350 attendees flocked to this year’s first Booksori event at the UW with Yeonmi Park as a guest lecturer
Booksori, a program of Korean book talks held monthly and hosted by Korean Studies Librarian Hyokyoung Yi at the East Asia Library of the University of Washington, has focused significant regional attention to the human rights issues in North Korea with this month’s event.
‘THINK’ (The Human Rights In North Korea), a UW student group that advocates North Korea human rights, and the Library of Korean Studies at the UW jointly organized this year’s first Booksori, where internationally recognized North Korean defector Yeonmi Park (22) gave a speech.
Park, who is originally from Hyesan, Ryanggang province in North Korea, escaped her home country in 2007 at the age of 13 by crossing the border into China, and traveled through the Gobi Desert in Mongolia to seek asylum until finally arriving at the Incheon International Airport in South Korea two years later in April 20th, 2009.
Being fluent in English, Park has delivered a number of speeches to promote human rights in North Korea as well as criticize China’s forced repatriation of North Korean refugees. Her memoir In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom was published in September 2015.
Park has been studying police administration at Dongguk University, and recently transferred into Columbia University, where she started her studies in January of this year.
Open to the general public, the event lasted an hour and a half with Park giving her speech in Korean and THINK member Jessica Kim translating it into English.
Park stated, “I consider my arrival at the Incheon International Airport in April 20th of 2009 as my second birthday, where I was gifted with ‘human rights’, a concept I didn’t even know existed”.
While describing her hardships in South Korea where a countless number of foreign load words and discrimination against North Koreans made it difficult for her to immerse herself into the culture, Park stressed, “People often assume that North Korean defectors hate their home country, but we are just ordinary people no different from many others who are living overseas and missing home”.
