Park Yeon-mi is a North Korean defector and human rights activist. She escaped to China in 2007 and settled in South Korea in 2009. She comes from an educated, politically connected family that turned to black market trading during North Korea’s economic collapse in the 1990s. After her father was sent to a labor camp for smuggling, her family faced starvation. They fled to China, where Yeonmi and her mother fell into the hands of human traffickers before escaping to Mongolia. She is now an advocate for victims of trafficking and works to promote human rights in North Korea and around the globe.
When 21-year-old Yeonmi Park, made her debut on the world stage in October this year with harrowing tales of life under the repressive North Korean regime and her perilous escape to freedom, she left audiences, human rights heavyweights, and journalists in tears – some literally sobbing. The video link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei-gGvLWOZI
I highly encourage everyone to watch this video as it shows us her bravery and explains to us the living conditions of North Korea, till today!
North Korea believes itself to be Communism country which is based upon the ideology of Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism (The Red Phoenix, 2008) believes that working-class needs to struggle work and live for collective success. It believes in a classless society—communism. North Korea, in 1972 replaced Marxism-Leninism with Juche as the country’s official ideology. Research states that Juche has evolved, borrowing from Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and Confucianism along with the ideas of Kim Il sung and Kim Jongil. The Juche idea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is written by President Kim Il Sun in 1955. It is a man-centered and self-reliant approach, which emphasizes that a man is in control of everything and has the authority to decide everything. Nevertheless, research states that North Korea is a Communist State under totalitarian dictatorship. This is evident, since North Korea is under a one-party monopoly and the leadership does not bear pluralism and denies basic human rights.