A defector from North Korea is calling out “woke” and politically correct colleges here in the United States.

Yeonmi Park was just thirteen years old, and had already seen people die right in front of her, when she and her mother were able to escape from North Korea. However, their escape wasn’t without dangers. Slave traders captured them and sold them into slavery. If it wasn’t for the help of Christian missionaries, they’d still be slaves. Instead, they were freed and trekked across the Gobi Desert to freedom. After attending university in South Korea, she was transferred to Columbia University to finish her degree. 

A prestigious college in the United States, the land of freedom. It should’ve been a wonderful experience of Yeonmi, but it wasn’t. 

From the very first day she stepped onto the Columbia campus, she was being told about safe spaces, and lectured about her poor choice of reading material. Evidently Jane Austen is bad because everything she wrote is from the colonial mindset and is subconsciously brainwashing everyone. 

Think about it for a minute. Here is a young lady who went through the hell of living in North Korea, escaped only to be sold into slavery, and then walked across a freaking DESERT to gain her freedom. Yet, here in America the students and professors she encounters are telling her that they are so very oppressed and that it is the fault of every white man who has ever lived. 

As a child in North Korea, Yeonmi was told WHAT to think, WHAT to do and faced major punishment or starvation if she stepped out of line.

“North Korea was pretty insane,” she said. “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,” Park said. “So I knew how dangerous it was to say wrong things in a country.”

I can imagine it must’ve been pretty shocking and discouraging for her to find out that a once-prestigious college like Columbia University is fully engaged in policing speech and thought. 

Yeonmi had to learn critical thinking. 

“In North Korea I literally believed that my Dear Leader [Kim Jong-un] was starving,” she recalled. “He’s the fattest guy – how can anyone believe that? And then somebody showed me a photo and said ‘Look at him, he’s the fattest guy. Other people are all thin.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, why did I not notice that he was fat?’ Because I never learned how to think critically.”

“That is what is happening in America,” she continued. “People see things but they’ve just completely lost the ability to think critically.”

Or, they were never taught to think critically and live in reality. That’s why Yeonmi speaking out is so very important. College is supposed to be a place where you can learn about and debate different view points. It is supposed to be a place where one can delve deeper into subjects that are of interest as well as engage in the education needed for that student’s future career path. College is NOT and should NOT be a place where only the CORRECT speech, determined by the minority, is allowed. College should not be a place where censorship is part of the curriculum. 

For that matter, nor should our K-12 schools be mandating censorship and promoting the insidious Critical Race Theory, but they are. And there are many who are standing up to the school boards and the teachers unions on this. Including a lady who escaped Communist China. 

Watch a brave parent who grew up in Mao’s China point out all of the identical traits b/n the Cultural Revolution and what LCPS, and really every school system, are doing through the use of CRT. pic.twitter.com/zH7XuyBmW6

— The Virginia Project UAC (@TVPUAC) June 9, 2021

Xi Van Fleet eviscerated the Loudon County School Board. 

The Cultural Revolution began when she was 6 years old, she said, and immediately pitted students and teachers and against one another by hanging “Big Posters” in hallways and the cafeteria where students could write criticisms against anyone deemed ideologically impure.

~Snip

Communist squads would raid homes and destroy any relics of China’s past culture, history, governments or religion, she said.

“Everything that was considered ‘old,’ feudalist, a vase, Buddhas, everything was taken out and smashed,” she said.

There were thought crimes, too.

“We were asked to report if we hear anything about someone saying anything showing that there’s a lack of complete loyalty to Mao,” she said. “There were people reporting their parents, and their parents ended up in jail.”

Yeonmi and Xi are absolutely correct. The “woke” colleges and schools are engaged in policing thought and speech. Students and teachers are screaming 24/7 about being oppressed, while living in a country that allows them to speak freely, move about freely, and choose to be politically correct assholes. Not a single one of those “woke” students and professors on college campuses have had their lives endangered because of their government. Not a single one of them faces the threat of starvation, jail, or death for demanding they be addressed by whatever preferred pronoun is popular that day. 

For Xi and Yeonmi, the Chinese and North Korean governments dictated their every move and thought. In the United States, we have the freedom to think and speak freely…unless you are a “woke” college student or professor at Columbia University, or any other college here in the U.S.

A college professor at Columbia’s journalism school validates both of their points with his screed. 

Of course people have decried leftism on campus for so long that it’s cliché. In order to make the public care they had to hit that limbic switch by saying it’s being taught to children — innocent white ones at that. It’s all “Hide your childrens! The race people will get them!”

— jelani cobb (@jelani9) June 11, 2021

As does this NBC News “reporter.” 

New from us: How did Critical Race Theory become the new conservative cause célèbre?

Anger over the racial justice movement, cross-fertilization with parents upset about Covid response, and a whole lotta help from national groups and media. https://t.co/MvOGJPtcaK

— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) June 15, 2021

I can completely understand Yeonmi’s frustration and disillusionment with Columbia University and with our country as a whole. 

She faced true oppression in North Korea, yet here in the United States people who have every advantage are insisting that THEY are victims of oppression. Perhaps they should go to North Korea for a long visit, then they will truly understand what oppression and brainwashing really is. 

Feature Photo Credit: Yeonmi Park speaking at Students for Liberty Conference, by Gage Skidmore via Flickr, cropped and modified