hey, welcome to tonight's david l guy sponsored by the center of economic. i'm kathy wolfe, the vice president for academic affairs here at roanoke college. it's my present, my privilege to welcome you because i have the privilege of working with all of our academic and faculty i know and celebrate that we're immersed here in wide variety of ways of knowing and being in the world. it is crucial for all of us to encounter diverse perspectives throughout our lives. roanoke college advocates freedom with purpose. this means that among other outcomes, we strive to enable students to sharpen their minds through critical research and debate. build their own code of and live

in a diverse and tolerant community. ideas and viewpoints that backed by sound reason and evidence that do not deny the worth of other human beings have a place on a college campus and in a democratic, reasonable looking at the same can reach different conclusions about what that information means or how to act on it. some perspectives and claims will inevitably make us on may even make us, but we cannot up on engaging in civil dialog with people with whom disagree. this is part how we prepare ourselves intellectually to define and follow our purposes and contribute to civic life. events like tonight's talk are occasions for that civil dialog. i am grateful to dr. alice kassens for organizing tonight's event. dr. carson's is the john shannon

professor of economics here at roanoke. the director of the center for economic freedom and a research fellow with the federal of saint louis institute for equity. dr. carson's. i will now introduce tonight's speaker. thanks. thank you, kathy. welcome, everyone, to our evening. this crowd fantastic. we have to pull in extra chairs cause i see people standing up. this is wonderful. thank you for joining this evening. i want to first take a few moments to thank our sponsors that have made tonight possible. first, the young america's foundation. young america's foundation is leading pro-freedom youth organizer in the country and mission is to ensure that increasing of young americans, like many of you in here tonight, understand enter

inspired by the ideas of individual freedom. a national defense, free enterprise and traditional. we've been working with for several years to in many wonderful speakers and we're so grateful for the opportun that they help make possible for all of you roanoke college students and our beloved community members. second, where are. there you are, david. guy. david guy is a roanoke college alum, class of 1975. david in business administration was a member of the men's track field program. he was so good at the weight events, high. he was known as big guy. get it guy. he was inducted to our athletic hall of fame in 1985. he lives in charlotte with his wife, patty and it has great success in estate management and development. he also has a passion for sharing the power of free

markets, particularly with roanoke college students and our community. in that vein, david began funding the david elk lecture several years ago, and that is what we are here for tonight. david, thank you for your support, your friendship and your mentorship. lucky to have you on my team now. well, we're all here for tonight. our spring 2023. david l guy lecture. ian, me, park. born in north korea, human rights activist and tedx speaker yeonmi park grew up in punishing society. devoted to the worship of kim jong il. but at the age of 13, she and her family a daring escape to china in search for a life free tyranny. in her viral talks, viewed online, nearly. 350 million times. pak audiences to recognize and resist the oppression exists in north korea and around the world. tonight, she's going to take us

on a journey, her own journey. it's a tragic journey. it's a shocking journey. but it is her journey as she shares her journey with us. take a moment to think about all of those who are still experiencing that journey. please give a warm and loud maroon welcome to yeonmi park. thank you, everyone, for coming today. actually, roanoke is a special place in my heart. this is a first place that i came when i came to america, i went to tyler, texas, for bible study and a friend that i met, esther. she was from roanoke.

so she brought me here to have first american thanksgiving and christmas. and i still remember she was taking me to the roanoke star. yes and the museum. and that was my first time, actually. so the home when we entered the home, the tour was just going up by itself. it was a parking garage. once i got into the car again inside, i was like, is this your home? yeah. and then there's a staircase going of stairs. it was home. now, i think it was a normal size american home. but as north korean, it was a palace that i was getting into. and i asked her, like, is your parents are very special people. they were like, no, they are selling wigs. this is how normal americans live here. and that they i was praying in my deep in my heart.

maybe someday if i'm very, very very lucky, i might be able come back to this country. because back then, coming to america was not even in my imagination and that was such a, you know, almost reaching the stars that kind of dream. here i am as an american. i became american last year living. thank you. and living as a free person. so that's why i keep saying that. you know, anything is possible in life. and i was born in north korea. the very, very first thing that i learned from my schoolteachers were how horrible american --. by the way, that was same word, american pastors, same words. even in my book, it was like there are four or make ambassadors. you can't two of them. how american masters left to

kill. and we don't have internet in those cave. we don't even know what that is. so the only idea of america that i could understand from my teachers were this screw posters. we're american monsters. they were cold blooded reptile. they were like pulling teeth out of our women eating our children, torturing our people. and my school teachers were telling me, you are so lucky because you have our dear leader, ding dong, protecting us from these horrible americans. that's why we had we were so lucky that we had nothing to envy in this work. and now i to america. and the first time i was looking at americans first of all before, even i was thinking about propaganda. i was thinking why everybody looked the same here. even if i look same. so i don't blame you. people think all asians look the same. i felt exactly the same.

and i came to america to study at university and you know, like i'm going to the promised, the best country in human history, not just in the contemporary world. in empire, human history, this has been the best country this been the possibility of what individuals can achieve when. they are left from the government tyranny and then they have their own rights. so i come to america and i go to grocery store. the first thing that i went to in was going to wal-mart. my friend drove me to all my and she like, what do you need at your dorm? i mean, literally there is a chips, size of bags, like a half size of me. and then i went to buy an apple, right? and apple in the grocery store. my jaw dropped. there were a dozen different types of apple crisp apple honey

killer like don't even know how to pronounce them. i go by my and i mean sent my blah blah like three different things like paste. i was thinking this is the best country in history. how will you remember can have this many choices? because when you live in a dictatorship countries you do not have a choice in remember when american media making fun of kim jones a haircut and they were so saying oh poor north koreans owners come have to have a kim jong un's poor haircut. we don't even have a choice. what could we get for ourselves? now in america, you get 30 different types of toothpaste. and luckily, when i came here, i was admitted to columbia university in new york city. i was thinking, i'm getting i'm going to get the best education.

why this is best education is, i've believe. i remember the first day and my university's orientation and my professor soon asked us stay angry, stay outraged, because america is inherently evil system and. all the evil is happening in the world is because of greedy capitalism and, because of way. i was like, did i somehow go back to north korea? literally this is the exact same thing that i was in north korean classroom. my schoolteachers taught me that all the problems that we had in the world and the only solution for all the problems was a communist revolution. i was my at columbia university repeating exact same thing to me.

so let's talk about how utopia socialist paradise looked like. and i often tell people i was born the darkest place in world and if you actually see the satellite of north korea nighttime, it is really the darkest place because. they don't have electricity. i have so many climate change activist friends in new york city. i tell them, please go to north korea because we have all every day. we don't have any pollution. we have an energy consumption. it is a literally utopia. they can imagine. so you will impact on nature. boring that country. the very thing that my mom told me as a young girl, don't even whisper. she said, because birds and mice. could you hear me? she said, the most thing that i had in my body was my tongue.

if i said one thing, one word wrong, it was just not going to only get me. it was going to kill three two in its age. generations of my family with me. that's how i learned not to even whisper and not even think. and that threshold to get executed in paradise is laughably. people get executing because in north korea, every classroom, every have their portraits of dictators kim il-sung, kim il, kim jong un and their wife. the middle. 90. they'll officers kick your door and come and see those cloth and wipe the portrait. there's a tiny bit scattered on that portrait. that's how you end up getting executed because your loyalty not good enough. and then you end up in a concentration camp.

the first thing that you cannot do is why you are there. if you are them, why did i end up in a concentration camp? they executed on the spot and now with kim jong un, he decided that even bullets are too precious for the people of north korea. he using method of boxing in the mirror box put a human being in there and let them drain to death. that's how he kills people now in the 21st century. when i was growing up there, my only daily task was finding. as you can see, i'm pretty petty in my high horse. north are on average five inch shorter than koreans because of malnutrition and. i'm a mother. i have five year old boy right now. he's like 99%. i every way. and doctors confuse like, you're

so small you're here's his father so small houses so big like yes they're to my lineage, my in those even babies born then often mothers do not meet breast milk because they're malnourished there's no baby formula. so that's how babies die. and a school instead of me about the word in mornings i get brainwashed to believe the how amazing our dictator are and how horrible americans are in the afternoons. everybody not even elders or thoughts, even children, are five. we need to work in the collective for and one task that i remember from those chris clark in human feces the government could not afford the fertilizer so they were demanding people to bring poop

to the school so they could give it to the collective farm and that was my job every afternoon i was looking for human feces to bring to school. and this, by the way, free education, socialist system of free education. free education. and by the time i was 13 years old, i could no longer find any more grasshoppers or dragonflies survive and is actually ironic that i come to america. i was dreaming of eating steak and, you know, eating noodles, pasta. now there's so many leaders talking about the importance of eating insects to save the planet. i'm like, b.s. that they taste horrible, disgusting. i mean, humanity can, you know, get better. we can innovate. we don't have to go back to eating insects. and in new york city, my friends are going to eating this insect energy bar.

now i'm like, i'm done with i'm eating all the money in the world i can so surviving like that and day it dawned to us that we could not survive that way anymore, that we had escape from the moscow you, my sister, who was six nine years old, she crossed the border with her friends. first i wanted to go with her, but i couldn't go because i had a very horrible stomach pain. my mother took me to a hospital and i remember this guy just dropped my belly and he said you might just have appendicitis. so that he just cut me open without any painkiller. and you open the inside. what i had was just infection and then attrition. but he was embarrassed. he misdiagnosed me. so he said, removed my perfectly fine appendix. so when i go back to nursery and when i saw him, this is one

american value that i learned like you need to sue people right. after this surgery. this is really the last thing i remember seeing from my homeland was from my bathroom, from our house, their door to outside the bathroom. of course, we don't have. indoor bathroom there. piles of dead bodies. the humans laying down there. but seeing, you know, that the human body is like for north korean, it's like looking a tree is so normal like everyday i saw the dead bodies but this was talking to me cause oh, there's a lady on top over this. piles of dead bodies know laying a flower pants and her mouth just wide open and. her eyes were gone. the reason why i said we're going is because that's when we die. they eat our eyes first, because

that's softest human tissue. and why are these ladies everything gone and her soul. you see children chasing these rats? because they are hungry. and when these children eat those rats, they get the disease and they die and they read the rats eating these children. so we eat them to eat as this market continues in those korean. and that's when i thought i to escape no matter what my after few days after the surgery i a note that my sister left me and with my mother we crossed the frozen yalu into china from north korea. as soon as i crossed the river to china, the first thing that i was seeing was my mother being raped. and at nine none know what that was because north korea don't have sex education in after that

we heard that these people were telling they were not even threatening us. if you don't want to be so as sex slaves in china you have rights go back to north korea. and my mother i remember somehow my mother was asking you 13 years of child. what do you wanna do young me like do you want to go back to north korea. and one thing they made me want to stay in china. it was seeing a trash can for the first time in my life in this home, there's some lady was helping us to some food with along with this human traffickers. she was throwing things too in this little like little bean or something and i asked like, what's that? and she sees a trash can. the things that you don't eat raw and has a north korea was like, what do you mean you have things to throw in this country? i mean, as i said, in north

korea, we can i even throw the proof. so we literally nothing you can throw away in north korea. we are that's how impoverished we are. and in china, they afford to have a trash can. and i saw my mom, i want to stay in china china even if i went back to north korea, if that was the case, i wouldn't be here today. i belong there. they'll go from nutrition or just torture and execution from the government they sold my mother, for $65 in the 21st centuries. so slave and they saw me just over. $200 because it's child the virgin and i was very precious and this perverted chinese human traffickers and sometimes hard to reconcile the fact because today i flew from your my fly

cost them more than how much i was worth and i'm living in the same world. and these are two different realities. i mean because china had a one child policy and the communist party they are like in more than 30 million women, more than three, 3 million men in china cannot find wives. so they send those korean women as their sex toys. now, for places that north korean girls end up in china when they escape, number one place is organ harvesting. they buy our bodies and just open our body and take the organs that they need and discard us like. pigs. psyche place statement. nurse carry is a brothel. there's even no window in those rooms. they put the girl and they let them get raped for like 500 times that they and they don't

last more than few months. and by the third place is fake husbands our village young men, brothers or cousins by one girl and they go run them, rape the girl. and i was luckily bought by another human trafficker and he wanted to kill me as his mistress and did not want send me to a farmer. this man who bought me a 13 said if i become mistress, he was going to save my family from me. and i thought about myself. but i thought if i sacrifice myself, i could save my mother and my and my sister. so it is becoming sex slave after he to bring my mom back, he bought her back from the farmer that he sought and brought my sick father from north korea to china, but eventually passed.

two years of slavery when i was 15 years old, i met another north korean defector, a woman, and she something very shocking me the time she said, you meet they are missionaries from korea that who i rescued north korean defectors and they say that if we go to south korea we are going to be free. and in north korea, guys, we don't even have a word for love. we don't have a word for freedom. we don't have word for human rights. do you know why? because if you don't have the word, that means you don't understand. the concept that's. why this language you all that is happening in america is very concerning to me. that's is technically nursing vision. we moved those words kim jong un recently banned the mother's because he was afraid that if people their mothers we are not

going to love as much so as this lady like what do you mean if i to south korea i'm going to be free. and she said, if you go to south korea, you can wear jeans and you can watch k-dramas because was teenage girl. i wanted to wear jeans in north korea. if you jeans you go to prison because jeans are made in america. therefore a symbol of capitalism and people literally get executed for watching foreign in north korea and that's when i thought if there is a world that exists where i can watch movie i want to watch, then i choose whatever the clothes i want, those shirts i when i go there and the parts freedom was literally walking across the frozen gobi desert into mongolia. at 50. this mission is game on campus and if you're privileged, got

here and you shield them your clothing leads you to freedom and they set the chance of making one person, but still the people make it so. we chose that path and that's why right now? how many people do you think made to america from north korea just. 209 of us over the last 80 years. york new york city. i survived the gobi desert. i didn't get killed. i made it to south korea when i was almost 16 years old. now back to america. now, as i said, i became american citizen last year. and that i remember my interview session with my interview year for the citizenship test. she was asking me one question. nikki, have you ever persecuted anybody for their political

opinions. if i said yes to her, i could not become american citizen. and then i was so most of this cancer culture, anything that is happening right in mainstream media, none of these are qualified to american because how many people america currently getting canceled for their political opinions last year, i was invited to speak at fbi my right two days before my event. fbi as head of diversity person cause me. and this lady says because your public opinions we to cancel your event. is a scary how many people forgot what it means to be an american and the passing thing i thought i have done was giving my son the american citizenship

in our country that the north korean can have a child with american -- and have a half na is going to have american baby. he's a true testament to freedom. what what's possible? and then i as i said, it scares me every day living in big cities like new york and chicago, the professor's literally it's a the universities became an indoctrination nation camp. they don't teach you how to think they tell you literally what think and exactly same thing that north korean teachers taught us to do and are all doing this in the name of equity in the name of fairness. to me is asked my classmates in new york city like one day i was i was so puzzled, like, so what about america that you hate? so much, that you want to

dismantle this system and tear down the constitution. and she said, you know, look outside, there are homeless people and they are billionaires. we have any quality in capitalism. that's why this system is so evil. i what do you mean you have inequality in this country because you would you rather be equal. i know. dying from starvation. i mean, the inequality is a sign of progress. if you work hard, you going to get rewarded, you're going to get well. you can become a literally a trillionaire if you want to and is something that we should cherish and celebrate as a society, not something we should have fight against. we should fight against. it is a starvation that is poverty. that's the enemy. so that's why i'm here too.

now i see many american people are buying this beautiful language about fairness and equality of outcomes. again, in this country. and they keep telling me the only problem socialism because it was never implemented correctly. how how on there is to be fair 21 times already. how many times do you need to try this ideology? because in my life, nothing. nothing has been more dangerous than big government because even nothing they imagine china. so union those create all these countries they have the biggest mass murder in human history and this is what we need to up and fighting back this sugar coated language of equity and fairness and diversity inclusion. these are these ideas that we'll actually whenever society this

ideologies it brought to unions and siblings that millions people deemed free. we are in a minority. i keep saying i'm a human rights activist. some people keep coming to me, say, why i have to care about human rights? and they never asked. animal rights activists say, why do i have to about dolphins and puppies? like because this animals cannot speak for themselves. there are more than 4 billion human beings cannot speak themselves. why not? they don't even know what it means to have a voice. so if you do not for human rights, do you think the machine is going to fight for us? do you think the puppies and fight for us? this is the only that we can do as human beings. so thank you again for you all, for me and listening to my lecture. thank you so much, everyone. thank you.

you two guys. thank you. i think we have cuny. thank you so much, park. at this time, if anyone would like ask some questions, you can line up behind raising your hand. oh, all right. if want to line up behind. sorry. or bring back.

maybe you want to come in here. how long were you in the desert when you were, like, traveling to mongolia? thank you. thank you for, by the way, being brave. i know you're saying to me, like in america, even if you say the wrong things, you don't get executed. for people are very afraid to speak out. oh, i was just here one day because we chose like the coldest month of, the year in february. still, gaza. things like nobody's crazy enough to cross right now. right. and so were not caught by the guards. thankfully yeah. thank you. i was just wondering if you think that it's possible to find

a balance between pure capitalism, which causes suffering and pure socialism, which also causes. i. the suffering that capitalism causes seems very clear to me because it literally offers real hardship to the people. and this is the one thing that i learned in america. people who are in the capitals that cause not having a problem is actually a problem. they need to make a problem. for instance, i columbia my friends were saying there are problems in capital society. i asked like, what's your problem why you think you are so pressed? i say because i identify myself as a genderfluid and so, by the way, i in south korea 2014, i they googled like how to learn english and my google searches

said watch tv show and it was friends. i watched friends for 30 times and learned english. now i'm starting colombia 2016, two years later and. then they started telling you can 5000 different pronouns. they and friends. they do tell me they as a pronoun. so i cannot use that in my language to my classmates. and they were telling me that i'm so bigoted that i'm oppressing them. so if there's like a religion, you they cannot see that what will be the culture problem that is caused by capitalism than keepers? their own misjudgment? so would you give me example what could be the that capitalism give to people. well, i don't believe that the united states embodies pure capitalism we have certain socialist policies that have worked out as well as some that haven't. so i just think that on either

extreme you run into problems of dogma and ideology where maybe the solution is not to pick a side but to find a balance between sides. it's yeah, of course america has a huge welfare programs and i don't think they are working especially are living in chicago new york. now i realized that more and more i think that's i guess when you can't states the capitalism for to me smaller but the inefficiency of government and bureaucracy and they are how there is so bad at using public funds and i a firm believer that big government is always a threat to people is freedom. so yeah. i prefer living in a country. government is very much it is as

little as possible and individuals have their in their life, in their community, their children like pretty much that so don't think that answers your question sorry. yeah. hello. i was wondering to degree, do you think that kim jong un and, his cohorts believe the narrative that they push i mean, they don't believe in anything they're saying kim jong un was educated. switzerland, along with sister. they know what is. they know what human rights is. and despite that they are doing that to their own people, and that's i think they are pure evil. the top elite of kim jong un's, they're having to maintain the kingdom as it is, because as said in north korea, even you are homogeneous. same genetic. they divided north koreans into 51 different classes. we have a caste system based

what your ancestors did. so basically right now the same resembles the i sing america is how america is being divided by your skin color. they call my son who is privileged because his dad is half white. i mean, he's white, so my son's halfway white. and in america we have a hierarchy of victims, right it's like if your skin color is this, you identify as this, there's more victims and how much you privileged in those careers that like if your grandfather, a landowner, you are in a lower socio class, if grandfather was a communist you're in a higher social class. so nothing you can do, can change your class like you in america, you cannot change your skin color in those who cannot change your ancestors and is so heartbreaking that the same tactic that north korean regime used to divide is being used in. america like, people being

punished for something they have not done while like being a white is not crime like you didn't choose to be white when you were born. nobody choose that and in north korea when i was born country i was in the lower class. my great grandfather had a land. he was a landowner and that's what they said. my blood is tainted. my blood is oppressive to other people. yeah. thank you. i was just wondering what you thought of donald trump's meeting kim jong un from a couple of years ago. thank you. that's very story because. when i i was actually one of the open critics during time of the president trump, i mean, i was living new york city and everybody was telling that he's a dictator like kim.

you know, and i was very confused, just came to america. he was president. and everybody saying that he's a dictator and then that was it was the only time the new old times wanted to put me on the news like paper me too. criticizing trump. that was the only time bbc time magazine. everybody called me. oh, how he met with kim zeman. seems like to me that because coming from a business background, he thought he could make a deal, you know, like putting a hotel a like desert of cutting or something. i think he really underestimated that this regime has lasted 80 years. they are extremely and they are also behaving in their interests of china behind. so i thought that kim jong un giving him the legitimacy was now worth it. and i do think that trump had good intentions that he really

genuine thought he could give, that kim jong un some trust so he could open up the country and, you know, denuclearize country backwards. didn't happen. so it's too bad that, you know, good intentions always not lead to good pass thank. hi when you first came to america i was shocking thing that you found besides the things you've already talked about. it was very interesting, me and so many things, but, you know how again, like having too much can be a problem, you know, or my were going to like econ gym do you know what that is and yo i don't have a gym membership because like i were so much of it but you know my friends like their problem was like having eating so much foods that they had to lose weight and then

there's a dating app, but there's too many guys. they don't know what they say so they now nicole therapist about each week. and then it was very confusing because i was living in new york city i was oceana everybody got to be very happy and they were not they were really miserable and my agent was asking at some point, you need to go see your i was like, what's that my for asking? we don't even have the vocab for therapy or trauma. so it seems that when there's no actual very harsh existence, it does make people lose some and weakens humans ability to deal the situation so it's very interesting and i'm i'm becoming that everyday too i'm becoming malawi. so yeah.

i have two questions they're all about what we can do about north korea. so first what can like us as americans do against oppose oppressive like north korea and what should the u.s. and countries on the international stage do to oppose oppressive regimes. yeah the first question is very important question. i think this is where the credit to president trump he made made it clear to a lot of people that the the response ability lies in china's communist. they've been propping up this regime over the last 80 years. north korea cannot last even one week without china's support and this is exactly china's doing. so i think we need to like the politicians understand the threat of china the threat they are to the rest of humanity. and i think we need spread its words in america, too, because

most people don't understand that they somehow think north korea exists on their own. now, without china's help. oh, i think that is more like political level that we can do. and the second level is, of course, that you can engage this. a there are missionary groups, so they're asking north koreans there are 300,000 of them i see in china hiding and you can one person for $2,000. so it's a during the holocaust, you know there are who save the jewish people and like that you can save these people if you are willing and there are many ngos working on this issue right now. yeah. thank you. this next question will be our last question. thank you you. hi, i'm south korean vegetable. yeah. so thank you for coming here. so my question would be, is there going to be any possibilities for north koreans to earn their freedom back or if so, what do you think they'll be

the best possible scenario that could? yeah, thank you for that question. and a unification just happened here. oh, the only possibility of north korean crumbling is if china's communist party crumbles there. you know, survivor is depending on chinese survival like ccp. survivor so really quite going to die. and if china's miraculously changes direction and becoming more democratic and becoming more humane or they collapse themselves, become more democratic system in then north korea, follow exact same path. and i think that would be the best scenario. you know that like 1.4 billion people in china final are free and so many people will gain freedom because of collapse of ccp. thank you. thank you so much, everyone that

every.