Park Yeon-mi Quotes

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."

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 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.