A North Korean defector said she viewed the US as country of free thought and free speech – until she went to college here.
Yeonmi Park attended Columbia University and was immediately struck by what she viewed anti-Western sentiment in the classroom and a focus on political correctness that had her thinking “even North Korea isn’t this nuts.”
“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park told Fox News. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”
The 27-year-old told The Post that she could’t believe she would be asked to do “this much censoring of myself” at a university in the United States.
“I literally crossed the Gobi Desert to be free and I realized I’m not free, America’s not free,” she said.
---
“I thought North Koreans were the only people who hated Americans, but turns out there are a lot of people hating this country in this country,” she told The Post.
Cancel culture and shouting down opposing voices is becoming an issue of self-censorship.
Park, who chronicled her escape from North Korea and life in the repressive regime in the 2015 memoir “In Order to Live,” said Americans seem willing to give their rights away not realizing they may never come back.
“Voluntarily, these people are censoring each other, silencing each other, no force behind it,” she said.
“Other times (in history) there’s a military coup d’etat, like a force comes in taking your rights away and silencing you. But this country is choosing to be silenced, choosing to give their rights away.”
---
“In some ways they (in the US) are brainwashed. Even though there’s evidence so clearly in front of their eyes they can’t see it.”
Columbia University did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
North Korean defector slams 'woke' US schools