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International News
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Title: N. Korea calls her a 'poisonous mushroom.' She takes that as a compliment.
Source: MSN
URL Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl ... b6f?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
Published: Mar 3, 2018
Author: staff
Post Date: 2018-03-03 12:53:51 by buckeroo
Keywords: None
Views: 1154
Comments: 15

SEOUL, South Korea — Polite, petite and soft-spoken, Yeonmi Park has emerged as an unlikely thorn in the side of North Korea's blustering leader, Kim Jong Un.

Park fled North Korea at the age of 13,crossing the partly frozen Yalu River into China in 2007.

She says she endured repeated sexual exploitation at the hands of a human trafficker and watched as her mother was sold off and forced to marry a Chinese farmer. Park later trekked across the Gobi Desert to seek refuge in Mongolia before reaching South Korea.

Speaking out has earned her censure in her homeland. Pyongyang has called her a "poisonous mushroom" and a "human rights propaganda puppet." Park takes those epithets as compliments. She is glad to have made Kim's regime "feel threatened by my voice."

Now 24 and living in Chicago with an American husband and a newborn son, Park told NBC News how propaganda infused every school lesson. Kim Jong Il, the father of North Korea's current leader, was regarded as a deity whose portrait hung in every home.

"I thought Kim Jong Il was a god who could read my mind," she said. "I thought his spirit never dies, and I never thought he was a normal human being." Indoctrination made questioning one's circumstances practically unthinkable, and voicing displeasure with the regime could put one's whole family in danger. "I just never learned to think critically," she recalled.

But smuggled foreign DVDs like "Titanic" offered a glimpse of life outside of the repressive, poverty-stricken pariah state.

At first, Park struggled to understand how a three-hour movie could be made about a love affair, rather than glorifying a regime.

Her state-run school taught fealty to the government and impressed a hard-line stance toward its enemies, America and Japan.

Park was born in the northern city of Hyesan, near the border with China. Her father trafficked in Chinese-made goods on the black market — clothes, cigarettes, sugar and rice — and later smuggled stolen metals into China. At one point he was arrested and sent to a forced labor camp.

She describes a childhood of occasional comfort but mostly deprivation — extreme cold and hunger at times, and spotty electricity. Days when the lights turned on were so infrequent that they were treated as holidays. Her dream was to have a landline in the house.

In 2007, Park's older sister, Eunmi, who was 16 at the time, escaped to China with the help of a smuggler. Park and her mother made the crossing soon after, hoping to reunite there.

What followed was a harrowing, monthslong journey through a network of human traffickers.

Once across the border in China, Park says that one of the brokers tried to rape her, but her mother offered herself and was raped instead. Eventually her mother was sold as a bride to a Chinese farmer in the countryside.

Park described entering a business arrangement of sorts with her smuggler, who offered to reunite her with her parents if she became his "xiao-xifu," or mistress. The alternative was deportation to North Korea, likely followed by imprisonment or execution.

Park submitted to repeated rape and participated in the smuggling enterprise as a shepherd for other female North Korean defectors.

Before her ordeal, Park assumed that only animals could be bought and sold. "I lost my faith in humanity," Park said. "I mean I could not trust men again. I hated men. I hated humanity. How on earth can people sell each other?" Park's smuggler upheld his side of the bargain. He bought back her mother and smuggled her father into China. Her father died of colon cancer weeks later. Eventually Park and her mother met another North Korean woman, who told them that South Korea grants refugee status to defectors.

Aided by Christian missionaries operating an "underground railroad," one night in March 2009, Park and her mother crossed the border between China and Mongolia in the near-freezing Gobi Desert. From there they fled to South Korea.

Nearly seven years after separating, Park was finally reunited with her sister in South Korea. After years of trauma, her mother is on medication "trying to get better."

In 2014, she delivered a widely watched speech at a young leaders' summit in Dublin, Ireland.

Park moved to America to write her memoir and enrolled in the Columbia University School of General Studies, which caters to nontraditional students, focusing on human rights. She is taking a break from her studies after giving birth to a son last week.

Park also advised the Human Rights Foundation on "Disrupt North Korea" initiative. The group's "Flash Drives for Freedom" program sends USBs with Hollywood movies, K-pop and South Korean soap operas into North Korea by balloon.

The group sent 10,000 flash drives in 2016 and estimates that 1.1 million North Koreans have viewed the content. Park said she believes that the Trump administration's narrow focus on the North's nuclear program has deflected attention from the plight of millions of North Koreans.

Outside information — like the smuggled DVDs that Park once watched — is needed to change people's minds and ignite grass-roots resistance to the regime, she believes. North Koreans are "thirsty for knowledge," she said. Park would like to humanize the image of the North Korean people in the foreign media. Too often they are represented as robots, she said, when really they have the "same emotions and same dreams" as everyone else.

Park expects to be able to return to the land of her birth one day. "Nothing is forever, and I believe that North Korea will change in my lifetime."


Why does this story appear at this time since Park has been in the USA for years? Because the American populace needs to be conditioned for WAR with North Korea. This is always how these US initiated wars based on the "intelligence" of the CIA go. Look back in time about how the USA initiated WAR with Iraq based on poor, if not total BULLSHIT, made up in some stupid bureaucrat's office. What was it called, "arcs and sparks" or some other BS and we were supposed to be out "lickity split?"

More TRILLIONS on the US taxpayer's back for a useless war coming up.

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#1. To: All (#0)

OOPPSSS ... "arcs and sparks" = "shock and awe" based on earlier comment.

buckeroo  posted on  2018-03-03   12:57:52 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: buckeroo (#0) (Edited)

Why does this story appear at this time since Park has been in the USA for years?

Defectors from criminal regimes have always gotten coverage here. You still see Soviet defectors interviewed for instance. So I see nothing unusual here. This may be MSN's way to capitalize on Trump's shout-out to the Nork amputee defector during SOTU.

You're not in any danger from any war anyway unless the cartels go to war.

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-03-03   13:20:18 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Tooconservative (#2)

Have you ever directly been involved in the US military service?

buckeroo  posted on  2018-03-03   13:25:07 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: buckeroo (#1)

"shock and awe"

It's not just for North Koreans, President Trump is a globalist so the USA is included too.

Hondo68  posted on  2018-03-03   13:46:52 ET  (1 image) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Tooconservative (#2)

Standard war drums propaganda against the next victim at the top of the list.

Hondo68  posted on  2018-03-03   13:56:51 ET  (1 image) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Tooconservative (#3)

I notice that you didn't reply to my question. Yet, you are the most "talky" poster on LF through the day and night. I suppose you have never been involved in WAR or understand how the US government has the CIA lead the American populace to taxation slaughter on useless WARs that have gone nowhere but drive Americans out of the goddamned USA. Iraq was a CIA backed WAR with the USA backing Chalabi. It cost the USA taxpayers TRILLIONS with millions murdered. And the USA is still there and perhaps FOREVER.

buckeroo  posted on  2018-03-03   14:07:19 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: hondo68 (#5)

Standard war drums propaganda against the next victim at the top of the list.

I suppose that effort (saving the USA) will delay any wall between Mexico and the USA because we must goto WAR with North Korea.

Some folks will say: It's a WIN-WIN situation! And if you don't like it, you are a goddamned traitor!

buckeroo  posted on  2018-03-03   14:23:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: buckeroo (#7)

....and the USA because we must goto WAR with North Korea.

What natural resources do they have? Rice fields?

Fred Mertz  posted on  2018-03-03   14:28:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: Tooconservative (#2)

Defectors from criminal regimes have always gotten coverage here. You still see Soviet defectors interviewed for instance. So I see nothing unusual here. This may be MSN's way to capitalize on Trump's shout-out to the Nork amputee defector during SOTU.

You're not in any danger from any war anyway unless the cartels go to war.

Let's refresh your memory on past USA lead wars. With luck, you will remember. Below is an example of how the wonderful US Government was lead astray about the Iraqi WAR:

Chalabi duped us on WMD, says New York Times

12:05AM BST 27 May 2004

By Alec Russell in Washington

The New York Times, one of America's most influential newspapers, published a sweeping apology yesterday for being too credulous in its coverage of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, blaming its reliance on leading exiles including Ahmad Chalabi. The apology came as Washington seethed with a bitter row over the role of Mr Chalabi, the Pentagon's former favourite to lead Iraq, whose supporters provided faulty intelligence that primed the case for the war.

Washington's power brokers are scrambling to wash their hands of Mr Chalabi in one of the many feuds now raging in Washington over who is to blame for the crisis in Iraq.

His supporters say he has been smeared by his enemies in the CIA and State Department and his former sponsors in the administration are using him as a scapegoat.

The New York Times, while a fierce critic of the Bush administration, published a series of prominent reports before the war highlighting the apparent threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

They were followed up by newspapers around the world including The Daily Telegraph, and were also cited by hawks in the administration to boost their case for war.

In its apology yesterday the newspaper said a common feature of the "problematic articles" was their dependence at least in part on Iraqi exiles and defectors bent on "regime change".

It said it had found "a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been".

In another sign of the changing political climate, one of the most influential Arab supporters of the war, who helped underpin the administration's case, published his own mea culpa, admitting he had been wrong. "Let's face it," Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in The New York Times. "Iraq is not going to be America's showcase in the Arab-Muslim world." The New York Times apology, written as an editorial, stressed that it was proud of "an enormous amount" of its journalism and pinned part of the blame on editors for failing to challenge reporters.

But rival news organisations have highlighted the close connection between Mr Chalabi and a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, who wrote many of the articles. In an e-mail to a colleague she once said: "Mr Chalabi has provided most of the front-page exclusives on WMD to our paper."

In the countdown to war Mr Chalabi was the Pentagon's golden boy and was flown back to Iraq in the closing stages of combat to give him a head start in the race for the leadership.

But his star has fallen after it emerged that much of the faulty intelligence on Saddam's WMD came from his network of defectors and exiles. David Kay, who led the post-war hunt for WMDs, paid him a backhanded compliment, saying his brilliance was to funnel information to different western intelligence agencies. They then vied with each other to trumpet the insights of their intelligence, unaware that they were all from the same source, Dr Kay told The Daily Telegraph.

In January Mr Chalabi sat beside President George W Bush's wife, Laura, at the State of the Union address, but his influence in the White House had already evaporated after his outspoken criticism of American policy in Iraq last autumn. His fervent opposition to the United Nations in recent months worsened his position, not least because Washington is all but reliant on it to prop up the Iraq mission.

Now, following the Pentagon's decision two weeks ago to stop funding his intelligence operation, it appears to be open season on him. The FBI is looking into whether his Iraqi National Congress passed on classified intelligence to Iran and even acted as a conduit for Teheran by passing on faulty Iranian intelligence about Saddam's WMD to destabilise the country's old enemy.

Senior congressmen have called for a congressional investigation, a move welcomed by Mr Chalabi, who has denied the claims.


The USA was duped into war before and is doomed to perform the same FOREVER with silly little bureaucrats attempting to play as though they are GODS.

buckeroo  posted on  2018-03-03   14:39:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: Fred Mertz (#8)

What natural resources do they have? Rice fields?

The USA has not been involved in a WAR based on natural resource extraction process(es); it has been "national security" BULLSHIT since WW2; Korea was the fisrst of such efforts; that same banter of publick sentiment has been used ever since around the world. If you have ever attempted to learn about "national security" as an official slogan for WAR or military action or any BULLSHIT it is covered up by MORE BULLSHIT.

I don't agree with any of North Korea's hostile actions. But I don't agree with out right propaganda by the CIA that is well known to have infiltrated the MSM for decades in the past.

buckeroo  posted on  2018-03-03   14:57:45 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: buckeroo (#6)

I notice that you didn't reply to my question. Yet, you are the most "talky" poster on LF through the day and night.

I was elsewhere, looking at bullpup guns.

My goodness, you do get awfully fussy when someone mentions, even obliquely, that you are an ex-American.

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-03-03   14:59:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: buckeroo (#9)

TL;DR. I always thought Chalabi was a plant.

The CIA barely even tries to hide who these various puppets and prez-for-life wannabes. We saw the same with the idiotic Free Syrian Army (or whatever those "noble freedom fighters" call themselves nowadays).

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-03-03   15:01:21 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: Tooconservative (#12)

TL;DR. blah, blah, blah

The CIA barely even tries to hide who these various puppets and prez-for-life wannabes.

I know you don't fuckin' care. It is all the same ol' shit and you gladly give your money up to bureaucratic elitism.

buckeroo  posted on  2018-03-03   15:59:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: buckeroo (#13)

I know you don't fuckin' care. It is all the same ol' shit and you gladly give your money up to bureaucratic elitism.

Now you are starting to sound like a poisonous mushroom.

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-03-03   16:07:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: buckeroo, too conservative (#13)

I know you don't fuckin' care. It is all the same ol' shit and you gladly give your money up to bureaucratic elitism.

With a vocabulary as extensive as this one, Buckaroo shows his advanced education.

Liberals are like Slinkys. They're good for nothing, but somehow they bring a smile to your face as you shove them down the stairs.

IbJensen  posted on  2018-03-04   8:15:14 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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