Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with yon
mi park
a north korean defector human rights
activist
and author of the book in order to live
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to support this podcast let me say a few
words about north korea
from 1994 to 98 north korea went through
a famine
mass starvation caused primarily by king
jong-il
who at the time was the new leader of
north korea
after his father's death in 1994
somewhere between
600 000 and 3 million people
died due to starvation from all the
stories of famine in history
including my own family history i've
come to understand
that hunger tortures the human mind
in a way that can break everything we
stand for in north korea
during the 90s famine many were driven
to cannibalism
imagine more than 10 million people
suffering starvation for months
and years always on the brink of death
we don't know the exact numbers of
people who died because the suffering
was done in silence
in darkness very little information in
or out most people had to survive
without electricity
without clean water medical supplies
sanitation
and food the north korean propaganda
machine called this
the arduous march or the march of
suffering
and words such as famine and hunger were
banned because they implied government
failure
and once again now in 2021
kim jong-un the current leader of north
korea is calling for his country to
prepare for another arduous march
or march of suffering another period of
mass starvation
as the country closes its borders
looking
at atrocities of the past decades and
the encroaching atrocity there now
i think about the quiet suffering of
millions of north koreans
i think about the torture of the human
spirit
i think about a north korean child who
could be a scientist
an artist a writer but who instead grows
impossibly thin
without food their bodies slowly rotting
away as their parents watch helplessly
i got emotional in this conversation
with you on me
in part because i remembered my
grandmother who survived khaldamur
the famine in ukraine intentionally
created by stalin
where 4 to 10 million people died and
many
many more suffered imagine knowing that
if you don't engage in cannibalism
you will die before your children did
and then
they will be eaten imagine because of
this
deciding to murder and eat your own
children as many people did
imagine the kind of desperation torture
that leads up to a decision like that
i'm not smart enough to know what evil
is
know where to draw the line between good
and evil
but stalin king jong-il kim jong-un
are men who are in the name of power are
willing to make
millions of people of children suffer
and die from starvation
i rarely have hate in my heart but i
hate these men
i hate that such men exist in this world
i hate
that the beauty i love about this life
exists
amidst such unimaginable cruelty
i have been haunted by this conversation
by memories of my grandmother's pain
but i've also been warmed by memories of
her love
love gives me hope hope for the
perseverance of the human spirit
even in the face of evil
this is the lex friedman podcast and
here is my conversation
with yomi park can you tell your story
from north korea to today as you
describe in your 2015 book
and with the extra perspective on life
love and freedom you've gained since
then
wow that's a long story so i was born in
the northern part of north korea
initially
and my father was a party member
and my mom was housewife i had a one
order sister
and i remember born in that country i
never thought i was
in an unusual country now i'm thinking
of what it is like
literally called the hermit kingdom but
i thought
i believed that i was living in the best
country on earth
it was a socialist paradise and
everybody
in the rest of the world worshipped my
idea leader
and there was nothing to envy for me
so i had this enormous pride in my heart
and grateful to be in that country so
was love for the leader not
fear for me at least it was love
yeah it was all the moderation and
gratitude
it changed lately but for me was pure
pure like love was there any
like looking back with the perspective
you have now
would you describe some of those moments
growing up
as full of happiness or was that
delusion at the time so not knowing the
alternative
will you still be able to be happy the
fact that i did not know
like in north korea this is the only
country in this 21st century has no
internet
and they don't even know the existence
of internet
not only that we don't even have this 20
like like
you know 24-hour electricity yeah so not
knowing
definitely helped i think to be sane
so as a human being you're still able to
find moments of happiness
i think my happiness was from family
nothing else even though those they was
keep telling me that they were
our source of meaning and happiness i
don't think i ever got
happy by that maybe they're here and
they're in schools and like when i was
learning propaganda
like you know the proud feeling right i
mean the greatest nation
here and there but like actually true
happiness came from
laughing with my family and my friends
are there any childhood memories
pleasant or painful ones that stand out
do you know
i mean like you know whenever i think
about my
north korea the interesting is there's
no color
i mean one is because north korean
country has no color right most of
things are unpaved
and trees all cut down we have no fear
so people cut down trees to make food
so but only that like even what we were
wearing was like no color
so it's um interesting like memory to
look back what about fashion i've
noticed from
sort of uh you now you're you're
you have quite an incredible sense of
fashion so
contrast that with your time in north
korea how do you remember
fashion just or ways that people could
express themselves visually
was it all bland there was no word for
fashion in north korea
we didn't even know it was not even our
dictionary so of course i did not know
what victoria secret motors were i
didn't even know what motors were so
when i came out i learned
more there was a job and like what is
that and i'm still confused
so there's so many jobs that we have
here doesn't exist in north korea
what was life like in north korea as
compared to the rest of the world so
maybe you said there's no internet
uh 24-hour electricity
is a luxury you do not have what about
food
what about water what about basic human
rights
i think that's the thing like when
people were asking me can you tell me
about
like life in north korea and in the past
i was like
i cannot describe it to you and
initially i thought oh because of my
english that i cannot find the words
it's not that it's a different planet
the common sense that we have doesn't
exist there
like people literally do not know the
concept of
romantic love or human rights or liberty
so when i'm thinking back to my country
it's uh you know like as you cannot
imagine your life on mars right now
it's like that kind of difference i grew
up never seen the map of the world
i never knew that i was asian like the
regime told
me that i was keemer's son the first
king race
and then our calendar doesn't begin when
jesus christ was born
our candor begins where hymns was born
so
we and history was forgotten to us they
didn't touch
us about of course christianity or like
the
big bang like our history began when kim
was born
so everything was forgotten to us and
it was like different meaning i mean
feeling of existence
you know it's not even like the same
life i literally think
that was almost like my past life and
this is like a new life that i began
you're you're almost like a different
human being now absolutely
yeah so you've uh i have to say
i often say that my favorite book is
animal farm by george orwell
i've read it i don't know how many times
and so i was really happy to
hear that that was uh of the many books
excellent books they
will hopefully talk about you've
mentioned that an animal farm had a big
impact on you
it was the book that kind of
uh led to uh a kind of awakening for you
maybe
can you describe what impact it had so
after going to what i went through right
and i arrived in south korea after many
years of journey
they were saying so kim's were dictators
and south korea is not colonized by
american investors
and americans first of all not bastards
they're good people
and then they say everything that you
believed in north korea was a lie
it was a propaganda then at 15 i was
thinking
so if everything that i believe was a
lie how do i know what you're telling me
it's not like
that was so hard how do i trust ever
again
and i just it was chaos and belief right
i did not know what was true anymore
and that's the moment few years later i
read this book
like animal farm just by mistake it was
a very short book in the library i was
like okay i can finish that quickly
and when they're ending that like last
chapter right they
could not see between the pigs and
humans anymore like that sentence
i just understood everything what
happened i just it made
every sense to me what happened to me my
people
and to my country yeah that there's uh
there's so many things they could say
about that book yeah there's a haunting
nature
to the young and i guess spoiler alert
but you should have read this
already if you're listening to this um
at the end the animals were looking to
the humans
and to the pigs and they couldn't see
the difference and then there's this
kind of
gradual transition
from the initial revolutionary steps
of animals fighting for their freedom to
slowly
uh the pigs gaining control went from
four legs good two legs bad two uh
four legs good two legs better
even better i think yeah like that they
were so like
gradually transitioning the ideology
under which the farm operates
and i think the gradual nature of that
where basically you have generations
born not
knowing how things were in the past
and that's that's what makes the most
kind of for me
haunting transition from freedom
to slavery to suffering to injustice
all those things and the animals don't
know they're part of that
and also for me personally
i've always kind of found a kinship with
boxer the
the horse because i just i'm kind of an
idiot i just work really hard
to work hard and i just love the idea of
working hard for an ideal
mm-hmm and the tragic nature of
to the end that horse boxer working his
ass off
for for the pride uh
for others uh but yeah for the pride of
the farm you know
uh and then the the the pigs
giving him sort of using that but then
just sending him to the slaughterhouse
anyway
when he was no longer useful i mean
there's so many tragic elements that
echo everything i've seen in the soviet
union
and many of the elements that you see in
even
harsher more drastic way in north korea
if there's something hopeful you pull
from that book
like within the suffering within the
gradual decline
the taking away the freedom there were
still moments of beauty it seemed like
it can be but i think for me was
when i was ending the last page of the
book
until that point i was angry towards a
dictator
why do you do this as a human being i
was so angry
dreaming of killing him revenging my
father the people that he cared but when
i was ending the last chapter
actually everybody was responsible to
create this dystopia in my country
that animals initial animals that when
they're scared
when they receive the first execution
and then they were not doing their job
speaking out and keep questioning
like they had a question and then they
as soon as they feel fear
they silence yeah because of that like
that's when i was like
my grandma knew life could be different
i think the one thing about north
koreans are unique is that
they don't know they're oppressed they
don't know that they are slaves to the
dictator
and the fact that other people know
they're oppressed like in america a lot
of people think they are oppressed
like you are not oppressed you don't
even know the definition of oppression
and like that's like when the new
animals came
the new animals didn't even know what
the life could be like
there's no alternative for them to
compare even
and i was like my grandmother knew why
didn't they not do anything about it and
they were just scared they kept
silent and everybody was responsible
so the people who knew were too afraid
to say
and then there's people that just didn't
even know
and i don't know what's more terrifying
about
human nature looking at this group of
people who are
afraid to say that things could be
otherwise and then the group of people
that
don't even know it could be better no
it's uh i don't know that this is that's
the reason i've returned to that book
often because it's such maybe because
it's interesting using animals to
represent ideas that were very human
it almost allows you to explore the
darkness of human nature
without sort of being uh broken by it so
you mentioned anger when i watch your
interviews
you're really calm and collected not
just your interviews
you know instagram the way you present
yourself you um
i don't know it seems like you're almost
at peace with the world
um is there in private times when you're
just angry
do you feel fear do you go to dark
places depression
all those kinds of things are are you
able to put that world that you were in
behind you
it's a joke because i talk about north
korea every single day
and i still rescue people like from
china and russia and other countries
right and sometimes
our rescue mission fails and they get
capture and send back
i still have uh people in north korea
report to me
so like when i talk to my sister who
chose to not
be in this life activist life she forgot
most of things
and like for the other hand i like
remember everything
so sometimes it's uh it's it's a
blessing to
keep reminded of how because it's you
know they say
happiness relative thing it is sometimes
i mean a good thing is also people say
because nobody was fooling
when you're growing up everybody was
suffering you should have been okay
right but know like if you are suffering
that degree
no matter even if there's no comparison
like if you're in nazi german
in a holocaust right in the in the
concentration camp
i'm sure nobody was better than them i'm
sure they were
suffering is the same thing i suffered
but now because i'm
in this place i can compare easily right
getting that perspective
but it is true like i still have days
that i cannot get out of bed
and i'm really hoping like that where it
was elam was talking about downloading
your brain blah blah
yeah like if maybe technology develops
that i can download some part of my
memory
and then i can erase it like when was i
deleted
and that would be so much better what i
this is uh
sorry for the tough question but if i
came to you if elon
came to you and said we can erase that
part of your memory
would you do it some days i would do it
for sure
and my mom would do a hundred percent my
sister would do it
all other defectors know they do a
hundred percent
for me i hesitated because i'm a witness
so if i delete that part i don't know
how real that can be
but it is painful like after i talk
give a speech right i mean i'm fine but
somehow i'm depressed
sometimes if the talk was very intense
i'm like depressed for three weeks
it takes a while for me to be recharged
but i don't know why it is you know
yeah i i just don't know yeah
well there's also the and uh there's a
guy named victor franco who wrote the
book
masters for meaning and there's some
aspect um
where so he talks about the holocaust
and you can in the in those moments of
suffering still discover meaning
still discover happiness in the simplest
of joys
like while starving you know a little
piece of bread could be a source of
incredible joy yeah and there's some
aspect
in which that experience gives you a
clarity about the world
like somehow experiencing suffering
allows you to deep
deeply experience joy yeah and love
and also empathize with the suffering of
others and like it's almost like
brings you closer to other humans so
it's
this double-edged sword that um
that the highest of joys sometimes
are catalyzed by suffering and it's hard
to know what to do with that you see
that with
world war ii the stories of soldiers
that have suffered but
some of the closest bonds
of brotherhood of just pure love was
experienced by them
and it's it sucks that our brains are
like this
you know the love requires hardship i
don't know why that is
yeah that's like that's thing of course
in my journey i learned
how to survive right when to not trust
and when to run but i think
most of i was keep learning what it
means to be a human being
i think that was like ultimate thing i
was keep learning and
i still don't know fully what it means
but i do think it seems
like suffering is necessary for
people to be grateful and even be joyful
to sometimes
yeah so i talk about love quite a bit
and you mentioned that romantic love uh
i'm fascinated about
love in many aspects but
you mentioned romantic love was
forbidden in north korea yeah
what do you think about love now that
you've
kind of discovered it what's the role of
love in life
why was it so why do you think it was
forbidden in north korea
so the tragic thing about north korea is
not only just banning shakespeare
like we don't even know what romeo and
juliet is right our movies is never
about love stories
but then also they ban the love between
mother and daughter
wife and husband and you know
and you between your friends they deny
you being a human
so only love that i knew was when i
described my feeling towards the leader
and in the written form that was the
only love that people know in north
korea
and now i'm like there are many loves
you can experience
i mean i think you definitely love
science right
but imagine that if you're being denied
that yeah
so there are so many loves in life but
in north korea
all of those things are denied and i
think
for me is love what makes you tick
like you know love for your child love
for your parents
love your friends love for even yourself
that is denied so i mean many people say
like love is an option but like then why
do you live
i think we live to love and it doesn't
have to be romantic love it can be
anything
but finding love any in any person or
you know any subject i think that's a
goal i think that's when people find the
meaning in something
yeah i think a lot of romantic love is
just one sort of part of it
yeah one echo of the some core thing
yeah science i love science i love
robots all of those things and
it sounds like deliberately or not
the north korean regime wants to channel
that very
deep aspect of the human spirit all
towards the leader
yeah that's it that's the only thing
they allow us to fear
and know about so i remember i mean you
read 1984 by georgia where
it talks about double think and double
speak
who controls the language who controls
thoughts
and why he does talk about as they go
they like eliminate a lot of words
right now like later one word can
represent 10 different things
and like what fascinates me is like how
many
vocabulary meaning people can have and
like when i literally came out i
remember i went even to san francisco
and someone came to me and hugged me and
then he was a guy who's like
oh baby don't worry i'm gay i was like
what the heck is gay i don't know
right and then they try to go to hotel
room and google the gay
and i think oh that's what you meant and
like that like
they deny what that is i'm sure there
are gays in north korea i'm sure there
is
but you don't know what it is and
like that they eliminate words so the
fact that you know the concept
that is a state is much better than and
that's the thing a lot of people like
when you're born you somehow know what
justice is
what liberty is and it's all somebody
taught you that
and like that's the thing why people is
like oh humans are
inherently know what is right what is
wrong what is oppression and like
no that's like bs you gotta learn that's
fascinating that words
give rise to ideas so like
as a child one of the ways to learn
about justice and freedom
is to first learn the word and then to
ask well what is it
yeah the concept yeah and if you don't
have the word for it
then you never have the kind of first
spark
that leads to you trying to be curious
about it that's interesting and
controlling the words
and then yeah i mean your thoughts you
control the thoughts
there's so many echoes i mean i have uh
it's it's a very different but perhaps a
very similar experience which is the
journey of my family
through the soviet union
because there is a love of country there
is a pride of the people
yeah like you are proud of your family
in general yeah
but um i wonder how much of that is
polluted
by the the propaganda i think a lot too
for sure yeah it is to this day i'm like
my father who died in china and
he was tortured and then he died
he wanted to go back before his bath
right
and then it's like that if you go about
you're gonna be executed
and like i wanna be executed he wanted
to go back to north korea
to be executed so he can be buried in
his own land
and then his last wish was if i die
criminate me and then bring my ashes
back to my country
when i'm dead i still want to be my
country
and this is nationalism this is a
propaganda right
and but now like it's the same thing
like
it's the same thing if i die i somehow
buried in my land
and i still feel like i'm the outsider
i'm always longing for my home it's a
horrible home
yeah like let people say what's your
dream like do you want to be a president
do you need to run for office like
i just want to go home that's my dream
right
and people here don't get it ever yeah i
um
i don't know what to do with that i love
my country and i think for me my country
is
um the united states and perhaps it will
be for you too one day
it is i think it's becoming new years
has been a very special place in my
heart
i think this is the first place i felt
like i i feel like home
and i mean i was in south korea longer
and i didn't feel that way
so so i think there were very different
life stories but i think
it's almost two different people the for
me it's the person that was in the
soviet union and the person that's
here those are two different people for
that previous person's home
in the soviet union and he's part of me
yeah
and i suppose in that same way you're
you know your first maybe two decades of
life
are somehow longing for the home that is
north korea
yeah and your next two decades of life
might be finding a home in the united
states
yeah your your dad uh can you tell the
story
of um of his struggle
um uh of his death
i mean first do you miss him do you
think about it
all the time like i had a son when i was
22.
and i had ivf three times and
i know as you see i'm like 80 pounds but
back now like 75 pounds
because of my master of your
malnutrition somehow my body is very
different
and so after three times of av
ivf after 23 i was still wanting family
and the reason i wanted him is
because i felt so guilty for my father
that he never seen this world
i somehow like when you're so desperate
you become illogical
like i want to believe in the recon like
buddhist idea right you come back to
life
and i prayed please come to me like as
my son so i will take care of you like
come back
and when i was pregnant with my son even
though i planted pregnant with a girl
doctor made a mistake he became a boy
so i made his middle name like my
father's name since i think he's the
only
american got north korean name
[Laughter]
it is so he's so part of your father
isn't your son
yeah that's how i that's
how i make the sense of it and that's
how i move forward
like if i like as a logical human being
you you know when you're dead you're
done maybe that's that's what i at least
used to think
but then life just become too unbearable
and somehow that's the thing like
we tell ourselves stories in order to
live and that's how i came within my
title of the book in order to live
i had to tell myself a lot of stories to
overcome a lot of things
i think i was part of it
can you tell the story of um you
escaping north korea
to china yeah i think
it's it's a thing it's amazing
even though i was like 13 my like
life outside north korea is almost like
it went by like one second
and my life till that point was like
eternity
i remember being in china i arrived
there at the end of march
at 13 and by october it was six months
passed
and i literally felt like i lived
eternity
and one day living in china
felt like living one year one day was a
war like
surviving through one day was so hard
every night i was like i cannot believe
i got done one day today
that was the thing i was grateful for
before i went to bed
okay i survived i didn't get captured
and i made you another day on earth so
the experience
of the minutes is is what fear
fear of being captured fear
loss everything so
because i mean i sold my own mom in
china
to survive too
so it was more than that and
it's not feeling i think that's the
thing in china
i learned not to fear and
after my escape was challenging i didn't
feel anything
and it was hard not feeling anything is
a torture it's a bigger torture you can
never feel like
even you fear sadness that's better than
not feeling anything
and i fear something when i had my son
that's when i started healing so he was
a miracle
to save me but yeah in china it wasn't
even
fear like it was numb you were numb yeah
it was like paralysis
yeah just overwhelming
on the uncertainty of your future did
you have a sense what your future
held at the time like what do you even
even feature i don't even know that word
right
like a lot of times i was looking at
myself like i left my body and like just
looking at me
and just not feeling it it's not like
i'm scared for her
i'm like sad for her just looking at me
like
oh that's interesting wow not feeling
anything
and me like being raped going through
every emotion of life to survive right
like
but like like somehow i don't know
you say so or something like looking at
it just like
you feel nothing you don't feel anything
for that person
so even with your mom like what was
was there some
i don't know some warmth that you were
able to extract
from the connection with your mom yeah
of course i think that
made me survive i had a very strong
connection
with my family and i think that's what
kept me going
to do all of that i think as you said i
escaped at 13.
my sister at the age of 16 escaped with
her friend
first and i was going to escape with her
but
one day i got like really bad
stomachache and my parents took me to
hospital
and north korean hospital they don't
have like x-ray machines like they don't
even have electricity
they like literally using one needle to
inject everybody
yeah and people don't die from cancer
and north korea you die from infection
and fever and
hunger right it's most likely you're
gonna die more by being treated by
doctors and
not being treated i think i was lucky
even though they thought i had appendix
they they operate on me without any
painkiller
and i didn't get infection i survived
so that's how i got delayed to escape to
my sister
and she left me a note in my bedside
saying like follow this lady
and this is like another trick about
human trafficking right
she sold me to china as a sexual slave
and she executed fully later and she had
she was executed for that later she had
five daughters
and she sold all her children to china
and we can now sitting here judging on
like how heartless you are
selling your own children to china and
as a sexual slave they were like her
children were
7 10 years old but that was the only way
for her to save her children
and if she didn't start me that day i
would be dead right
now so i'm grateful that she sold me
and i think that's the thing is life is
so crazy
you cannot judge it's just so complex
and yeah that's how she changed my life
by selling me
she sold my mom and myself in 2007 to
china
so you're grateful for that you're
grateful for that suffering
of course i am grateful because the
alternative is worse
i would not be here with you you never
knew i existed
what do you make of the others suffering
in the world today
the people there in north korea
so that is part of the your
of your life's work is helping those
people mm-hmm
what do you think about them what should
people know about them
i think that's when i get angry whenever
i think about them
like your anger directed at
at
the heartlessness of people the
ignorance of people
like so when i got on north korea
going through all of them and i went to
south korea one day
i was watching television and just like
famous korean k-pop stars and crying and
doing some fundraising concerts and i
literally thought i was like oh my god
something is a horrible going wrong in
this country why are these people crying
it was cheery like campaign and then
later was
showing that it was the animal rights
campaign
to helping out cats and puppies in the
shelters
yeah do you know anybody she has their
tears like that
to another human being right now like no
right people rather give a million
dollars to save some dolphins
than saving these children right now
being raped in china
and i think i love elon musk i read this
right i love these people want to like
go the moon
mars and like people told them like yeah
you went we went to the moon like i did
not know in north korea
i think that's what upsets me okay why
there is not even one single human
with that kind of brilliance in their
brain
they they can't save so much suffering
that nobody does anything
i think that's when i i feel like hard
to find help in humanity
and that's when i get so upset because
think about like even biden or trump or
obama
they know what's happening in north
korea exactly right i mean if we see
satellite photos
there's public executions i mean the u.n
says this is the holocaust happening
again
and is it happening if the holocaust
happening again how
why how are you okay doing nothing about
it
but somehow humans are able to okay not
doing anything
and this is like this is
hard like when people say i'm gonna
change the world i want to make a
difference like
it's hard to believe it you know
yeah that we can turn our back to human
suffering at scale when it's right in
front of us i mean that makes you think
about the holocaust
this is just everybody was looking the
other way
yeah because it was almost too hard to
look at it
no it's not it's the easier thing like
it does the thing
i was like here to speak at the south by
southwest few years ago
and like they're everywhere talking
about like elon musk project going to
the moon right
we're gonna be multi spell like species
i was like
back then i did not even know who he was
so if you're guys
trying to go after this earth you
haven't even explored our earth yet
you cannot go to north korea right now
you haven't explored that part of our
our like planet can we do that first and
then move on
explore the landscape of human suffering
like alleviate suffering in the world
there's
um there's a lot of suffering happening
in africa
that has to do with disease and for some
reason
it's even though we turn our back to
that kind of suffering too
we still can try to do something about
it
and there's still efforts uh in terms of
uh health care in terms of medicine in
terms of bioengineering in terms of like
all these efforts to help people from
disease but like
that's almost like converting into an
engineering problem and trying to solve
it
that somehow is easier for us humans but
when there's obvious sort of
non-disease-related
torture of humans we look the other way
yeah whether it's china or it's north
korea
yeah i mean that has to be changed
somehow
we'll have to change that somehow this
is the thing right now like
the china like they bring the xinjiang
vigors right dave
they say oh this vitamin take it and
then it kills their sperm
and make them not reproduce their birth
rate gone down something 47 to something
in the one year time it's a genocide in
21st century
and they get those people and get their
like organs out
imagine if there's some people who do
that with cutie puppies and cats
there's gonna be insane amount of
product they're gonna destroy everything
and this is like a human nature that i
don't get
why there's so much anti-human sentiment
in this modern world like we don't have
to like
the the fact that i was saying like the
fact that you care about animals rights
it's beautiful because you care about
something who cannot speak for
themselves
the fact that we care about animals is
because they cannot speak for themselves
right they don't have that
ability and there are many people who
cannot speak for themselves right now
and why do you refuse to be the voice
for them
because they're simply being a human and
maybe it connects to us
not being proud of who we are like maybe
i don't know what it is why do they deny
humans
this way maybe they don't like
themselves
yeah it's almost um we would have to
acknowledge some dark things about
ourselves in order to start helping
what's the solution so you know i see
two solutions
one is in the military side
yeah it's uh assassination
or the full-on invasion
and then on the activism side
which is figuring out ways to um
like like you said sort of let people in
north korea
understand their situation sort of from
within try to reform
or maybe there's others obviously there
could be activism
from the outside to build up momentum
for the entirety of the world
especially the world that it's not just
the united states or europe but also as
russia and china and so on
what what are your ideas here how we can
what we can do as individuals and as
countries
i think the first thing that we can do
is speak about
chinese role in this sponsoring
dictatorship in north korea
like i haven't had so much struggle
talking about north korea right they say
how north korea is possible why is it
like the way like this is
99 accountability going to
ccp kim jong-un cannot last
without chinese have even one week this
is
completely funded this holocaust is
funded by ccp
but if you talk about in the mainstream
of course they don't buy it
and i think it's in a way north korea is
a lot easier to
serve than even in the middle east
there's nothing conflict like
between people there's no ideology no
religion nothing
people are peaceful right there's not
even one civil
any discontent among the people or
problem is there's a dictator funded by
the second economic power in the world
and
even any military they know if they kill
kim jong-un they're gonna get killed by
chinese
nobody can dare to stand up against kim
jong because of china is backing it
so somehow here in the west we
collectively
acknowledging that china is the
responsible person
for these crimes against humanity in
north korea then we can somehow
i don't know china exactly we're
we're failing to do that in a way
in all kinds of avenues of life of
public life
because uh for many reasons they're
probably primarily financial
but it also i'm against
i don't know maybe you can correct me
i'm against sort of
making china this evil enemy
because i've seen this with russia as
well and i don't think that leads to
progress
i think you want to highlight like you
basically want to
help china the chinese people
become the best versions of themselves
so speak to the chinese people
and not fear not uh making the leaders
of china
the like into these caricatures of
devils
i i feel like the cold war the way it
was done in russia i just for
both sides they were caricaturing each
other through propaganda and the result
was not productive at all
it did not help russia become the best
country it could be did not help america
become the best country it could be
and the same thing with china i feel
like making them into this enemy
like being afraid of china being
making them into the thing that's going
to spy on us that's going to destroy the
rest of the world
that's not going to help china like
reform themselves they're going to plant
their feet
the dictators the evil people will
become more evil
the power hungry will become more like
they will centralize the power more it
feels like
um maybe naive but it feels like
it should be like again
love not violence that solves this thing
now of course in north korea it's like
long gone 80 years
almost 80 years old you can't love is
not going to solve that problem or
i mean i don't it's very difficult they
have tried that
because of the sunshine policy which is
there's a two people walking down the
street and the sun and the wind made a
battle
so who can take off that man take off
jacket so wind
tried to blow as much air he could and
then that man was
like putting more like his jacket on
right not taking off but sunshine came
like okay i'm gonna give him a lot of
worms
and then he took his jacket out and came
out so that was the theory let's give
north korea as much love they want
let's give them a lot of money whatever
they want let's give to them
do they know that we are not here to
attack them yeah and north korea what
they did with the guy who did the
sunshine policy in south korea named kim
daesung
won the nobel peace prize for that and
kim
kim jong-il used the money to build
nuclear weapons
so that's how they came with the nukes
so i think
that's the thing i hope your love serves
problems
but there's got to be a way and that's
the the hope is with the 21st century
you can directly speak to the people
somehow when there's no internet when
there's
nothing like that it's hopeless i think
china there's a hope
that yeah the china is still connected
to the internet i love your optimism
i have seen the actual dark side of
china
on the underground i hope
i think that's the thing people here in
the west right they say oh how can it be
that bad
they ask me like i walking passing this
young teenager man in near the world
with my sister
he's like intestine coming out through
his bad way
and even in that moment what he wanted
was
please give me food he was hungry his
intestine is hanging out of his body
yeah and he's
asking for food do you know what humans
demand when they die in north korea all
they want is eating
right yeah and people say oh nothing can
be that bad
but people just here haven't seen an
actual true evil would you say that the
evil comes from a tiny minority of
people
or does it permeate much larger parts of
the population
like if we look at sex trafficking
how many people
like is it 99.9 of the people are s
are um
longing to do good in the world
or is there is it uh
or do we all have the capacity for evil
in certain kind of environment certain
kind of
uh governmental structures inspire a
large
percent of the population to do bad
things
i think humans are capable of anything
there is no exception
i don't think there's any saying to born
with a morality
i think in north korea you can say
initially that there's few guys in the
top
wanting the power and then doing this
but
eventually made a society where people
don't even know what
compassion is we don't know the concept
of we don't know that you need to feel
bad for another human being when they're
suffering
the fact that you know compassion is in
your knowledge that's why you do that
humans need to learn it's not anything
bad about human nature it's just saying
humans are capable of everything we are
the most adaptable species on the planet
that's why we
created the internet like talking this
way right
now other animals have done it because
we are so adaptable
that is a good thing and that's a bad
thing so in the adaptive situation
they all can be i mean during the
holocaust right those people
they could have been capable of good too
if they were exposed to different system
yeah and that's why when people
underestimate evil
that's what scares me evil is evil
it's a different thing it's a completely
different thing
and of course i could really get your
idea we don't want to isolate 1.3
billion human beings in on earth by
chinese but the thing is we are talking
about this
regime not the people i love chinese
people i speak chinese
i love like all about the country but
this system
does promote evil well that's an
optimistic view actually because
we can fix systems yeah it's harder to
fix people
so if we fix systems then the people are
adaptable absolutely as you said
i mean that and then the question is uh
first of all you have to
talk about it just as you're doing
you're right now like this little flame
that burns bright and it's really
important for north korea but just keep
talking about it
until there's until hopefully
leads to at the highest levels of power
revolutionizing the systems in the world
and then
uh in china and in north korea do you
see
north korea being a potential instigator
of a nuclear war
they will not start any korean war as
long as they can do whatever they want
right now
right north korea's army not designed to
fight the enemy
they designed to prevent their own
people the quteta and the revolution
with their own citizens
that is 1.6 million north korea
with a tiny country the fourth largest
armies in the world
so this this country designed to fight
with their own citizens
and the army the fourth largest in the
world
is designed to basically fight its own
people oppress their own people that's
what north korean military is about
okay let me uh ask you some
aspects about north korean life can you
describe the seongbon
system of uh ascribed status used in
north korea
yeah so that's a very interesting thing
right right now there are a lot of
people playing with this ideology of
like
democratic socialism socialism communism
whatever you call marxism leninism right
they have all like these similar
features where
we give collective power to a certain
entity
and they will make the decision for the
bigger good
right and north korea came up with the
idea
the kimir song he was the leninist he
was marxist
saying i'm gonna create the most equal
society on human face
so it was a communist north korea and
then
they came up with this tumbling system
it's a family caste system
three b categories warrior wavering and
hostile
and then in between three classes they
divide into 50 different
classes so a lot of people don't even
know which exact class you belong to
that's a sacred golem document and
that's how they decide your future so in
no way north korea
before you're born your life is
determined for you
and this is normal joke right they
dreamed of creating the most equal
society
they ended up with became most inequal
society in the
face of humanity so there are 50
different classes
and where the one guy on the top became
a god
so when this animal farm as we keep
saying like there's so many
all the animals are equal and someone
and more equal than others
exactly but but it's not only it's just
more equal
one guy in our school became a god
because north korea was born
out of uh marxist ideals yeah
from stalin can you comment on
uh juche ideology which seems to
be its own kind of socialism
but uh with unique aspects here
it really does ideologically says the
importance of having a great leader
yeah is there some interesting
similarities or differences that you can
comment on
between other implementations of
communism throughout history
the soviet union china elsewhere
so tutor is very unique it came around
the 90s after soviet union collapsed
so before that north korea was very
still loyal to the marxist and
melanianism
which is state takes care of you we are
going to give you the right education
health care your livelihood you
everybody's going to be equal
you're going to have in the working
collective form collective workplace
everybody collectively do things
together and let's work for the paradise
but 1991 the soviet union collapsed
and until then north korea was heavily
subsidized by soviet union's aid
and then soviet didn't give them
anything so now three million people die
on the streets
the regime then came up with the idea
okay our goal
is what is successful ruling for us is
keeping the 10 percent
of population alive which is in the
capital pyongyang
so they design the hunger games there is
a capital
13 other districts everybody on the
countryside on purpose being starved
so those people who are starving cannot
thinking about meaning of
life cannot thinking about shooting to
the moon right they're not gonna think
about anything or they're gonna think
it's like finding next meal
all on purpose is man-made famine
international community was begging to
give north korea food
why not stood at the u.n they begged to
give north korea formula
medicine and food they are begging can
you please feed your people and kimchon
said no thank you
last year like we knows had a horrible
horror flooding south korean prisons are
begging
can you get can i give you please some
medicines like no
because he wants to be the one provider
he doesn't want people to think other
people giving him the thing
so on purpose other people are starving
and the truth
idea is that's when you're coming from
so until that communism was about like
steady speaking being a
father figure takes care of all your
needs right give the power to us
and you are all good but north korea
regime says okay
now we cannot give people's rations so
which means
means self-reliance you need to take
care of yourself
while you're giving every right to us so
now
in 1990s the regime told us okay
we are not going to give you russian you
cannot trade
that's illegal but you find your own way
to survive
so be self-reliant that's what to say
and you know but when you're a god you
can do whatever you want you don't need
to make a sense
that's the difference being a god and
being a leader
even it is religion it's not falsifiable
you cannot challenge it
god's way is suspicious god works in the
mysterious way
so when you're god people are not gonna
say oh this doesn't make sense right
you're gonna okay whatever god says
we as a human being we can never change
these thoughts
it is unbelievable what regimes can do
the there's something about
famine you know
that um is another
is another level of evil to me
you know what stalin did in ukraine in
the 30s
yeah fuck him
yeah this is what torture is
cannibalism yeah and um
north korea too they humans right now
in 21st century seven billion people on
this earth right now
you make the enough food for 10 billion
people
nobody should be starving right now it's
worrisome to me the humanity is moving
forward with the technological advances
blah blah we are going so
fast in in advancement and we are living
this like 25
million human beings in the cage
completely leaving them behind
and north korea is living like 16
centuries i never
like this morning i was taking a shower
beautiful shower
like one never knew what shower was i
was bathing few few times a year going
to the like
river how do i even know what shampoo is
and this is
how human beings in 20 persons living
and it doesn't bother us and rather
most people obsess being a vegan and
like
how how do you reconcile this
i think we get used to stuff very
quickly we get used to comforts that's
just the way of human life you
you take the beautiful things for
granted
so i try to appreciate everything i have
so whether it's
uh like the food i have now or like the
luxury to have a diet and
to be struggling with that yeah or just
the basic simple moments of being alive
with the people i love
or actually i get like i think i'm on
drugs all the time because
i feel like just even like uh this mug
everything on this table
just brings me joy but it's
like filling your life with joy in the
full
capitalistic american way you can still
at the same time
uh not feel too bad about yourself no
and still
focus on the the suffering in the world
and i think
there's some way
that in trying to build a better world
in america it has ripple effects
elsewhere sort of like so i'm a fan of
rockets in space it sounds perhaps
counter-intuitive but sending raucous to
space
will help solve the north korea
a problem because it lets
people dream yeah and build
cool stuff so it's not the rocket it's
the other people
that like are inspired by the rocket and
then look to
other problems in the world i mean
that's what elon did is like he saw
problems in the world and saw like what
can i do to help it
and i think the north korea one is a
tough one though
because that's ultimately has to do
with revolutionizing government
china china that's what it takes
changing chinese communist party is
impossible
that's why we couldn't solve north korea
for that many decades but
it's china well for now it's china but
it's china
it's um so it's uh
russia it's certain aspects of the
united states and struggling with that
uh one of the you know there's a bunch
of technologies that are striving at
this
um for example uh i don't know what your
thoughts about cryptocurrencies
i love it so like there's a idea that
money could be a way to destroy or to
challenge the power centers of the world
yeah
so if you give if you take away the
power from fiat currency and give it to
this thing that can't be controlled by
government that's cryptocurrency whether
it's bitcoin ethereum all those kinds of
things
that's a way to get money into the hands
of people
to where the government can't take that
money away
but north koreans don't have electricity
no internet
so yeah we can do that with china we can
do it a lot of african dictatorship
countries
right i do think big cryptocurrency is
such a fascinating technology
right i think this is an amazing
experiment i mean
that power is in our hands i'm the huge
advocate believer
but i think nurses too behind yeah you
know i think that's what is unique about
north korea is that
most of things that we talk about is now
it's different planet literally
the common law that we have is now
applicable
what about