Yeonmi Park

Yeonmi Park (Korean: 박연미; born October 4, 1993) is an American conservative activist and author. Born in North Korea, she defected from the country and was described by The Washington Post as "one of the most famous North Korean defectors in the world". Born in Hyesan, Park fled from North Korea to China in 2007 at age 13 before moving to South Korea, then to the United States. She made her media debut in 2011 on the show Now On My Way to Meet You, where she was dubbed "Paris Hilton" due to her stories of her family's wealthy lifestyle. She came to wider global attention after her speech at the 2014 One Young World Summit in Dublin, Ireland. Park's memoir, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom, was published in 2015, and as of 2023 has sold over 100,000 copies. During the 2020s, she became a conservative political commentator in the American media through speeches, podcasts and the 2023 publication of her second book, While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America. The authenticity of Park's claims about life in North Korea – many of which have contradicted her earlier stories and those of both her mother and fellow defectors from North Korea – have been the subject of widespread skepticism. Political commentators, journalists and professors of Korean studies have criticized Park's accounts of life in North Korea for inconsistencies, contradictory claims, and exaggerations. Other North Korean defectors, including those from the same city as Park, have expressed concern that the tendency for "celebrity defectors" to exaggerate about life in North Korea will produce skepticism about their stories. In 2014, The Diplomat published an investigation by journalist Mary Ann Jolley, who had previously worked with Park, documenting numerous inconsistencies in Park's...