North Korean escapee Yeonmi Park speaks out on her story - TomoNews

Meet Yeonmi Park. At 21 she looks like a typical university student enjoying the perks of living in Seoul, South Korea’s ultra-modern capital city. It’s hard to believe that she was actually born and grew up in a small port village in North Korea, along the river that defines the border between the North and it’s largest neighbor, China. Today Yeonmi is an outspoken activist, telling her family’s story about their harrowing escape from North Korea, ruled by one of the world’s most reclusive and repressive regimes. At a young age Yeonmi was indoctrinated with North Korean ideology, where Kim Jong-il and his family are treated as gods and any dissent is punished with prison and torture. The government tightly controls everything and limits citizens’ access to the outside world. When Yeonmi was just 13 years old she was invited to watch the execution of her best friend’s mother. The woman had been arrested for watching South Korean movies and sharing the DVDs with friends. She along with several others were executed by firing squad for their crime.