Kang Chol-hwan Quotes

We are people who lived in absence of freedom. We know how precious it is. I want to give all these people their freedom, and the opportunity to live has humans. These are my friends, my family, and my fellow North Koreans.

After listening to the radio, I learned what the North Korean government had been telling us about the war was not true. This myth allowed the North to hold the South responsible for the war.

People who are hungry don't have the heart to think about others. Sometimes they can't even care for their own family. Hunger quashes man's will to help his fellow man. I've seen fathers steal food from their own children's lunchboxes. As they scarf down the corn they have only one overpowering desire: to placate, if even for just one moment, that feeling of insufferable need.

All North Koreans know the risk of all their actions. Yeonmi Park grew up in North Korea and says watching outside videos changed her perspective of the world. She says, as a child, all she learned from watching state-run media was love for the Kim regime and North Korea.