Yeonmi Park, North Korean defector, derides 'woke' culture in University of Iowa visit

A North Korean defector compared "woke" culture to Kim II Sung's regime Tuesday during an appearance Tuesday night on the University of Iowa campus, also sharing her experience fleeing her home country.

Yeonmi Park spoke to a crowd of about 150 students at Main Lounge in the Iowa Memorial Union, sharing her experience in North Korea while she criticized the U.S. society as a left-wing culture aimed at inclusion.

Park was a guest of the University of Iowa chapter of Young Americans for Freedom's Preserving American Liberty & Freedom Series, which has hosted notable speakers such as Matt Walsh and Chloe Cole.

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Park fled North Korea to China in 2007, when she was just 13 years old. She spoke of that experience during her appearance Nov. 14 in Iowa City. She noted how her sister left first while Park fled a bit later after she recovered from an illness, departing with her mother.

Park said she ate grasshoppers and dragonflies because of how deep her family was in poverty in North Korea. She said she still can't get her weight above 80 pounds due to years of malnourishment.

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Park also said she was sold for sex trafficking in China for $200. She eventually reunited with her mother and voyaged through the Gobi Desert to escape the oppressive Chinese regime, something she was critical of Tuesday. She blamed the Chinese Communist Party for her stint as a child sex slave.

Park derides left-wing movements on inclusion and pronouns

Much of Park's 45-minute speech and the subsequent question period Tuesday night compared her time in the oppressive North Korean regime to the progressive left-wing movements in the U.S.

She noted how North Korea doesn’t have words for gay, lesbian, or even stress. She said the North Korean regime believes there is no stress in a socialist paradise.

“There are many friends that I've met at Columbia and other places talking about how they fight for this thing called LGBTQIA, this alphabet soup, right?” Park said, drawing some laughs from the crowd. “The never-ending lines continuing on and they're saying how we need socialism, how we need more tolerance in America. I was thinking, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

She also derided her professors at Columbia for embracing and blindly touting being “woke.”

“I was confused,” Park said. “I asked my professor, ‘What do you mean, I need you to be woke? I'm awake, look at me, I’m more awake than this.’”

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Her first exposure to the Western world came when she watched “Titanic” with friends in North Korea, which she said opened her eyes.

Park wondered why she was watching a love story and why a then-young Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays the role of the lead character, Jack, would be in a movie about love. Park wondered how he could choose a woman over the communist party. She even thought DiCaprio might have been killed for making the movie.

She also said the iconic TV series “Friends,” can be credited for helping her learn English. She said she thought the NBC show would be somewhat like her experiences in the U.S.

But when she arrived stateside, she realized she would instead be learning “10,000 different pronouns.”

“‘Friends,’ they don’t have that,” Park said.

Park was also hesitant when she heard the viewpoints of her American classmates and how they wanted to fight back against the government.

“They say they want to tear down the Constitution. They will destroy America. They will destroy capitalism,” Park said. “And I asked them, ‘Why do you hate America so much? Why do you hate capitalism so much?’ And they say, ‘Do you know why? Because capitalism creates inequality.’”

Park believes the U.S. is in a "far better spot" than she was in during her time in North Korea, telling Tuesday's crowd that she would rather live in a world with homelessness and inequality than in a communist state where everyone is starving.

“I would rather than live in a country where people like Elon Musk make rockets and the electric car and be a billionaire,” Park said. “I'm so grateful for the iPhone. I hope anybody who made the iPhone should be [a] billionaire. …They met the needs of the people. Capitalism is a very ethical system and they are so confused that they think the enemy is inequality. The true enemy to any human being is poverty.”

Park's story challenged by UI students

A few students Tuesday night raised concerns over Park's legitimacy and consistency.

A student also pointed to Park's affiliation with Turning Point USA, a conservative activist group that introduced her as “a self-described Enemy of the Woke” in May. The student said Park "switched her tone since being announced as a contributor." He also criticized Park’s support of Israel after making a career out of condemning North Korea’s human rights abuses.

Park responded and said she hadn’t changed, and she is still critical of individual restrictions like mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also said she is considerate of both sides of the Israel-Hamas war. However, she made comparisons of Israel’s bombing of Gaza to the United States’ role in World War II, battling against imperial Japanese and Nazi rule.

“That's why our ancestors taught us that freedom is not free. Freedom does have a price,” Park said. “...Sometimes we do have to defeat evil and the cost is real. And the world is not perfect.”

Park also criticized the student for not knowing the "full truth," how it does not come from a 30-second TikTok video.

“That is why we’re witnessing the end of civilization," Park said.

Ryan Hansen covers local government and crime for the Press-Citizen. He can be reached at rhansen@press-citizen.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ryanhansen01.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Yeonmi Park, North Korean defector, criticizes 'woke' culture at UI