Top 44 North Korean Quotes

We must work to make the South-North Korea dialogue lead to talks between the United States and North Korea. Only then can we peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.

In the spring of 2007, Israeli intelligence brought to Washington proof that the Assad regime in Syria was building a nuclear reactor along the Euphrates – with North Korean help. This reactor was a copy of the Yongbyon reactor the North Koreans had built, and was part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program.

Japan continues to work closely with the United States on the issue of the North Korean nuclear crisis and has played an important and constructive role in the Six-Party talks.

In China, it was hard living as a young girl without my family. I had no idea what life was going to be like as a North Korean refugee. But I soon learned it’s not only extremely difficult, it’s also very dangerous, since North Korean refugees are considered in China as illegal migrants.

The North Korean government are out to get me.

In North Korean culture, love is a shameful thing and nobody talked about it in public. The regime was not interested in human desires and love stories were banned.

One of the things we need to do with North Korea, which is a rogue nation, is to get the international community in support of further sanctions, of keeping pressure on the North Korean regime.

I am one of the lucky North Koreans who made it out of China. North Korean defectors in the country are terrified of trying to leave because they are often caught at the borders as they attempt to cross into Mongolia or Laos.

I myself hate the communist North Korean system. That doesn’t mean I should let the people in the North suffer under an oppressive regime.

While our nation’s attention is rightly focused on the Middle East, the North Korean threat has grown exponentially, while there seems to be a falling asleep, so to speak, at the switch when it comes to North Korea.

As a child, every North Korean is very happy. We were very happy because we learned horrible things about the outside world, like in America and Japan. We thought they were suffering; that’s why we were very happy… but in reality, we were living under fear.

I believe President Trump is more reasonable than he is generally perceived. President Trump uses strong rhetoric toward North Korea, but during the election campaign, he also said he could talk over a burger with Kim Jong-un. I am for that kind of pragmatic approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.

South Koreans often don’t think of North Korean defectors as Korean. While we have been granted citizenship, the locals don’t consider us as South Korean citizens. We are often treated differently and viewed differently, even by people who care for us the most.

After years of failure, I do think that President Trump has shown a lot of wisdom in reaching out his hand to the North Korean leader and to suggest to them that there might be a different future for the North Korean people.

Beijing cannot sit by and let her North Korean ally be bombed, nor can it allow U.S. and South Korean forces to defeat the North, bring down the regime, and unite the peninsula, with U.S. and South Korean soldiers sitting on the Yalu, as they did in 1950 before Mao ordered his Chinese army into Korea.

The United States is deeply concerned about the vulnerability of the North Korean people to a coronavirus outbreak.

The North Korean regime really can control people. I think they are the best dictator in the whole planet.

I wanted to show North Korean people that they have hope, and they can be free someday, like myself.

Most North Korean people have never seen a map of the world. They don’t even know that the Internet exists. They don’t even have electricity.

Even after arriving in South Korea, it’s dangerous. As a North Korean defector, I need to be careful from the spies to protect my relatives inside North Korea.

I don’t think the current regime of South Korea will deal actively with the issue of North Korean defectors.

North Korean defectors who speak out against the regime always feel nervous. We never know what the North Korean government is planning. It’s really difficult for us to show our faces and speak out, but we feel obligated to do something to inform people about the ongoing tragedy inside North Korea.

It is not unimaginable to have military options to respond to North Korean nuclear capability. What’s unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado. That’s unimaginable to me. So my job will be to develop military options to make sure that doesn’t happen.

They are always open to come to South Korea and play, because we never reject North Korean athletes.

I believe that dialogue is necessary. We were unable to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue through only the sanctions and pressure.

Here in South Korea, I’m continuing to learn English in order to boost my prospects. When North Korean defectors try to get a job to stabilize their lives, their lack of English is a handicap. It was the same story while I was living in China. It took an enormous amount of time and enthusiasm to learn Chinese.

If the North Korean Communists provoke another war, we must immediately deter it and give them a decisive counterattack at the initial place of aggression.

My life is not only mine. I am telling the story of all North Korean people; it is my responsibility to tell it.

Even North Korean people who are not necessarily happy with economic policies are still loyal to the state itself. It’s a military-first state, so whether it does very well on the economic front or not, is not central to public support for it.

Children live in the only successful Marxist state ever created: the family. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ is the family’s practice as well as its theory. Even with today’s scattershot patterns of marriage and parenting, a family is collectivist to a more than North Korean degree.

A South Korean teenager, 18-year-old male, is about five inches taller than his North Korean counterpart. And there are many soldiers who are only about 4’6″. The height requirement is supposed to be 4’9″. That’s the size of my 12-year-old son.

North Korean defectors can usually tell when other defectors are lying about their past.

There is no way to know for certain what accounts for North Korean decisionmaking, given how closed a country it is.

My father came by himself across the North Korean border when he was seventeen. And hasn’t seen his brothers or sisters or parents since then. And he died some time ago, but never saw any of his relatives. My mother was a refugee in war-torn Korea.

Before Kim Jong Il died, it wasn’t like one day Kim Jong Un took over. Kim Jong Il made sure his son was known to the North Korean people and it was clear that he was the next heir. He prepared him for at least three years beforehand.

We must embrace the North Korean people as part of the Korean nation, and to do that, whether we like it or not, we must recognize Kim Jong-un as their ruler and as our dialogue partner.

Even though some heartless North Korean, Korean-Chinese, and Chinese citizens have exploited vulnerable defectors for money, I witnessed many acts of kindness by the Chinese.

South Korea and the U.S. share common interests with regard to the North Korean nuclear issue, so I promise that South Korea will fully consult with the U.S. on the deployment of THAAD.

The anti-Japanese resistance was as familiar a theme in North Korean cinema as cowboys and Indians was in early Hollywood.

Most people in the country didn’t – and might still not – know about how powerful the United States is. They think North Korean weapons are the best in the world, and they’re very proud of them. They believe they can protect the country from anyone.

So South Korean ability is very much limited to handle North Korean, you know, difficulties. So we don’t want to see an immediate collapse of the North Korea regime.

40 percent of North Korean children suffer from stunted growth. 20 percent are underweight.

I watched a lot of documentaries about North Korean defectors. I also practiced speaking in a North Korean accent with a teacher, and studied a lot.

So if North Korea continues present isolation, then with such economic difficulties the North Korean government must meet a very serious situation in the future.