https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=lks7xKNX6bk
So, okay, so you lost your father was imprisoned when you were about eight, seven or eight. And what happened to him? What was the consequences for him? He was doing quite well in some sense by North Korean standards with his trading. So he was good at what he was doing and your mother helped him. But he got imprisoned, especially after he moved up into more dangerous commodities. You said that he started to trade metals and that he was hiding the metals in cars, railway cars that were reserved for, I think I’ve got this right, for Kim Jong-il. Yes. Yes, because they wouldn’t be searched. Yes. So every train in North Korea, we only have one train line and that goes from one side of the country to the end. It sometimes takes a month to go because the low electricity and the railways are very bad. And that’s why there’s always reserved one cargo that carries the things to Kim’s. And what’s in that car just out of curiosity? I mean, we hear these rumors, they grow the parts of the country that has the best land for growing apple or growing something like the best of the best from the country that is specially reserved for them. And nobody actually knows what’s in there. Even when the people who search that cargo cannot go and the people who guard it, they have to do body search and health check up for them. So that’s how severe this control is. And really nobody knows what they’re carrying inside. And my father was able to do something with them and then carry the metals in that cargo. Hiding and he was bribing he was bribing guards to allow that to happen. Yeah. And then he got caught. Yeah. And was put in a so what kind talk about the prison situations the print because just normal life in North Korea is unbearable by all accounts, but the prisons take that to a whole new level of hell. So what would have your father experienced in the North Korean prison camp? So there are three types of prisons in North Korea. One is called a guale. So it is concentration camp. Usually you’re born there. So you’re because you grab it is that one day my grandfather communism crime, then they take the older generation to there. And it is like permanent living condition there. You live there forever for the rest of your life. And you’re born there. You can be born there because of the group guilt of your ancestors, which never goes away. Right now you can never redeem the by the your group, your whatever your ancestors did forever you’re there. So they don’t even consider this inmates are human enough. They don’t even teach them who is it literally is they don’t even know what things on your is in that concentration camp. You said they’re not even allowed to look at the guards. Yes, but that is every level. So where my father went was a prison camp. They let those people know what Kim Il Sung is. But the thing is, they to also treat them like animals. They don’t let them to ever see the guards eyes. And, of course, the conditions are, I mean, it’s a Holocaust. The what the UN said in 2014, the UN did three years investigation and the only resemblance that we found in our history is Holocaust. This is a Holocaust happening in North Korea. Like, again, do you have any idea how many people are in the concentration camps, the worst of the prisons? Do you know what the estimates are? They say around 200,000. And what about the total prison population? Do you have any numbers for that? Because so many are dying. So when you go to the prison, a lot of them die within three months. So those like numbers are very hard to get. And it’s the most secretive country in the world, like even though the America cannot figure out North Korea. So those we know that their positions, we can even sound like seeing those public executions happening. But it’s very hard to estimate how many going in and how many dying after like three months. It’s hard to like calculate that numbers. And so your father was in prison for how long? He was sentenced to more than 10 years. Initially was I thought was 17 years, but North Korea showed the record it was like I think 11 years sentence prison camp. He got out something for five, four maybe years later for the sick leave, which means he was bribing. That’s the thing. Right. He played a trick on the ward. Right. Right. So they think for the sick leave, once you get killed, you go back to prison again. And he was a very like a businessman. He learned like guards and get him out. And that’s how he got him out during his sentence. When you go to the restroom, you always close the door behind you, right? You don’t want a random passerby looking in on you. So why would you let people look in on you when you go online? Your online privacy is important. That’s why I use Express VPN. And you should too. Using the internet without a VPN is like going to the restroom without closing the door. 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What had happened to him? So when I was reading this book by Giorgio in 1984, it talks about the man like Winston. It talks about the man like Winston who had a lot of wits and after that all the torture he became empty. Right? Like, and a lot of people read that book as fiction to them, but for me that was like my father. When I saw my father again, of course he had no hair. He just got out of prison camp. I mean, all he got was just bones, like literally skin on the bones. And the thing is I didn’t even feel anything. That’s like what I’m still guilty is like I felt nothing. He was just so empty. His eyes were just hollow and empty. And then he was starting singing songs like I didn’t do enough for my country. Like he was so guilty that he was not a revolutionary. And if he wasn’t him and in so many ways that was worse than killing him. He killed his soul permanently that he never came back. Until he died he felt guilty that one day he committed for the regime. To his death, he told me never betrayed like the dear leader. And I don’t know what he did to him, but he came out as a completely different person. So it was not long after that that you and your family decided to leave North Korea to escape. You were 13. Your dad died. He died of cancer. And it wasn’t long after he got out of the prison that that was the case. And then you guys decided to make your way to China. So my sister at 16 she escaped first with her friend and I told you as I got my stomachache she left me a note to say go find this lady. She will help you to escape. Initially we didn’t plan to escape with my mom. I was going to escape with my own sister, but because I got sick my sister had to leave first. I didn’t plan to escape with my mom. I was going to escape with my own sister, but because I got sick my sister had to leave first. I found the note and found the lady with my mom and told her that she told me if I go to China she said I was going to find my sister. And then I mean but when you’re so desperate like you don’t even know what China is. Like we don’t have internet to look search and what’s going on in China. Just hoping because China is the only place that had the lights at night. And if you look at North Korea from a satellite image it’s quite interesting because the entire country is black at night and it’s surrounded by the bright lights of South Korea and all of Southeast Asia. But you have this immense territory the whole north of Korea that’s completely dark and you talked about standing with your boyfriend at that time looking at the lights in the distance of China. But you didn’t know anything about it at all and had no idea what was going to happen to you if you escaped into China. No I did not even know what was China. I just saw the lights and maybe if I go where the lights were I thought maybe I would find a bottle of rice. That’s how innocent we thought about it. Right and some of that motivation was direct hunger. You were hoping to find somewhere where you could at least get enough to eat. Yeah it was that’s the thing. It’s the thing when people say you’re so brave that you risk your life for freedom. Like no I wasn’t. I didn’t even know what freedom was then. Like how do I know what freedom is? And I just was literally escaping to find some food to survive from hunger. And that’s how we crossed that frozen river that night with my mother and myself when I was 13 years old. China leaving my father behind back in North Korea. So tell us what happened. Tell us about what happens to North Koreans as they move with the traffickers into Korea because that’s a whole story in and of itself and it was something you had no idea about. I know this is a thing like people the world is obsessed talking about slavery but this is a slavery that’s happening just right now at this very moment that we are talking about this. So there are like 300,000 North Korean defectors in China and they are all enslaved by Chinese people. I was one of them. In 2007 we found this lady miraculously she wanted to help me to go to China. I didn’t even know why. She bribed the guards. So in North Korea it’s most heavily guarded border with people with machine guns and Kim Jong-un literally buries landmines on the border so people would not escape. So entire country is a concentration camp. Entire border is set. We were luckily bribed the guards. We crossed the frozen river to China. Of course the first thing I see was my mom being raped informally. you