A North Korean defector has slammed the Columbia University claiming that it reminded her of the oppressive regime and fears for the future of the US. After attending an Ivy League she said that United Stae’s future ‘is as bleak as North Korea’.
Yeonmi Park was transferred to Columbia University in 2016 to study a bachelor of arts. However, she said that she was immediately struck by ‘anti-western' sentiment and a ‘focus on political correctness in her classes’.
“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” said Park. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different, but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying,” added the 27-year-old.
“Even North Korea is not this nuts. It was pretty crazy, but not this crazy,” she added.
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Giving the example of an incident, Park said, “I said I love those books. I thought it was a good thing. But then, she said, Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racist and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you.”
Further, she said that she found it bizarre that professors asked students what their preferred pronouns were, and did not use gender-neutral pronouns. “English is my third language. I learned it as an adult. I sometimes still say he or she by mistake, and now they are going to ask me to call them ‘they’? How the heck do I incorporate that into my sentences?” said Park.
Park’s family fled North Korea in 2007 after which she lived in China for two years. Later she moved to South Korea in 2009 and settled in the US in 2014. Yeonmi has frequently spoken about her harrowing escape from North Korea at the age of 13 with her mother.
“In North Korea, I literally believed that my Dear Leader was starving. And then somebody showed me a photo and said look at him. He is the fattest gut. And I was like Oh my God, why did I not notice that? This was because I never learned how to think critically and this is what is happening in America,” Park said.