Yeonmi Park, a human rights activist who escaped North Korea when she was just 13 years old, said people complaining about the horrors of capitalism should take a vacation to her former country..Speaking at the Strong and Free Networking Conference in Ottawa on Saturday, Park compared life in North Korea to the movie The Hunger Games, with people eating rats or resorting to cannibalism to survive..“They say how capitalism is evil, everything should be free and it's an injustice that you have to work 40 hours a week," said Park. ."Do they know that through most of our evolution we were starving? Do you know that without capitalism you can’t have all the things that you enjoy?” .Park said, as a young girl, she contracted a chronic case of pellagra because of malnutrition and had to resort to eating dragonflies and cicadas. .Park said she became aware of the oppressive nature of her country after acquiring an illegally imported copy of the movie Titanic. She claimed there is no word for “love” in her former country, and marriage is only encouraged in order to create more citizens for the state to enslave..“When I watched that, it gave me a piece of humanity and freedom. And I literally thought that these people got killed for making this movie,” she said..“For North Koreans to see that you can cherish something as basic as a human relationship, that story is a revolutionary thing for people.".In 2007, Park and her family escaped North Korea by traveling through China with the help of smugglers. Chinese and South Korean missionaries helped them relocate to Mongolia before she relocated to South Korea and eventually, to the United States..Park told the audience that living in New York City was a shock to her because people took their comparatively wealthy lifestyles for granted..“People living in Manhattan are drinking juice detoxes and going to therapy, and it is so bizarre. My dream as a child was having one bucket of meat, because I never had much growing up,” she said..Park said she has seen several parallels between the push for socialism and communisms in the United States and Canada and her experiences in North Korea. She claimed young people don't understand that making everything "free" eventually leads to lower standards of living and a loss of individual liberties..Park said the degradation of free speech in the west “terrifies” her. She said criticizing the North Korean government or even owning a bible was punishable by death..“What I'm really fighting for right now is that we have a right to be wrong. We have a right to be stupid, especially in universities, because if we can’t ask stupid questions then how can we fight for truth and justice?" said Park..Park said she believes individual liberty must remain the foundation of western civilization, because in communist countries being an individual is considered to be dangerous..“People say that persecution is not that bad in America and fighting for freedom is cliché," said Park. ."But they have never known the price of freedom and how it can go away. That’s why we need to fight back right now, before the price becomes too much and we cannot anymore.”.Park said she doesn’t believe the situation in North Korea is hopeless, especially with the Flash Drives for Freedom campaign that is smuggling information from the outside world into the country. She hopes that North and South Korea will one day be able to reunite into one country.."My biggest nightmare is what's gonna happen if nobody is free and nobody is able to fight for freedom. So as a free people, that's why it's our job to find and support non-profits," she said.."If we protect North Korean people's rights, then hopefully someday they will be able to help fight for our freedoms in Canada."
