North Korean defector, human rights activist shares story

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — In El Paso, it’s not an uncommon story to hear about people crossing an international border seeking better opportunities.

The University of Texas at El Paso’s College of Business brought Yeonmi Park to speak about her experience escaping North Korea as a part of the Leonard E. Read Public Speaker Series, hosted by the Center of Free Enterprise.

The director of the Center of Free Enterprise, Nicolas Cachanosky, explains that their mission’s program is all about “being a good citizen on how the economy actually works.”

“One of the programs we run (the Leonard E. Read Public Speaker Series) is to bring speakers to campus that are specialists in different issues going on in the economy, in U.S. society or worldwide to give a talk to our students, faculty, staff or anyone. Everyone is invited,” said Cachanosky.

Park, who recently turned 30, recounts her experience on escaping and becoming a North Korean defector.

“I was born in Hyesan, it’s the northern part of North Korea. It was the border from China,” she recalls. “That’s how it helped me to escape, it was a border town.”

According to Park, she was only 13 years old when she escaped along with her mother.

“It came down to that (escaping) because we couldn’t really find food to survive. Because we were on the border, you could see the electricity lights from China. I thought, ‘If I go where the lights were, I could find water, rice.’ That curiosity led me to escape from North Korea,” Park said.

After escaping, being separated from her mother and being sold as a sex slave in China, Park found a silver lining when she saw South Korean Christian Missionaries rescuing North Korean defectors.

“It’s a very fortunate thing, even though North Korea has been oppressed for the last 80 years. Only about 209 of us (defectors) made it to America within the last 80 years, so mathematically, I don’t even know what the chances are of me making it this far,” Park said.

Park has been spreading her story worldwide, speaking on TedTalk and going on a podcast with Joe Rogan to tell her tale.

Park is using her platform to speak about North Korean girls being trafficked in China and about her people she left behind.

“There are 300,000 North Korean young girls in China, currently trafficked like I was. They are sold as sex slaves every day, they get raped, and they get killed. And there are 25 million of North Koreans that are under darkness, having no idea that humans have rights, what even freedom is,” Park said.

“I know that many, many people are facing situations that are so dangerous and are not like America. That’s why I’m trying spread the word, that currently estimated that there are more than 4 billion people, on Earth, are not free. Being free is in the mindset of the minority. Most of Americans don’t realize that they think that everyone has a life like we do here. So, I try to educate public as much as I can,” Park said.

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