North Korean Defector Yeonmi Park Warns Americans: "If We Lose This Country, We Are All Going to Die"
North Korean defector Yeonmi Park is issuing a blunt warning to Americans about the future of the country she now calls home, and she is not softening it.
"For me, I was fortunate that I had a country to escape to from North Korea to America, but if we lose this country, we are all going to die, actually," Park said.
Park knows exactly what she is comparing America to. She escaped North Korea as a teenager in 2007, crossing into China with her mother before eventually reaching South Korea and, later, the United States. She told that story in her memoir "In Order to Live," which brought international attention to daily life under the Kim regime. The book described hunger, fear and a government that controlled nearly every part of life, and it made Park one of the best-known defectors in the world.
Her 2023 book, "While Time Remains," turned the spotlight on America. In it she described what she saw as warning signs on college campuses and in the wider culture. She wrote that some of the patterns she noticed reminded her of the country she fled, a comparison that drew both praise and pushback. Supporters said she was speaking from experience few Americans have. Critics questioned parts of her story and her conclusions. Park has stood by both.
She has repeated those concerns in speeches and interviews across the country, often telling audiences that Americans do not realize how rare their freedoms are. Her newest comments come ahead of an anti-communism event at Cornerstone University, a Christian school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The event is titled "Why Not Communism? A Wisdom Conversation on Freedom, Faith and the Future of America" and is scheduled for October 1.
Park will share the stage with Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, Soviet communism scholar Dr. Gary Saul Morson, Cultural Revolution survivor Xi Van Fleet and Cornerstone University president Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riaño. Two of the speakers grew up under communist governments. Van Fleet lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in China before moving to the United States. Morson has spent decades studying the Soviet Union and the literature that came out of it.
The event is aimed at students, many of whom were born decades after the Cold War ended and know communism mainly from history class. Organizers are betting that firsthand stories will land harder than any textbook. The format puts people who lived through it in the same room as people who study it.
The timing also matters. Debates over socialism, free speech and the role of government are running hot heading into the midterm elections, and events like this one are part of a wider push to reach younger voters on those questions.
For Park, though, the message is personal rather than political. America was the place she ran to when she had nothing. She says that if America is lost, there is no other country left to run to.
Do you agree with Yeonmi Park that America is the last place left to escape to? YES OR NO?
