Shawn Ryan?

  Grandkid's life.

• 2:23:53Speaker 07

  Yeah. And then in America, even the price is not that much. People are cowards. They go to corporation, they follow the diversity training, they follow all this nonsense, they don't even know what that means.

• 2:24:08Shawn Ryan?

  They do as they're told.

• 2:24:09Speaker 07

  They do as they're, they're following shit, like all these people. If I was alive at the time of the Holocaust, I would have saved Anna Frank. I would be the hero of saving all these people. I'm telling them, yeah, there are three hundred thousand of North Korean women are going through modern day Holocaust. What are you doing about it? Nothing, watching their Netflix.

• 2:24:29Speaker 07

  So the hypocrisy of these people. And but you should, I mean, that's the thing. There's no alternative other than keep fighting to me. So I think that's what I'm trying to convey to American people. It's it's not an option to fight or not. We have to do this. If we don't do this, if we don't protect our freedom, who's gonna do it for us? You know, I was always saying it's important to fight for animals' rights. There are so many my friends in New York City fight for climate change, fight for little ducks, you know, fight against Canada goose, you know, fighting for dolphins. And to me, they always ask me like, why are you fighting for human rights?

• 2:25:12Speaker 07

  And people ask like, why do I have to care about human rights? We don't ever ask why do you have to care about puppies, right? Somehow, when you fight for human rights, you always have to tell them why you fight for it. Because we are the only ones can fight for human rights. Dogs will not fight for us. Machines will not fight for us. We are the one only ones can fight for our rights as a human beings.

• 2:25:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:38Speaker 07

  And somehow, that is not somehow automatically understandable thing to them. That is somehow is it a luxury that we should do, you know, we can only afford when we can.

• 2:25:50Shawn Ryan?

  I think what you're saying is a mass population of people who have had it very easy

• 2:26:01Shawn Ryan?

  for a very long time.

• 2:26:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:26:04Shawn Ryan?

  They don't understand, they don't, it's like

• 2:26:09Shawn Ryan?

  similar but completely different. It's similar to the mindset in North Korea. They can't imagine

• 2:26:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:26:15Shawn Ryan?

  what freedom is like. They have, they have no idea what they're missing out on, you know, in life. And then, you know, turn the tables and come to America and they, Americans, most of them, cannot fathom what a life in North Korea would be like, or what a life in Venezuela, or Cuba, or Russia, or Iran. You know, they cannot, it doesn't, it doesn't even compute.

• 2:26:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:26:47Shawn Ryan?

  You know, because if it did, then we wouldn't be seeing the shit that we're seeing right now. You know, and I don't know.

• 2:26:58Shawn Ryan?

  The divide has become so strong that I don't know, I don't know how to, I don't know how to bring this stuff to light, you know, it's people like you, they have to bring it to light. And, and I think the hardest part of what you have to do is you have to bring this story to two different, to two different sides of this country.

• 2:27:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:27:19Shawn Ryan?

  You have to bring it to the right, to the conservative side, you have to bring it to the liberal side and, and hope to God

• 2:27:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:27:26Shawn Ryan?

  that people are listening. Do you, do you feel like people are listening?

• 2:27:31Speaker 07

  I, it's interesting. When I was with my first book, um, I had a media training by

• 2:27:43Speaker 07

  the publisher and they gave me training not to talk about anything. Like I remember, I came to America first time and somebody asked me like, what do you think about gun, owning a gun? I said, that is the most empowering thing I've ever heard. Imagine if North Korean people had guns. They're not gonna let them come, execute your mom or your children. They're gonna shoot them back, even if, I mean, it doesn't matter, you're gonna get killed anyway. If we had guns, governments, what, are they gonna kill all of us? Then who are they gonna rule over? Right? It makes no sense for them to kill all of their people. So, there's no country ever can do that to their citizens if their citizens have a right to defend themselves.

• 2:28:25Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:28:26Speaker 07

  It was about that. I was like, of course, we should defend that rights. It's, it's the most important right I can ever see as a free individual. Keep that liberty. And they were like, okay, what do you like to read? It's like, I like to read John Steer, like, Mears, like, on liberty and Basti as the law. And they were like, okay, but just don't talk about that in public. Because before even you start your five, four, nine, or some people, they're gonna brand you as a conservative, raving, uh, conspiracy theorist.

• 2:28:59Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:29:01Speaker 07

  So I had to avoid that for a long time. I did not talk about that. I only talked about it in the day when I was seeing the pandemic. How I was powerless raising my son in Chicago. There's nothing I do to make no sense this masked man that own my kid. There's nothing I could do. You know, they were forcing him to do it. I mean, what can I do? There's nothing I could do. Even though children are safe. And they would open the dog parks. And then my son, the children's playground is closed in the hot summer day in Chicago. Where the sun hits the playground, it sanitizes it all. And I was like, dogs have more rights than my child right now. Dogs can go dog parks and play and run around.

• 2:29:45Speaker 07

  My child, because he's even child, he cannot go to playground and play together. And I would feel so powerless at the time. And I was like, I'm not gonna repeat the history. I'm not gonna be like my grandmother, gonna be compliant, you know, complying with this this control. And when it comes to me, I did not know even that I was oppressed. And I'm gonna fight everything I have.

• 2:30:12Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you. Good for you. I love hearing that. Well, you know, I think that is a perfect way to end this. And um. I just wanna say, I know how. I know how hard it can be to share your story. I've not experienced anything even close to that. But um, I do know a little something about internal trauma. And I just, I just wanna thank you for, for being that vulnerable and, and, and sharing your experiences with my audience. And, and I know it's gonna have a tremendous impact. And I just thank you.

• 2:30:54Shawn Ryan?

  And for everybody listening, go buy While Time Remains, link's in the description. And um, and I, seriously, it's been a real honor, you know, hearing your story and getting to know you and, and thank you. And I wish you the best of luck.

• 2:31:09Speaker 07

  Thank you so much.

• 2:31:11Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. Cheers.