Name: 我是北韓千禧一代--樸妍美（CC）。 (I Am a North Korean Millennial - Yeonmi Park (CC))
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T07:04:58.000Z
Duration: 11 min 59 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

to 不定詞

My name is Yeonmi Park and it is a real privilege to speak to you

So Hyesan is just right on the Chinese border

So occasionally I could even smell very like fatty oily delicious noodles cooking from China

And sometimes when I was little, some Chinese kids were asking me "are you hungry there?"

And they would shout across the river and I would say "Oh shut up", you know

My family was really happy when most of the men worked as police and doctors and as soldiers

And their wives often came from political families

So belonging to Choson Rodongdang or Worker's Party of North Korea is a huge privilege

But most of North Koreans are not so lucky

And in North Korea there is a Songbun caste system

So that means there is opportunities and positions in the life

So you don't have to plan anything and you don't even have to think too much

Because they control everything, they are telling you what to do in the future

Yeah this is me and my sister and my family picture

So yeah when I was about four or five, my father had a business venture trading from Pyongyang to Hyesan

So my sister and I had to move back a lot between Pyongyang and Hyesan

When I was young I went to school and of course I learned about how great our leader was, you know

is I mean... but that was not anything special for me because I had so much fun playing with my friends

Like go riverside and hiking and swimming

Or sometimes I could even play Super Mario game at our friends houses

You guys know what is Super Mario Game right?

I'm still looking for that mushroom to getting me bigger, taller!

Yeah if you know, just tell me after this

I went to Pyongyang and Pyongyang was huge

While living there I could go to a fancy restaurant for the first time in my life

In the morning the cheery songs blast out over the loud city speakers

So that means I was in North Korea, the government say

the propaganda like "Oh we are a happy country, everybody is happy"

But in 2004 my whole world came crashing down

My father, my hero was arrested for his illegal trading business

And that was three long years before I saw my father again

And because of that I could not live in Pyongyang anymore, so I had to go back to Hyesan

Back in Hyesan I saw a new side of North Korea

This can be explained by the Black Market Generation, which includes me

So this generation is those who grow up without much food supplies from the government

So look here at these pictures, people are selling, bargaining and buying like markets here, right?

I think this symbolized the new free-spirit of my generation

So I think this is the hope for North Korean freedom for several key reasons

Firstly, our relationship with the Kim dynasty is hugely different

Because I never experienced any good life under their regime

Kim Il-sung passed away in 2004 (correction 1994) and I was born in 1993, so I don't have any memory of him

Not like some North Koreans who still have a really good memory of Kim Il-sung's time

During his time not many people were starving or dying for food

So they still think Kim Il-sung is a good leader

But, you know, our kids and my case, I don't care who is that guy, you know

He was died after I was born one year later

Therefore, we have less loyalty for the regime and never sincerely worshipped him

And secondly we had more wide access to the outside media

So here Titanic, Cinderella, Snow White, 007

Here is California, where is Hollywood by the way?

Yeah, so I saw all these movies, I even saw like WWF, like wrestling

Is there anybody seeing that here? Put your hands up

Oh okay, good! I saw that when I was just five. It was so violent

I thought that most Americans have like big muscles here, you know

So that was me, when I was in North Korea I wanted to be like a princess

waiting for the prince riding a white horse, that was my dream too

Watching these foreign medias, that was a huge joy to see this different world

It was so fascinating to see the people, how can they express themselves individually

How people can have their own unique style

So I made a paper doll and made some unique dress for my paper doll

Even though I cannot do it in public, in North Korea, so I like expressed my desire through that doll

And while watching all these movies with my friends, and they told me that they want to live in society like that

Like South Korea, where they can express their desire and they can be free

In North Korea they don't have any freedom to sing, listen to, wear, even dance

What is wrong with my body right? So they have to control every clothes

You cannot even wear skinny pants and wear a sexy dress. You cannot dance and move your hips, you know. It's so ridiculous right?

We really, really hate it. So underground we dance and we will do the disco, you know. Watching the movies

Yeah so today we are more capitalistic and individualistic

Because when I was just seven I was just busy working with my homework from school

And my father just told me that, "as long a you know how to count money, you don't have to know all these things"

So I thought about it and then learning about Kims, it was not anything useful and practical at all

So I quit, I didn't really study much after that

That means, how much we really care about the market

You know how to survive by ourselves, without relying on the government

So government's Kim dynasty was really nothing to us

And of course we are more individualistic so I think this is a really key point

Once you start trading for yourself, you start thinking for yourself

That is a really big problem for the totalitarian government

So why I left Korea is my father's imprisonment destroyed my reputation too

So under Songbun Caste System his sins are my sins, so I am guilty too

So I wanted to get married with a man who has a good background

And I wanted to go to university being a doctor, but I was guilty and I couldn't go to university

So there was no bright future for me, so we had to get out from there

I went to China with my family, so my mom my father and I had an older sister

Three people went to China and for the first time I couldn't believe my eyes

Like in the streets the kids were dying their hair and ripped the jeans, you know, they were so free

And I was like "oh my god, I cannot believe this" In China I could see all these movies in public

So, wow, this is really heaven, this is the life that I was expecting for

But in China as a North Korean refugee, I could not have enjoyed all these things