Joe Rogan Experience #1691 - Yeonmi Park

1. 0:00 – 3:31

   From North Korea to America: Childhood memories that still feel like a nightmare

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Well, very nice to meet you, first of all.

   2. YPYeonmi Park0:15

      So nice to meet you too.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      Thanks for coming here. Um, is this your first time in Texas?

   4. YPYeonmi Park0:19

      No, I've been here before.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:20

      You've been to Austin before?

   6. YPYeonmi Park0:21

      Yes.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:23

      So for people who don't know your story, I'm just gonna give them a primer, just to- just to sort of, uh, establish your history. You were born in North Korea and you escaped North Korea when you were 13. Is that how old you were?

   8. YPYeonmi Park0:38

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:39

      Um, I think we should start off with what it was like living in North Korea. Um, I saw your interview with Jordan Peterson and it was, uh, it was incredibly moving and it was incredibly disturbing and eye-opening and, um, it's ha- it's hard to believe for people that don't know what life is like in North Korea, the reality of you growing up in North Korea, but just talking about how you essentially had no food and you would-

   10. YPYeonmi Park1:12

       Hmm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:12

       ... go looking for bugs to eat.

   12. YPYeonmi Park1:14

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       This was the reality of your existence as a child, that there was no protein.

   14. YPYeonmi Park1:21

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       What ... W- when you ... Now that you live here in America and you can kinda eat whatever you want, when you look back on that, what does it seem like to you? Does it seem like reality? Does it seem like a dream? What does your childhood seem like?

   16. YPYeonmi Park1:39

       It ... Sometimes this feels like dream.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:42

       This feels like a dream?

   18. YPYeonmi Park1:43

       Yeah, so I pinched myself a lot in the beginning, 'cause they say if it's not dream it hurts, right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:50

       Right.

   20. YPYeonmi Park1:51

       And you pinch yourself. So a lot of times I pinch myself, because sometimes I'm really horrified if I wake up from this that I'm gonna wake up in my living room in North Korea. So it's ... Sometimes that line is very blurry to me and ... Because it o- the one common thing that North Koreans all have is actually in our dreams when you sleep it's back in North Korea. So in our dream we somehow never able to escape it.

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:18

       Hmm.

   22. YPYeonmi Park2:19

       So every day my mom wakes up, like, she tell- tells me about story how she was back in North Korea and I have the exact, the same thing. No matter what, how many years we left afterwards, in our dreams we are still in that country, tr-

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:32

       So that's the nightmare?

   24. YPYeonmi Park2:33

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:33

       The nightmare is that you're still trapped in North Korea?

   26. YPYeonmi Park2:35

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:36

       When you lived there you didn't know that there was another way to live.

   28. YPYeonmi Park2:41

       No. It's, uh ... It's like here right now, we cannot imagine a life in a some different planet in the universe. Right? We just don't know what that life looks like. Exactly the same thing. I never knew the life in different planet could be like.

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:58

       And, and where you lived in North Korea there was no internet.

   30. YPYeonmi Park3:02

       Yeah.
2. 3:31 – 5:03

   Starvation as social control: black markets, foraging, and engineered hunger

   1. YPYeonmi Park3:31

      So I don't even know what Jesus Christ is and I don't know anything before Kim. So there was ... Everything before Kim, the history was erased for us. And, but the t- the thing is that we are hungry, we are starving. If you eat breakfast you worry about lunch. If you make it to dinner you are not sure if you're gonna make it to tomorrow. So in that s- scenario who thinks about history? You know, nobody thinks about anything other than surviving and that is why precisely Kim Jong-un keeping us starving mode even though the UN, the international organizations begging to f- give food and formula to North Korean people, but Kim Jong-un is just saying no to this food aid 'cause he doesn't want us to be fed.

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:18

      So he's purposely starving the people to keep them weak so that all they think about is surviving so they don't think about revolution.

   3. YPYeonmi Park4:25

      It's a Hunger Games. It's like when I was reading this book Hunger Games I literally like, oh my God, this person copied North Korea. There's a capital, you divide into 13 different districts. Capital people have everything they need and on other provinces they're on purpose there being starved. So only thing you can think of, your survivor. I mean, if we are full in our stomach, right, you're gonna start thinking about meaning of life, m- art, what's out there in the universe. You can do all of that higher thinking when you are full in your stomach, but when you're hungry the only thing that matters is your hunger.

3. 5:03 – 11:48

   A caste system with generational punishment: 50 classes and ‘three-to-eight generations’

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:03

      When did North Korea become what it is now? When did it shift to this totalitarium regime that's starving its people and puts people in these classifications? Like, for one, for one example, one of the classifications is if your grandfather or great-grandth- grandfather committed some sort of a sin-

   2. YPYeonmi Park5:23

      Hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:24

      ... you are perpetually punished for that.

   4. YPYeonmi Park5:26

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:26

      Everyone in your generation, your next generation, all of them are guilty.

   6. YPYeonmi Park5:31

      Yeah. Forever. There is no redemption. If the one person commits a crime in that family clan, three to eight generations gotta be punished.

   7. JRJoe Rogan5:40

      How many generations?

   8. YPYeonmi Park5:41

      Three to eight generations.

   9. JRJoe Rogan5:42

      Three to eight?

   10. YPYeonmi Park5:43

       Yes. Mostly, commonly three, but the people, like, who challenge the regime or challenge the leader, then eight generations get punished.

   11. JRJoe Rogan5:51

       Eight generations?

   12. YPYeonmi Park5:52

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan5:52

       And then after the eighth generation are they absolved?

   14. YPYeonmi Park5:55

       No, they are gone.

   15. JRJoe Rogan5:56

       They're all gone?

   16. YPYeonmi Park5:57

       Like, by eighth generation you even kill the in-laws of somebody you know.So not even the blood you get purged. If your cousin, somebody marrying the in-law of somebody, so there was one official who escaped, 35,000 people were purged. A lot of them, 80% of them did not even know that they were related to this person.

   17. JRJoe Rogan6:18

       Wow.

   18. YPYeonmi Park6:19

       Yeah. Cousins of cousins, somebody, somebody, that's how they find... They get rid of the root of entire, this clan.

   19. JRJoe Rogan6:27

       When did this all start?

   20. YPYeonmi Park6:29

       When Kim Il-sung came into power. So he was a big Marxist and Leninist, and he was a communist. So in the... Before the Korean War in 1948, that's when he began this, uh, in the name of equality, right?

   21. JRJoe Rogan6:44

       Right.

   22. YPYeonmi Park6:44

       "Let's take everything back from the capitalists, let's nationalize the land, get rid of private property." But he made North Korea into very unequal society, dividing people into 50 different classes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan6:59

       50?

   24. YPYeonmi Park6:59

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan7:00

       And the way the classes worked, you couldn't marry up.

   26. YPYeonmi Park7:04

       No.

   27. JRJoe Rogan7:04

       Say like if you were a higher class-

   28. YPYeonmi Park7:06

       Mm.

   29. JRJoe Rogan7:07

       ... and a man wanted to marry you-

   30. YPYeonmi Park7:09

       Mm-hmm.
4. 11:48 – 18:24

   Total state ownership: no property, no pets, no planning your own day

   1. JRJoe Rogan11:48

      Are you allowed to have a garden? Can you grow vegetables? Can you have animals?

   2. YPYeonmi Park11:53

      Well, uh, one of the executions that my mom saw was a, a young man was eating beef, a cow, because he killed a collective farm cow and he got executed for that, is everything is owned by the state.... in North K- you don't even own yourself, right? So, I remember going to South Korea, people ... I got a gift one day, and it was a planner. So what you do, what you are trying to do is a notebook. And in North Korea, like, there's ... you don't plan your day. You, you don't get to plan what you do with your life. Like, a week before or day before, there is announcement from the government how you're going to spend your day, when, what to eat, where to go to work, what to do, when to go to sleep. Everything is determined by your own state.

   3. JRJoe Rogan12:42

      So, this guy was executed because he killed one of the state's cows?

   4. YPYeonmi Park12:45

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan12:45

      And you're not allowed to have your own animals?

   6. YPYeonmi Park12:48

      The-

   7. JRJoe Rogan12:48

      So this ... You can't have, like, chickens or something along those lines?

   8. YPYeonmi Park12:51

      They might hide it, but last year Kim Jong-un confiscated entire dog from the population, 'cause he-

   9. JRJoe Rogan12:57

      All the dogs?

   10. YPYeonmi Park12:58

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan12:59

       That was because of COVID-19, right?

   12. YPYeonmi Park13:01

       No.

   13. JRJoe Rogan13:01

       No? It wasn't?

   14. YPYeonmi Park13:02

       Because he said it was a, a corrupt Western sentiment where we have pets.

   15. JRJoe Rogan13:06

       Mm-hmm.

   16. YPYeonmi Park13:07

       So he ordered to kill the entire dogs for the meat, to get rid of dogs, because even ... he just didn't like that it looks like Western having a dog, having a friendly relationship with animals.

   17. JRJoe Rogan13:19

       So, everyone's dog-

   18. YPYeonmi Park13:20

       They're confiscated.

   19. JRJoe Rogan13:20

       ... in all of North Korea was confiscated and killed?

   20. YPYeonmi Park13:23

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan13:23

       And what did they do with the dogs?

   22. YPYeonmi Park13:25

       I don't know what the regime leaders did.

   23. JRJoe Rogan13:29

       Whew. Wow.

   24. YPYeonmi Park13:30

       Yeah. (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan13:31

       So, do they provide you with any food?

   26. YPYeonmi Park13:33

       No.

   27. JRJoe Rogan13:33

       No. So you have to find food on your own, and most of the food is wild food?

   28. YPYeonmi Park13:38

       Yes.

   29. JRJoe Rogan13:38

       Like grasshoppers and-

   30. YPYeonmi Park13:40

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5. 18:24 – 36:34

   Death as a daily sight: bodies in rivers, hospitals without anesthesia, and the ‘rat cycle’

   1. YPYeonmi Park18:24

      Well, I mean, seeing dead bodies on the streets is like an everyday thing. It wasn't, um ...

   2. JRJoe Rogan18:29

      Where were the bodies? Like, w- just laying around on the streets?

   3. YPYeonmi Park18:31

      Uh, so they are floating in the rivers and then they also... Train stations somehow had a lot of dead bodies because North Korea is very cold. And there's a train waiting area and North Korea has one train go to one distance, like, once a month (laughs) . And like, here it would take, like, one hour to go the other place. In North Korea, it would take a month at least to go because there's no electricity. And sometimes people have to push the train.

   4. JRJoe Rogan18:57

      They have to push the train?

   5. YPYeonmi Park18:59

      Yeah. Yeah. Traveling in North Korea is, uh, un- unbelievably difficult thing within North Korea. So, uh, I mean, anyway, so in train stations, that's when people die mostly. And in North Korea, the hardest thing as a child for me is that when my mom goes away to find food. Like, it... we don't have a call... like, we don't have phones, we don't have letters. If I say goodbye to her, I don't know when I'm gonna see her again or if I'm ever gonna see her again, because she could have cared and, like, raped and starved. You just never know how to find people. So in the, you know, in the morning when you go, like, walk in the train station, they've just put the piles of the dead bodies. And they're all, like... become rigid, right? They're almost like the... like wood. Piled around them and taking away and... One... But the thing is, for me, I didn't even know the word compassion. Like, nobody told me, "You have to feel bad for it," because for me it's like, like fish in the water don't notice the water, right? Like that-

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:59

      Right.

   7. YPYeonmi Park19:59

      It was just something every day I saw as a child.

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:02

      So you, you never went days where you didn't see... this was a normal thing to see dead bodies?

   9. YPYeonmi Park20:07

      Yes. It was every day as, as, as... like normal as, like, breathing the air right now. And one thing that I used to remember is, sister... my, my sister and I was walking by, by the well. Like, in North Korea we don't have a sewage, we don't have running water obviously. We have to go to well or river to bring the drinking water. And there's a young teenage boy, I think, lying down and his intestines coming out of his, uh, back. When you're really malnourished that thing all opens up. You got zero, zero fats. Every hole all opens. And, and you see dogie-... like, dogs looking at his organs coming out. And he was still somehow conscious, begging for food at that time.

   10. JRJoe Rogan20:50

       He was begging for food while his organs were hanging out of his body?

   11. YPYeonmi Park20:52

       Yeah. And I don't know why he was, like, pants were off and I felt nothing. That still haunts me to this day. Like, I don't know how I felt nothing at that point and that just looked horrible. And because you're... just the fact that he's alive and so much flies flying by on his organs and how he's st- somehow consciously begging for food and I, I didn't feel anything.

   12. JRJoe Rogan21:22

       You felt no compassion?

   13. YPYeonmi Park21:23

       No, nothing.

   14. JRJoe Rogan21:23

       It was just normal?

   15. YPYeonmi Park21:25

       Yeah. It's... yeah. So that's... that was, like, daily life thing. And then in the hospital when I was 13 years old, I... my, my parents took me to hospital because I had a bad stomach ache and then we don't have, like, X-ray machines, we don't have MR... none of that, just doctor rubs your belly and then he says, "Oh, we need to operate on her." I think her, like, appendix were bursting or something. So that afternoon they, they cut me open without any anesthesia and... but it's normal thing in people in North Korea... operation without anesthesia. But the, the chances of you going through surgery is a lot higher for you getting infected because we don't have penicillin. The nurses using a one needle to inject every single patient so who... do you know what the other person has? You get from actually more sick by being in the hospital.

   16. JRJoe Rogan22:16

       Right.

   17. YPYeonmi Park22:18

       And this is where... we don't, of course, have indoor bathroom for the patient. We have to go outside and in between there there's a piles of dead human bodies and that's when I was seeing this, uh... some are rats eating human eyes first for some reason.

   18. JRJoe Rogan22:35

       Because they're probably soft and easy to eat.

   19. YPYeonmi Park22:37

       Uh-huh. And this woman, I don't know, in her... my age probably. Short hair, wearing this flower pants and when they're dead all, like, their mouth is somehow open and their all eyes are hollow. And you see k- children, like, looking at the rats and laughing and chasing them and adults telling them, like, "Don't eat those. You're gonna get sick from it." But of course kids don't care, like, even finding a rat is delicacy because even finding a snake is a, is a, is a big prize. You don't find those, like, often.

   20. JRJoe Rogan23:10

       So they were finding the rats and then just trying to eat them?

   21. YPYeonmi Park23:13

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan23:13

       Were they eating them raw?

   23. YPYeonmi Park23:15

       Sometimes if you find the skin you do, but they do find some, like, fire and roast them.

   24. JRJoe Rogan23:22

       So they were excited to find a rat to eat?

   25. YPYeonmi Park23:24

       Yeah. They love-

   26. JRJoe Rogan23:24

       So they would catch them with their hands?

   27. YPYeonmi Park23:26

       Yeah. Oh yeah, of course they do catch them, uh, with their hands and, and these piles of human bodies, like... she was on top, that's why I was able to see her wearing this flower and pants to this day and then, like, her eyes are so hollow. It's like when you look at the human body, like, nothing is left. I think that's what... it's not like just death is sad, it's just like how it becomes nothing.

   28. JRJoe Rogan23:50

       Right.

   29. YPYeonmi Park23:50

       So empty inside. She does not know the shame or pain, just she was lying there like that and you see children just chasing them and laughing and try to catch the rats.

   30. JRJoe Rogan24:01

       And the children didn't feel anything being around the dead bodies? Just was normal?
6. 36:34 – 43:58

   Fear, surveillance, and public executions: loyalty tests and collective violence

   1. JRJoe Rogan36:34

      When Kim Jong Il died and, um, people were crying in the streets and people were sent to prison-

   2. YPYeonmi Park36:41

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan36:41

      ... for not crying enough-

   4. YPYeonmi Park36:42

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan36:43

      ... what... uh, it was the strangest thing for us to watch as Americans because-

   6. YPYeonmi Park36:48

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan36:48

      ... it was performative-

   8. YPYeonmi Park36:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan36:50

      ... where people were performing. They were-

   10. YPYeonmi Park36:52

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan36:52

       ... they were, they were not really crying. They were cr- they were wailing-

   12. YPYeonmi Park36:56

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan36:56

       ... in this very theatrical way-

   14. YPYeonmi Park36:58

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan36:58

       ... to let everyone know that they were complying.

   16. YPYeonmi Park37:01

       Mm-hmm. It's, uh, your life is on the line. People watching you. If you don't mourn enough, that's the thing, is if you don't mourn e- the most extreme high, they're gonna send you to prison camp and execute you. So we are doing it to survive.

   17. JRJoe Rogan37:18

       Did you see anyone who didn't mourn enough?

   18. YPYeonmi Park37:21

       No. I mean, you, it's impossible. How do you not mourn enough? How do you not possibly? That's the- your life generation is depending on you when you mourn.

   19. JRJoe Rogan37:30

       So everyone knows this?

   20. YPYeonmi Park37:32

       Of course we all know.

   21. JRJoe Rogan37:33

       And everyone knows it's a threat?

   22. YPYeonmi Park37:34

       Even babies know. Even babies know. When you're born in North Korea, you know what it is. You don't like start questioning. It's... I mean, the first thing my mom told me as a young girl was not even, "Be careful of strangers. Be careful," you know, 'cause like none of that. She would say, "Be careful of your tongue because that is the most dangerous weapon you got in your, in your body. Don't even whisper because the birds and mice could hear you." So, that's the first thing you hear it from your parents, how dangerous what you say is gonna be.

   23. JRJoe Rogan38:06

       Did you personally see people that you knew get imprisoned because of things that they said?

   24. YPYeonmi Park38:12

       They just disappear. Like, um, one of my sister's classmate, her mom one day executed, and then because they accusing her to receiving money from the foreign CIA or the South Korea intelligence. But a month later they, they said, "Oh, it was not a problem. She was not spy." So they brought the family members back out of the concentration camp.

   25. JRJoe Rogan38:34

       So they killed her for nothing?

   26. YPYeonmi Park38:35

       And they don't even say sorry to that. It's like we don't even know that's a concept government can be sorry or they can ever make a mistake.

   27. JRJoe Rogan38:43

       So how did they find out that she wasn't really a spy?

   28. YPYeonmi Park38:46

       We just don't know. Just one day that classmate came out and my sister, Ms. Classmate came out and then she... they said like her mom was not a spy, so they got out of the prison camp. (exhales) And that's it. There's nothing, nothing we were not... none of that.

   29. JRJoe Rogan39:03

       And so this was a common thing?

   30. YPYeonmi Park39:05

       Yeah.
7. 43:58 – 1:05:57

   A ‘holocaust’ enabled by geopolitics: camps, weapons testing, and China’s role

   1. JRJoe Rogan43:58

      ... and looking back on it now and knowing, knowing that it exists right now what, what can be done? What could the rest of the world do? I mean, North Korea has nuclear weapons.

   2. YPYeonmi Park44:09

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan44:10

      It's, uh, they have a powerful military.

   4. YPYeonmi Park44:12

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan44:13

      What can the rest of the world do to stop this from happening? Because it seems like... I mean this is horrif- it's a, it's a form of genocide and it's happening right now.

   6. YPYeonmi Park44:22

      See, it's a, it's a holocaust. In 2014, UN conducted its investigation for a year and the conclusion was the only resemblance that we find in our history what is happening to North Korean people is a holocaust. So holocaust is happening again. And of course, we are denying it again. Right? When it was holocaust was happening a lot of people say, "How this are possible? It's so hard to believe that." And North Korea using these concentration camp, these people do the biology test. They put them in the gas chambers. Right now they do that.

   7. JRJoe Rogan44:56

      A biology test?

   8. YPYeonmi Park44:57

      Of, of course.

   9. JRJoe Rogan44:57

      What, what, what's the biology test?

   10. YPYeonmi Park44:59

       They test a lot of, of the weapons, biological weapons. So they, you know, keep tr- trying to... They are s- North Korea spends entire their GDP on developing nukes and, uh, wea- weaponries. I mean, they, they are the biggest provider to the Middle East. When there's a war, they buy missiles from North Koreans. North Korea makes money by selling as-, I mean the crystal meth and opium. That's how Kim Jong-un makes money in hacking, right? He steals a lot of Bitcoin and get out of banks, like ATM machines, that's how he makes money, 'cause they don't export anything other than drugs and weapons and hacking and human trafficking.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:40

       So they experiment on their own people to find out if these biological weapons work?

   12. YPYeonmi Park45:44

       Yeah. And also, they need a lot of concentration like prisoners because they have to clean the nuclear debris because they do a lot (laughs) of tests, like, uh... So since 2017 North Korea conducted almost 30 missile tests. If the one test missile cost to, to feed a 25 millions entire year, so he, if he chose to do four like less tests, nobody had to die from, in North Korea, from starvation. And right now Kim Jong-un recently admits that 11 million North Koreans are severely malnourished and he's proud to say that. And he's, he's not even, like, bothering to hide it like in the past, like, "Yeah, they are starving. So what?"

   13. JRJoe Rogan46:26

       And he's fat?

   14. YPYeonmi Park46:27

       Oh, yeah. That's his problem, being too fat.

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:33

       (sighs) Wow. So they, they're forced to clean up nuclear waste from these-

   16. YPYeonmi Park46:40

       The debris, everything, yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan46:43

       ... test sites? And of course they die from radiation.

   18. YPYeonmi Park46:45

       Of course. They, they don't last really three month. Normal life expectancy when you go to concentration camp is three month.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       Three months?

   20. YPYeonmi Park46:52

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:53

       And-

   22. YPYeonmi Park46:53

       So they need a lot of those people.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:54

       And they just use those people for fodder?

   24. YPYeonmi Park46:57

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan46:58

       How many people are... Do they know how many people are in these concentration camps?

   26. YPYeonmi Park47:02

       Nobody knows exactly, but, uh, 700,000 of them. But there's also prison camps. Concentration camps, prison camps, and labor camps.

   27. JRJoe Rogan47:12

       And some people are born into these camps?

   28. YPYeonmi Park47:14

       Yeah, those are people in the concentration camps, and they don't even get to know the name of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-un. They're too, too below the level. They don't even bother to tell them who's the leader of the country is.

   29. JRJoe Rogan47:28

       And what did someone in their family do that would allow them, that would make them get put into these concentration camps?

   30. YPYeonmi Park47:35

       So they find out later their great-great-grandfather was, uh, working with the Japanese for like a week when the Japan was colonizing or the Korean War starting, they were talking to American soldiers, or they were, they're like, like cousins of nephews of like some in-law was a Christian, 'cause North Korea's number one Christian per- persecution country, 'cause they copy the Bible, right? They said, "Oh, Kim Il-sung loves us so much. He's a god. He gave us his son Kim Jong-il and he dies, but his spirit's with us all the time. That's why they can read my thoughts, knows how much hair I have and that's how..." So be- when you become a god, you don't need to explain, you don't need to make sense.
8. 1:05:57 – 1:06:07

   China and human trafficking: defectors as targets, repatriation, and sexual slavery

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:05:57

      ... you escaped. When ... B- b- tell us what it was like. First of all, where did you escape to? You escaped to China?

   2. YPYeonmi Park1:06:05

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:06:06

      And how did you get across?

9. 1:06:07 – 1:12:06

   Yeonmi’s escape and sale: crossing the frozen river, rape, and being traded like property

   1. YPYeonmi Park1:06:07

      Uh, it was a frozen river in March, 20... uh, Mar- uh, end of, end of March, uh, in 2007.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:06:13

      So you traveled on the frozen river?

   3. YPYeonmi Park1:06:15

      Yeah. And we luckily didn't get shot by the guards, and when we got into the other side of the riverbank of China, that's when mom got raped, and then they took us in a house and they were, like, turning me around, like a slave market, right? They check my teeth and my body structure and somehow being virgin is very precious in China, so they sold my mom for around $65 in this 21st century, and they sold me less than $300, and they sold us separately. But the thing is, they didn't even try to force us. They were asking, "If you don't want to be sold, you can go back to North Korea." Right? And even North Korean regime doesn't punish me, I couldn't find food to eat. I was gonna die anyway. Even if the regime doesn't kill me, the starvation was gonna kill me. And for the first time, I remember that night in the, the trafficker's house, I saw a trash can-... and I did not know what it was. So I asked this lady, like, "What is that?" And then like a went around thing and said, "Oh, that's the trash." Like, "What is trash?" And she's like, "Oh, the things that you don't need you throw there, like in a throw bin away." And I said, "K- what do you mean you have things to throw away?" 'Cause we never needed a trash bin in North Korea. We had nothing to throw. Even if the hairs comes down, we don't have, like, heating, like, that we have to start a fire. And starting fire takes... Paper is very precious. So we burn, like, hair there, tr- to try to start a fire. Like, literally nothing was thrown away in that country.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:07:56

      Even human poop, right?

   5. YPYeonmi Park1:07:57

      Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, that regime cannot have a fertilizer. They don't even have the technology to have a fertilizer, so they demand us to bring the poop. And as us kids, you go to school, the teachers beat you and then go home and look for poop. So I would go in the streets and looking if anywhere, like, a dog pooped or somewhere. Of course, like, all those dogs are poops gone. So finding a poop, and when you don't eat, eat, eat much, you don't poop, like, in North Korea, like, few times a month.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:08:26

      Really?

   7. YPYeonmi Park1:08:26

      It's very precious then. Yeah, of course.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:08:29

      Few times a month?

   9. YPYeonmi Park1:08:30

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:08:31

       And it becomes very precious.

   11. YPYeonmi Park1:08:33

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:08:33

       And you have to give it over to the regime?

   13. YPYeonmi Park1:08:34

       Yeah. So that's nothing is being wasted in that regime.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:08:39

       So do they have toilets or do you go to the bathroom in outhouses? Like-

   15. YPYeonmi Park1:08:43

       Oh, we have all outhouses there.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:08:45

       Outhouses.

   17. YPYeonmi Park1:08:45

       And they're digging a hole, but we have to lock it, because they... some people come and steal it, because it's-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:08:49

       They come to steal the poop?

   19. YPYeonmi Park1:08:50

       Yeah, it's a government quota. You get punished if you don't bring poop. Everything is punishment in that country.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:08:57

       So how much... What is the quota? Like, how much poop do you have to give them?

   21. YPYeonmi Park1:09:00

       S- so sometimes per family they say one ton. How do you find that?

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:09:05

       A ton?

   23. YPYeonmi Park1:09:05

       Yeah, so we-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:09:06

       2000 pounds?

   25. YPYeonmi Park1:09:08

       I do the kilograms, so like-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:09:09

       Oh.

   27. YPYeonmi Park1:09:09

       ... 1000 kilograms, right? It's like a ton.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:09:12

       1000 kilograms.

   29. YPYeonmi Park1:09:12

       One ton, so-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:09:13

       Yeah, it's about right, so-
10. 1:12:06 – 1:16:53

    Surviving two years in China: constant flight, repeated abuse, and a brutal bargain to reunite family

    1. YPYeonmi Park1:12:06

       (laughs) Well, living in two years of China, like, feel like I lived 1000 years on this earth (laughs) . I feel, like, very old. Um, yeah, I remember after there for six months, one day, I was walking along and then, like, I literally felt like I lived 1000 years, right? Like, making it one day was such a struggle. Whenever you let one day live, you think like, "Oh my God, I made one more day on Earth."

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:12:33

       In China?

    3. YPYeonmi Park1:12:34

       Yeah.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:12:34

       So i- it was that hard in China?

    5. YPYeonmi Park1:12:36

       Mm-hmm.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:12:36

       What was so hard about it?

    7. YPYeonmi Park1:12:38

       Because, one, you don't know when you're gonna be arrested, so you always put your shoes on tight, shoe laces, and whenever you get into some indoor, you look for a place to run, right? If you are so invited to somebody's house, you see the hole to check the doors, "Where can I run? Which route do I run?" When you even sleep, you, you know how to run, right? You get ready to run from the police. And that is a constant threat. And, and of course you're raped every single day by these human traffickers, and they even come follow you to bathroom. There's no human dignity. They beat you and they... I mean, you're not your own person, and they... the common things that they t- tell us, tell us that you... our lives are even not valuable, like pigs, because even they kill us, they know that we cannot go to police.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:13:28

       How did you escape from all that?

    9. YPYeonmi Park1:13:31

       This is, uh ... So the man who bought me, uh, he was very impressed because by then I went through two human traffickers prior me. So by the third human trafficker, nobody's virgin. They all got raped. So he was Han Chinese and couldn't believe that I made it to him as a virgin, because the first trafficker, my mom covered. Second trafficker, I felt like hell. I literally lose my mind. And thankfully, he has his, like, mistress in the next room, so I didn't get raped, even he tried (laughs) so hard, I didn't. So by the third time Han Chinese, I was trying to kill myself and then he said, "Oh, if you become my mistress, I'm gonna help you to get in your- get your family to you." But before that, he showed me the phone he had, 'cause I'd never seen a phone in my life as North Korean. And he showed me, "Oh, this phone can take pictures and look at these pictures I took." And in a moment, the one picture was I saw with my mom in it. And I started telling just like, "My mom, my mom." And that's how he knew that I had that... the woman that he sold was my mom and of- obviously, he raped her too. So he said if I become his mistress, he's gonna, uh, get me... help me mi- with my family. So he took my virginity, raped me, and thankfully, he did help me. He brought, he brought my mom back from a farmer that he sold, and he brought my sick father from North Korea. That's how I brought my parents back to me.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:05

        How did you escape from him?

    11. YPYeonmi Park1:15:07

        Two... after almost two years, he became a gambling addict. He was a big gambler. He's spending all his money and somehow this evil man was letting me go, 'cause he couldn't even afford to give me food at that point, he w- he was so broke. So he said, like, "I'm letting you go." And in some ways, in his most evil way, he loved me. So after two years, I was let go, and then I went to this chat room. So this is another thing. A lot of North Korean girls, uh, capturing these chat rooms where we do body cams. Clients are South Koreans. So we chat and then we show our body. But North Korean women, we choose that route because it's better than being touched by men in person. Right?

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:55

        Right.

    13. YPYeonmi Park1:15:55

        It's you're not raped in person.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:15:57

        So, this is all on the internet with web cameras?

    15. YPYeonmi Park1:15:59

        Yeah. That's sm- or so number one thing that North Korean women do in China or this nightlife. So in that room, I heard about something called the South Korea for the first time, because the clients are South Koreans.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:16:12

        You didn't know what South Korea was?

    17. YPYeonmi Park1:16:13

        I knew the different name, like, different name, but I knew that country was colonized by Americans. I heard that in South Korea, the South Korea was very corrupt capitalist and raped by American soldiers every day and they all, like, cannot go to... kids cannot go to school and they all want to come to North Korea.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:16:33

        That's what you had learned from North Korea?

    19. YPYeonmi Park1:16:35

        Oh yeah, that's what I thought.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:16:36

        Wow, they all want to go to North Korea?

    21. YPYeonmi Park1:16:38

        Yeah, they all want to come to North Korea. The entire humanity wants to be like North Korea. So we are so fortunate. They tell us that we have nothing to envy in this world.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:16:50

        Wow.

    23. YPYeonmi Park1:16:51

        Yeah.

11. 1:16:53 – 1:29:35

    The Mongolia route: Gobi Desert crossing, suicide tools, and detention before South Korea

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:16:53

       So you find out about South Korea from these chat rooms and you start to get a different idea of what South Korea must be like?

    2. YPYeonmi Park1:16:59

       Yeah. And we met this defector lady in that chat room. She told me she knows some missionaries and if we become Christians, they're gonna help us to go to South Korea and be free. And that's when I heard, like, free for the first time, I asked her, like, "What do you mean free?" And she said, "Oh, you can watch TV and you can wear jeans and nobody gonna arrest you for that in South Korea." (laughs) So that's what I thought of freedom.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:17:26

       Watching TV and wearing jeans?

    4. YPYeonmi Park1:17:28

       Yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:17:28

       That's, that's what you thought of freedom? Wow.

    6. YPYeonmi Park1:17:30

       It was never like freedom of speech or none of that. It was like, "Oh, that's cool. I can wear jeans." (laughs)

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:17:36

       (laughs)

    8. YPYeonmi Park1:17:36

       'Cause I was a teenage girl. I wanted jeans. In North Korea, you get sent to prison camp for that.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:17:41

       You get sent to prison camp for wearing jeans?

    10. YPYeonmi Park1:17:43

        Yeah. It's a joke for Westerners that North Korean, even haircut is, like, ordered by the regime. Like, the only thing that North Koreans are allowed to do that in that country freely, really, is breathing. Everything else is controlled. What we wear, what we watch, what we listen to, how we dance, what haircut that we get. Every single thing is controlled by the regime.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:18:11

        So you're working in these chat rooms.

    12. YPYeonmi Park1:18:14

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:18:15

        And you meet this woman and she says, "You just have to become a Christian"?

    14. YPYeonmi Park1:18:19

        No, we have to go there was shelter that Christians had. So we have to go in there, study Bible and we have to prove our faith to them. Then they're gonna rescue us. That was a condition to be rescued, by Christians.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:18:32

        So it's a Christian missionary-

    16. YPYeonmi Park1:18:34

        Mm-hmm.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:18:35

        ... from South Korea?

    18. YPYeonmi Park1:18:36

        South Korea. Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:18:37

        And how... so did you have to go to South Korea in order to prove yourself to them or did they, did they-

    20. YPYeonmi Park1:18:44

        No, we-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:18:44

        ... do this all through online?

    22. YPYeonmi Park1:18:45

        No, we couldn't go South Korea, obviously. So we... they had a shelter in China, in some house hidden. So we went to their shelter and then we joined them as a group and studied the Bible every day. So we would go fasting. I mean, we've been starved all our lives, but they say, you know, "God provides, so you go fast, you study Bible, you memorize verses, they come test you and we pray together." And then once they think we are actually Christians, then they tell you how to go to South Korea.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:19:16

        How long did that take?

    24. YPYeonmi Park1:19:18

        Several month. And, but when you're so desperate, right, like, I'm gonna believe in rocks if somebody ask me-

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:19:25

        Right.

    26. YPYeonmi Park1:19:25

        ... to believe in. Like, you believe in anything, literally.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:19:28

        Right.

    28. YPYeonmi Park1:19:29

        So... and it was so easy, like, North Korea regime was Bible.... like, I was like, "What the heck is this thing called Jesus and God?" And like, North Koreans are like, "Don't worry, baby." They said, "Plug God to Kim Il-sung and Jesus to Kim Jong Il." And per- perfectly made sense. Like, God loves us so much, he gave us his son, he kn- he's there to protect us, we gotta suffer and go to paradise with him later in life.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:19:50

        (sighs)

    30. YPYeonmi Park1:19:52

        So, I did become a Christian.

Episode duration: 3:13:43