A Quote by Park Yeon-mi

Most North Korean people have never seen a map of the world. They don't even know that the Internet exists. They don't even have electricity.

Park Yeon-mi

Quote Topics

Electricity Even Exists Internet Know Korean Map Most Never North North Korea North Korean People Seen World

Quote Author

Park Yeon-mi
North Korean - Activist
Born: October 4, 1993

South Koreans often don't think of North Korean defectors as Korean. While we have been granted citizenship, the locals don't consider us as South Korean citizens. We are often treated differently and viewed differently, even by people who care for us the most.

Park Yeon-mi

Most people would trade everything they know, everyone they know- they'd trade it all to know they've been seen, and acknowledged, that they might even be remembered. We all know we die. We all know the world is too big for us to be significant. So all we have is the hope of being seen, or heard, even for a moment.

Dave Eggers

North Korean defectors who speak out against the regime always feel nervous. We never know what the North Korean government is planning. It's really difficult for us to show our faces and speak out, but we feel obligated to do something to inform people about the ongoing tragedy inside North Korea.

Lee Hyeon-seo

So South Korean ability is very much limited to handle North Korean, you know, difficulties. So we don't want to see an immediate collapse of the North Korea regime.

Kim Dae Jung

I don't think the North Korean leadership is interested in a genuine deal to end their WMD programs or their stranglehold on the North Korean people.

Lee Hyeon-seo

Even though some heartless North Korean, Korean-Chinese, and Chinese citizens have exploited vulnerable defectors for money, I witnessed many acts of kindness by the Chinese.

Lee Hyeon-seo

Even after arriving in South Korea, it's dangerous. As a North Korean defector, I need to be careful from the spies to protect my relatives inside North Korea.

Lee Hyeon-seo

After years of failure, I do think that President Trump has shown a lot of wisdom in reaching out his hand to the North Korean leader and to suggest to them that there might be a different future for the North Korean people.

Gina Haspel

The pulsar map is not dangerous at all. It will likely never even be seen by extraterrestrials.

Frank Drake

Most people in Seoul don't care about the North's belligerent statements: The farther one is from the Korean Peninsula, the more one will find people worried about the recent developments here. Scary impressions are important to North Korea because for the last two decades its policy has been, above all, a brilliant exercise in diplomatic blackmail. And blackmail usually works better when the practitioners are seen as irrational and unpredictable.

Andrei Lankov

My father died without knowing even this kind of democracy exists in the world. He didn't even know this much food was available in the world.

Park Yeon-mi

While the United States has never decreed that everyone has a 'right' to a telephone, we have come close to this with the notion of 'universal service' - the idea that telephone service (and electricity, and now broadband Internet) must be available, even in the most remote regions of the country.

Vint Cerf

Most people in the country didn't - and might still not - know about how powerful the United States is. They think North Korean weapons are the best in the world, and they're very proud of them. They believe they can protect the country from anyone.

Lee Hyeon-seo

Beijing cannot sit by and let her North Korean ally be bombed, nor can it allow U.S. and South Korean forces to defeat the North, bring down the regime, and unite the peninsula, with U.S. and South Korean soldiers sitting on the Yalu, as they did in 1950 before Mao ordered his Chinese army into Korea.