Yeonmi Park: podcast appearances and interviews

Yeonmi Park, born on October 4, 1993, in Hyesan, North Korea, is an American conservative activist and author. She defected from North Korea to China in 2007 at the age of 13, later relocating to South Korea and then the United States. Park gained media attention in 2011 after her appearance on the show Now On My Way to Meet You, where she was nicknamed 'Paris Hilton' due to her stories about her family's wealth. She rose to wider prominence following her speech at the 2014 One Young World Summit in Dublin. Her memoir, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom, was published in 2015 and has sold over 100,000 copies as of 2023. During the 2020s, she became a political commentator in the American media through speeches, podcasts, and her second book, While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America, published in 2023. Park's accounts of life in North Korea have been subjected to criticism, with some skepticism about the veracity of her claims due to inconsistencies and contradictions noted by journalists and Korean studies experts. She has acknowledged discrepancies in her stories, attributing them to imperfect memory and language skills, and her autobiography's coauthor argued she was the victim of a smear campaign. Park runs the YouTube channel Voice of North Korea by Yeonmi Park, which has over one million subscribers. Her political views are characterized as conservative, and she has criticized political correctness and woke culture in the United States.