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Park Yeonmi 박연미 | |
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| Born | 4 October 1993 Hyesan, Ryanggang Province, North Korea |
| Nationality | Korean |
| Known for | Spreading misinformation about North Korea |
Park Yeonmi (last name Park, though the order is often rendered as Yeonmi Park in Western media) is known for "defecting" (emigrating without warning) from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). She now resides in the United States of America. Known as a “celebrity defector”, she is one of the most well-known defectors from the DPRK.
Fame[edit | edit source]
She first gained prominence in 2013 by presenting some of the most extreme and absurd testimonies, and has been able to build a cult following and a very lucrative career as the posterchild for anti-Communism. She is cited more than any other defector because she says exactly what anti-Communists want to hear about a closed-off, Communist country. Today, she is a culture warrior who weaponizes her background for personal gain. As her credibility waned, Park settled into her niche as a right-wing ideologue, standing side-by-side figures such as Jordan Peterson, who wrote the foreword to her latest book: While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America.[1] Park has claimed the U.S. has "fallen to socialism". An emblematic example of this in action from The Telegraph, a right-wing British media network:
However, since relocating to America, and earning a degree from Columbia University, she has sounded the alarm over “cancel culture” and political influences on the country’s education system… In an interview with The Telegraph, Ms Park said she was shocked by the political ideology promoted by professors and fellow students at the Ivy League university. She claimed that while studying for a human rights degree, she was taught that Jane Austen “promoted white supremacy”, maths was “racist” and debate over trans issues were silenced… Ms Park was particularly critical of the way in which discussions around sex and gender were policed on campus, calling it “crazier than North Korea”.[2]
Park has even continued with her lies in the USA, telling Joe Rogan that her turn to the right was "prompted by an incident during the George Floyd protests in 2020, when she was allegedly robbed by three Black woman, and stopped from calling the police by a crowd of 20 white bystanders".[3]
She told the New York Times that she is working for Turning Point USA.[4] Park also has material ties to the Atlas Network, a conservative organisation which has received funding from the US State Department and the United States Congress.[5][6][7]
Bourgeois Background[edit | edit source]
Yeonmi Park has been called the Paris Hilton of North Korea, and lived a life of privilege and luxury among the upper echelon of society in the DPRK before leaving to begin her career as a celebrity defector in the West.[8]
Inconsistencies in story[edit | edit source]
Her stories as a defector are highly inconsistent and contain large amounts of false information.[8] Park claims that her best friend's mother was executed at a stadium in Hyesan in 2002[9], but according to several other similar defectors, public executions in Hyesan only ever took place on the outskirts of the city, and there haven't been any public executions there since 1999. Park initially stated that the woman was executed for watching a James Bond movie, but later changed it to be a DVD from South Korea. Andrei Lankov, a Western critic of the DPRK who writes from South Korea (where praise of the DPRK is illegal), was skeptical of Park's claim that watching a Western movie would result in an execution.[8] Park's claims include ludicrous things such as having to push a 15-tonne train, that DPRK's plants all mysteriously turn poisonous in springtime forcing parents to feed deadly mud to their children, and that there is no ice cream in DPRK (provably false).[10]
In January 2013, Park said that she never saw anyone starving in the DPRK. She later claimed that she saw people eating grass and insects to survive. This practice was attested to during the years of the Arduous March, the years during which Park was living in the DPRK,[11] but it is unconfirmed whether Park remembers it firsthand or is only repeating stories she heard, as she herself would have been only five years old at the end of the Arduous March.
In 2014, she said that she defected to China from the DPRK with her mother and father. She later changed the story and claimed that her father stayed behind.[12]
In an interview with North Korea Today, she said that she could not afford to go to school in the DPRK. In another interview with them, she talked about what she learned in school and said the DPRK had a free education system.[13] Park has claimed in one instance her family was very wealthy, and yet in another instance said her family was very poor.[14]
Park's fictional storytelling can be explained by the economic incentive. The more extreme the stories told, the more money a defector is paid.[15][16]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Ken Silverstein (2025-01-10). "Young Voices, the PR Shop That Launched the Career of North Korean Celebrity Defector Yeonmi Park, Helps American Journalists and Foreign “Dissidents" Peddle the Gospel of Capitalism" Washington Babylon. Archived from the original.
- ↑ Rozina Sabur (2023). "‘Woke’ US schools scarier than North Korea, says defector" Archived from the original.
- ↑ Thom Waite (2023-05-17). "Yeonmi Park: is the DPRK defector and ‘enemy of the woke’ a western psy-op?" Dazed. Archived from the original.
- ↑ Will Sommer (2023). "A North Korean defector captivated U.S. media. Some question her story." Archived from the original.
- ↑ “Part talent agency, part PR firm, Young Voices is closely affiliated with the Koch-funded Atlas Network, and its most famous graduate is celebrity North Korean defector Yeonmi Park.”
"Young Voices helps conservative US writers and foreign dissidents become champions of America" (28/07/2023 at 04:00 GMT). Intelligence Online .com. Archived from the original. - ↑ "North Korean human rights: the crisis that remains" (September 5, 2018). Atlas Network. Archived from the original.
- ↑ “Young Voices isn’t a conventional business, though, but a political organization that exclusively recruits and promotes conservatives, such as its best known alumnus Yeonmi Park, the North Korean celebrity defector and fabulist it helped transform into a global right-wing star. Established in 2013 by the Atlas Network, a nonprofit based in the Virginia suburbs just outside of the capital that creates and connects a web of right-wing think tanks in the US and around the world, Young Voices subsequently spun off and currently operates as an independent organization. It remains closely affiliated with Atlas and has close ties to a number of prominent conservative outlets, including the Federalist Society, which it recently partnered with on a media fellowship program for law students. Casey Givens, the group’s President and Executive Director, is a former Policy Analyst for the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Vice President Scott Barbee, the controlling shareholder of the investment firm Aegis Financial Corporation, and Treasurer Dan Grossman, the owner of a chain of office supply stores, both have board seats at Atlas. Young Voices received donations of about $2 million last year, according to its most recent nonprofit tax filing with the the IRS. It doesn’t disclose its donors, but they include Stand Together, which was founded by Charles Koch, and the Bradley Foundation, a leading funder of conservative causes.”
Ken Silverstein (2025-01-10). "Young Voices, the PR Shop That Launched the Career of North Korean Celebrity Defector Yeonmi Park, Helps American Journalists and Foreign “Dissidents" Peddle the Gospel of Capitalism" Washington Babylon. Archived from the original. - ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Mary Ann Jolley (2014-12-10). "The Strange Tale of Yeonmi Park" The Diplomat. Archived from the original on 2022-08-01. Retrieved 2022-08-05. Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name ":0" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Will Sommer (2023). "A North Korean defector captivated U.S. media. Some question her story." Archived from the original.
- ↑ Thom Waite (2023-05-17). "Yeonmi Park: is the DPRK defector and ‘enemy of the woke’ a western psy-op?" Dazed. Archived from the original.
- ↑ “The defectors that are in their 20s and 30s right now from birth or childhood grew up not knowing what rice or meat is because they were born during the Arduous March. As soon as they were born, they only had corn, grass and tree bark to eat, and instead of going to school they had to trade in the market every day or go up the mountains to gather firewood.”
"Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang (서울의 평양 시민들)" (2024-08-16). DPRK News Room. - ↑ Will Sommer (2023). "A North Korean defector captivated U.S. media. Some question her story." Archived from the original.
- ↑ "Yeonmi Park: The Defector Who Fooled the World" (2014-12-22). JooPark3782 Blog. Archived from the original on 2022-03-28. Retrieved 2022-08-05.
- ↑ “Park’s own accounts have shifted over time; in some, her family was wealthy and in others they was dirt poor, to take but one example.”
Ken Silverstein (2025-01-10). "Young Voices, the PR Shop That Launched the Career of North Korean Celebrity Defector Yeonmi Park, Helps American Journalists and Foreign “Dissidents" Peddle the Gospel of Capitalism" Washington Babylon. Archived from the original. - ↑ “Cash payments in return for interviews with North Korean refugees have been standard practice in the field for years.
Initially, the payment was to cover the cost of meals and local transport, which was approximately $30 in the late 1990s when I first began interviewing in China and South Korea. However, the fees had risen to $200 per hour by the time I attempted to interview people from North Korea in May 2014.
A government official from the South Korean ministry of unification told me the range of fees could vary wildly, from $50-500 per hour, depending on the quality of information.
... Cash payments in return for interviews with North Korean refugees have been standard practice in the field for years.
Initially, the payment was to cover the cost of meals and local transport, which was approximately $30 in the late 1990s when I first began interviewing in China and South Korea. However, the fees had risen to $200 per hour by the time I attempted to interview people from North Korea in May 2014.
A government official from the South Korean ministry of unification told me the range of fees could vary wildly, from $50-500 per hour, depending on the quality of information.
... North Korean refugees are well aware of what the interviewer wants to hear.
This practice also drives the demand for “saleable stories”: the more exclusive, shocking or emotional, the higher the fee.”
Jiyoung Song (2015-10-13). "Why do North Korean defector testimonies so often fall apart?" The Guardian. Archived from the original. - ↑ “Back in 2017, the South Korean government quadrupled the reward it pays North Korean defectors for “useful information” on the regime, to just under £700,000. In both South Korea and the US, meanwhile, bestselling memoirs and sensational speaking engagements help convert trauma into cash...”
Thom Waite (2023-05-17). "Yeonmi Park: is the DPRK defector and ‘enemy of the woke’ a western psy-op?" Dazed. Archived from the original.