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North Korean defector Park Yeonmi discusses her experience in North Korea

North Korean defector and human rights activist Park Yeonmidiscussed living in isolation under the North Korean governmentat a conference on Saturday hosted by Princeton for North Korean Human Rights.

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“I never heard about Beethoven, I never heard about Shakespeare. All I heard about was our dear leader and the regime. I thought I was living in a pretty normal country that was just isolated,” Park said.

Park noted she was thirteen years old when she fled North Korea with her mother via China. She said China introduced another terror because the Chinese government would send North Korean refugees back to North Korea if caught. She and her mother were purchased by human traffickers in China, she added.

“My mom’s price was $260, and you cannot even buy an iPhone with that money,” Park said.

After travelling through the Gobi Desert to Mongolia, Park explained she settled in South Korea at age 15 and is now attending Columbia University at age 22.

“Luckily, I made it. I’m here,” Park said.

In order to live with such traumatizing experiences, Park said that she told herself stories to bury these moments in her past.

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“I hated the world. I couldn’t love anybody. I couldn’t trust anybody. All I had was ambition and hatred,” she said.

Park said that her talk at the One Young World Summit 2014 in Dublin made her realize that people actually cared about listening to her story.

“When I spoke in Dublin, I saw people crying for me,” she said.

She added that she had lost faith in humanity, but that moment restored that faith, andshe decided that she could open up about her story.

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Park idsa North Korea is the “darkest place on earth” and “a totally different universe” compared to South Korea. Although it is the 21st century, there is no 24-hour electricity in North Korea, she said, noting people were not allowed to even visit another town without express permission.

"People don’t even know what passports are,” Park said.

Park added that the situation is “unspeakable” because people in North Korea don’t know what freedom is. When she arrived in South Korea, she was met with a sort of discrimination from those who were afraid of being connected to a North Korean, she explained.

“I hid my identity and lived as a South Korean,” Park said.

Despite these setbacks, Park said she experienced positive benefits of culture shock when she arrived.

“In North Korea, everything on TV was about our dear leader Kim Jong Un,” Park said. “Suddenly, when I came to South Korea, everybody was talking about K-pop stars.”

“That was a culture shock for me,” Park said.

Park, however, noted her concern about the South Korean perception of North Koreans as foreigners. Althoughshe was educated to believe that North Koreans and South Koreans are one people, she noticed that everyone in South Korea viewed North Korea as a foreign country, she explained.

“That scares me,” Park said.

Acknowledging that it is difficult to change the mindset, she said that she hopes the two Koreas to be unified, but doesn't know how it will.

She said that as a student in Columbia, she would like to make the human rights issue alive on campus. Looking towards the future, Park noted that she would like to start or join a foundation dedicated to the North Korean cause.

“If we really care about these issues, I’m sure we can come up with solutions to free the North Korean people,” Park said.

Vice Co-Chair of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea Suzanne Scholte also spoke at the event.

"North Korea is the worst human rights tragedy in the world today," Scholte said. She also noted that North Koreais the only country in the world whose citizens do not enjoy a single human right. Scholte said North Koreans are like slaves who give undying allegiance to their dictator.

Park has written a book titled, "In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom," and a book-signing was held following the lecture. The 2016 PNKHR conference was held in a full Dodds Auditorium in Robertson Hall on Feb. 14.