"Ate Grass and Dragonflies to Survive"…Suspicions Raised Over North Korea's Version of 'Paris Hilton'

Washington Post "Inconsistent Story"
"Some Claims Even North Korea Experts Laugh At"

Recently, some media outlets have raised suspicions about several statements and past actions of Yeonmi Park (29), a defector from North Korea, who said to a recently defected U.S. soldier, "I hope more people who dislike America will seek asylum in North Korea."

Park, who lives in the U.S. as a North Korean human rights activist and an influencer critical of 'Political Correctness,' has stories that seem inconsistent.

Human rights activist for North Korean defectors, Yeonmi Park [Photo by Instagram]

On the 16th (local time), The Washington Post reported that Park's accounts of her upbringing in North Korea "have been criticized for being inconsistent." The outlet stated, "Park has endured years of criticism that some of her horrific experiences in the dictatorship do not add up."

Born in Hyesan, Yanggang Province, North Korea, Park appeared on Channel A's entertainment program Now I Am Going to Meet You (hereafter ‘Going’) in the early 2010s, where she said her father was a Workers' Party member and that she grew up in an economically affluent environment. She earned the nickname "North Korea's Paris Hilton" as a result.

After passing through China and Mongolia, she settled in South Korea in 2009 and enrolled in Dongguk University's Department of Police Administration. In 2015, she transferred to Columbia University in the U.S. and later obtained U.S. citizenship.

In 2014, Park attended the 'World Young Leaders Conference' held in Ireland, where she made a significant impact by appealing to the seriousness of human rights abuses in North Korea. She then rose to global influencer status after publishing her memoir In Order to Live (2015).

The Washington Post pointed out that "after Park moved her platform to international conferences addressing human rights issues, she claimed to have eaten grass and slept outdoors to survive," highlighting discrepancies in her statements about the economic status she enjoyed in North Korea before and after entering the international stage.

During her broadcast appearances in South Korea, Park said she lived in the top 1% in North Korea and never experienced hunger or malnutrition. However, after the 'international conference,' she told stories of eating grass and sleeping outdoors to survive and claimed she had never encountered eggs or indoor toilets before leaving North Korea.

Park explained that she did not mention the hardships of her childhood on Korean broadcasts because "she no longer wanted to think about them," as stated in her book.

The Washington Post: "Korean Experts Mock Park's Claims"

The Washington Post also pointed out that Park's claim of witnessing a 'stadium execution' conflicts with testimonies from other North Korean defectors.

Park claimed she witnessed the execution of a friend's mother in a stadium because the woman had watched a Hollywood movie. However, another defector from Hyesan refuted this in a 2014 op-ed for the U.S. diplomatic magazine The Diplomat, stating that no executions were carried out around that time.

Regarding her defection route, Park herself said in 2014 that "her entire family crossed into China by vehicle," but in her conference speech, she said "only she and her mother crossed the border on foot."

In response, Park explained in a letter to The Diplomat that inconsistencies in her testimony were due to "immature English." In her 2015 book In Order to Live, she explained that she did not mention childhood hardships on broadcasts because "she no longer wanted to think about them and because the broadcasts wanted a wealthy defector concept."

Park has frequently appeared on conservative U.S. podcasts and broadcasts, where she claimed that North Korean residents cannot see world maps. She also asserted that due to collectivism in North Korea, the word 'I' does not exist (they use 'we' instead), and that North Koreans do not even understand the concept of 'love' except for their worship of the Kim family.

In response, The Washington Post quoted North Korea expert Professor Andrei Lankov, who said, "World maps and arithmetic are clearly included in elementary school textbooks, and the use of 'we' instead of 'I' is due to a rhetorical style unique to the Korean language." Regarding the claim that North Koreans do not understand the concept of 'love,' "Professor Lankov and other Korean experts laughed it off," the article reported.

The outlet noted that some North Korean defectors in South Korea "believe that the more attention-grabbing stories they tell, the more money they can earn," adding, "There is no need to exaggerate the already horrific realities of North Korea based on recorded truths. Experts criticizing Park worry that if the authenticity of claims about North Korea is doubted, serious interest in the country's severe human rights situation may be overshadowed."

Meanwhile, Park was named one of the '100 Women of the Year' by the British BBC in 2014, and her book published the following year was selected as a recommended read by The New York Times (NYT). She currently works on human rights activism with the conservative Christian group Turning Point USA. Her YouTube channel, 'Voice of North Korea by Yeonmi Park,' has 1.13 million subscribers.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.