Top 60 Park Yeon-mi Quotes

I didn’t know people can be good. I didn’t know people are designed to be good and help one another.

I can’t say if I enjoy the attention or not. It’s really exhausting. But every speech and every interview is extremely important to me because it could be my last one.

English is my third language.

I didn’t know it was even possible to sell humans. I thought people can only sell animals, chickens. But I didn’t even know that kind of concept – human traffic – can be exist in the world. So I just couldn’t process it when I heard it.

I never asked to be a spokesperson or public figure. It just happened.

I think my father would have become a millionaire if he had grown up in South Korea or the United States… Almost anywhere else, business would have been my father’s vocation. But in North Korea, it was simply a means to survive.

North Korea spends billions of dollars to make this nuke test system. If they would spend just 20 percent of what they spent on making nuclear weapons, nobody would have to die in North Korea from hunger but the regime chose to make us hungry.

Because I have seen oppression, I know what it looks like.

I didn’t know what freedom was. I didn’t even know the word. I didn’t know the concept. I never heard of that word, ‘freedom.’ To me, the happiest thing was having food.

I know what it means to be a slave, both physically and emotionally.

People would ask me about my hobbies and what I liked. I had never been asked those questions because what I thought didn’t matter. I didn’t know what a hobby was. In North Korea we used ‘we,’ and to say – ‘I like this,’ – was the worst thing you could say.

If I keep silent, I am betraying my people.

In North Korea, when there is an alarm, it means that there is a war drill. It means that you need to run.

I’ll live longer than Kim Jong-un – he’s fatter than me. He doesn’t like me.

When I saw my father’s death it was not human, he was less better than an animal and I didn’t want the end of my life to be like that.

I never used a translator, never thought that the journalists might not understand.

Nothing is forever, and I believe that North Korea will change in my lifetime.

I mean I could not trust men again. I hated men. I hated humanity. How on earth can people sell each other?

For a long time, I lost faith in humanity, especially men.

That is what is happening in America. People see things, but still they’ve just completely lost the ability to think critically.

Kim Il Sung prepared Kim Jong Il for decades to be his successor and made it very clear from the beginning, ‘This is my son and he’s going to lead the country’ and that took more than 10 years – almost 20 years.

I heard about desert, but I never seen them with my eyes. I just couldn’t believe there was nothing, except sand and except the stars in the sky.

I didn’t know who Bob Geldof or Richard Branson were and I thought Dublin was part of England.

Reading ‘Animal Farm’ set me free from the dictatorship in my head. I could see all the tactics used by the regime to control us – they were all in that book.

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.

I never heard my father telling my mother that he loved her. And my mother never told me she loved me, either.

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

In North Korea, people who are actually oppressed don’t even know they’re oppressed.

Freedom meant for me to wear earrings, not freedom of speech.

My mum was sold for $65 and I was sold for $260 – at the age of 13.

Why would North Korea people care if they have nukes or not? All they want is food. They want freedom.

I just never learned to think critically.

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.

I thought America was different, but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.

The oppression is like nothing imaginable – I literally believed that Kim Jong-il could read my mind.

I really had loving parents, and my father was the example of perseverance… he never gave up, and he taught me it’s so easy to give up, but to fight is harder.

I don’t think anyone should have power over me, or have the right to tell me what to say or how to think. That’s not right. I want to be free.

North Korea is a very Confucius country. We respect the elders, the hierarchy. It’s not like America where anyone can step up and do things, we have our tradition.

My favorite movies were ‘Titanic,’ ‘James Bond’ and ‘Pretty Woman’ – people smuggled in pirate copies from China.

I had to be very unrealistic about my situation. If I was so realistic I would never have made it this far. So, you just sometimes have to be hopeful for no reason.

North Korea was pretty insane. Like the first thing my mom taught me was don’t even whisper, the birds and mice could hear me. She told me the most dangerous thing that I had in my body was my tongue.

I literally crossed through the middle of the Gobi Desert to be free. But what I did was nothing, so many people fought harder than me and didn’t make it.

The media’s censorship is unthinkable… If we don’t stop, we are going to end up like North Koreans.

I do think sometimes, I wonder is it true that every life is equal in this world? Do we care about North Korean lives?

I was born at the end of the 1993. The regime stopped giving food to the people. Three million people died from 1995 to 1998. It’s one of the world’s worst man-made famines in history.

Risking your life is not an easy thing to do.

There were stereotypes: you are from the communist country so you are not a hard worker. You talk awkwardly and speak with an accent and you don’t have any high education like us so you are basically stupid. And I am shorter than South Koreans – I was malnourished when I was young. It made me believe I was a loser.

I thought Kim Jong Il was a god who could read my mind. I thought his spirit never dies, and I never thought he was a normal human being.

I surrendered all my privacy to write this book. It was so hard and so painful. I went through so much crazy stuff. But I wanted people to realize that North Koreans are just like them.

I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever see men as normal people and I could never trust them. I couldn’t bear any human connection with men.

In North Korea, it was actually an oppressive regime and that’s why I escaped with my life.

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.

I had to look for food all the time. I had to catch dragonflies, grasshoppers, and that was the only source of protein for me.

I was a slave. I was sold in China in 2007 as a child at 13 years old.

I do want to go home. That’s my dream. North Korea is still my home.

I am an ambitious person. In the West, being ambitious isn’t a bad thing. You work hard and you have a purpose in life. But in North Korea, you can never be individualistic. You can never live for yourself. You have to live for the regime.

I know the truth of North Korea. The oppression and their tragedy. It cannot be silenced.

I crossed the Gobi desert to be free and now I thought I live in a country where I can say what I believe and have my freedom to think. However, now I have to constantly censor my speech because in the name off a ‘safe place.’

I wasn’t dreaming of freedom when I escaped from North Korea… I was willing to risk my life for the promise of a bowl of rice.

I have a dream to have a normal life, someday have a child, get older. But it is hard, it’s a big commitment.