Top 103 Quotes & Sayings by Park Yeon-mi - Page 2

Reading 'Animal Farm' set me free from the dictatorship in my head. I could see all the tactics used by the regime to control us - they were all in that book.

I didn't know who Bob Geldof or Richard Branson were and I thought Dublin was part of England.

Nothing is forever, and I believe that North Korea will change in my lifetime.

If I keep silent, I am betraying my people.

North Korea is a very Confucius country. We respect the elders, the hierarchy. It's not like America where anyone can step up and do things, we have our tradition.

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.

I was born at the end of the 1993. The regime stopped giving food to the people. Three million people died from 1995 to 1998. It's one of the world's worst man-made famines in history.

I crossed the Gobi desert to be free and now I thought I live in a country where I can say what I believe and have my freedom to think. However, now I have to constantly censor my speech because in the name off a 'safe place.'

I didn't know it was even possible to sell humans. I thought people can only sell animals, chickens. But I didn't even know that kind of concept - human traffic - can be exist in the world. So I just couldn't process it when I heard it.

I heard about desert, but I never seen them with my eyes. I just couldn't believe there was nothing, except sand and except the stars in the sky.

Kim Il Sung prepared Kim Jong Il for decades to be his successor and made it very clear from the beginning, 'This is my son and he's going to lead the country' and that took more than 10 years - almost 20 years.

When I was invited to return to the 2015 One Young World summit in Bangkok, I knew that I had to make it back. One Young World had given me a platform, and for me it was vitally important for new delegates to hear about North Korea.

Before Kim Jong Il died, it wasn't like one day Kim Jong Un took over. Kim Jong Il made sure his son was known to the North Korean people and it was clear that he was the next heir. He prepared him for at least three years beforehand.

The year 2015 brought me so many further chances to spread the word about human rights violations in North Korea, from addressing the United Nations to publishing my autobiography.

I never used a translator, never thought that the journalists might not understand.

Back in 2014, at the One Young World Summit in Dublin, I shared my story of my escape from North Korea to China in 2007. I had no idea what was coming or what to expect.

I don't think I will ever understand what freedom means, but I am enjoying learning.

I mean I could not trust men again. I hated men. I hated humanity. How on earth can people sell each other?

I was able to see the lights coming from China. If maybe I could go where the lights are I could find something to eat, that's why I escaped.

I know what it means to be a slave, both physically and emotionally.

The North Korean government are out to get me.

I can't say if I enjoy the attention or not. It's really exhausting. But every speech and every interview is extremely important to me because it could be my last one.

What you need to know about North Korea is that it's not like other countries like Iran or Cuba. In those countries, you have some kind of understanding that they are abnormal, they are isolated and the people are not safe. But North Korea has been so completely purged from the rest of the world, it's literally a Hermit Kingdom.

I wanted to show North Korean people that they have hope, and they can be free someday, like myself.

I came to South Korea with a feeling of deep kinship, but people here perceive me only as a talbukja, someone of a different nationality.

I was determined that I was going to have a successful and normal life.

I had to be very unrealistic about my situation. If I was so realistic I would never have made it this far. So, you just sometimes have to be hopeful for no reason.

I just never learned to think critically.

North Korea spends billions of dollars to make this nuke test system. If they would spend just 20 percent of what they spent on making nuclear weapons, nobody would have to die in North Korea from hunger but the regime chose to make us hungry.

I really had loving parents, and my father was the example of perseverance... he never gave up, and he taught me it's so easy to give up, but to fight is harder.

Going to Columbia, the first thing I learned was 'safe space.' Every problem, they explained us, is because of white men.

I have visited slums in Mumbai, I have visited slums in other countries, but nothing is like North Korea because North Korean starvation, it's a systematic starvation by a country that chose to starve us.

There's nothing I did wrong. I was just born in North Korea, and that was my crime.

I'm extremely grateful I was born in North Korea. If that didn't happen, there's no way I could understand other people's pain.

I thought Kim Jong Il was a god who could read my mind. I thought his spirit never dies, and I never thought he was a normal human being.

We don't have friends in North Korea. We only have comrades. There's no concept of friends.

I surrendered all my privacy to write this book. It was so hard and so painful. I went through so much crazy stuff. But I wanted people to realize that North Koreans are just like them.

I do want to go home. That's my dream. North Korea is still my home.

I had to look for food all the time. I had to catch dragonflies, grasshoppers, and that was the only source of protein for me.

North Korea was pretty insane. Like the first thing my mom taught me was don't even whisper, the birds and mice could hear me. She told me the most dangerous thing that I had in my body was my tongue.

I never heard my father was telling my mother that I love you. But in the movie man tells woman I love you. Right? And those things were never allowed for us to express to each other than the dear leader of the North Korean. So of course watching this information helped me to understand the outside world a little bit, that I realized there was some humanity out there.

In North Korea, we never learned to think critically. There is no concept of individualism. The government treated us as less valuable than animals. You can't even stay overnight at someone's house without permission from the police. My mother warned me not to say - or even think - anything bad about our "dear leader," Kim Jong Il, because "even the birds and mice can hear you whisper."

In North Korea the math book says, you know, there are four American bastards. You kill two of them. Then how many American bastards left to kill. a And as a child I had to say, "Two American bastards." And that was my education.