Unseen part of North Korea [VIDEO]

Eunhee Park

On August 25, Teach North Korean Refugees (TNKR) held its 8th English Language Speech Contest. Eunhee Park, a North Korean refugee who joined TNKR in 2015 speaking English at a basic level, won second prize in the contest, which was hosted by TNKR and the Shin and Kim Law Office, and sponsored by The Korea Times. Australian Gemma Haines was her mentor getting her prepared for this contest. Below is the text of Park's remarks as prepared.

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Good afternoon everyone! My name is Eunhee Park. And I escaped from North Korea when I was 21 years old in 2012. Today I am going to tell you about the North Korea I've Lived Through

After the inter-Korean summit and the North Korea-United States summit, North Korea and denuclearization have become important issues capturing the whole world's attention.

Through the internet,' we learn about North Korean issues.

What you all have seen in the media about Kim Jong-un, nuclear weapons, poverty and starvation are true.

But there is part of North Korea that you don't see.

So today, I'd like to talk about the real North Korea and my life there.

When I tell people, I came from NK they want to know 2 things:

How is life in North Korea and What North Koreans do for a living.

Today I am going to tell you about my own experiences.

First of all, what was my daily life like in North Korea?

I was born in 1991 in a city called Wonsan. Wonsan is a beautiful town which is on the east coast of North Korea. It is near Gungang mountain and Songdowon beach, where many tourists from all over the world visit every summer. In North Korea my daily life was mostly just going to school and studying.

The subjects we learned were a lot of what most people learn: Mathematics, English, Physics, Chemistry, and so on. Except the English we learn is British English, not American English. In school we were told the U.S. is North Korea's worst enemy in this world.

For instance, our elementary school mathematics textbook said "There are guys in uniforms called ‘American bastards'. If there were 5 of them, and I killed 3, how many of them would I have left to kill? There are 2 left." This is what our classes were like.

When I was 8, in school we had a field day, and one of the competitions was "Striking American Bastards." We had to make a dummy of an American, and at the time, the part that best represented an American was a big nose. and on the field day, we had a competition to see who could knock down the dummy by stabbing it in the chest with a sharp wooden stick and lighting it on fire. But when I saw foreigners with big noses at the beach, they are so nice and smiled at us and they gave us snacks and candies. I never once thought about stabbing them, like we learned in school. It was probably around that time when I didn't hate the U.S., but actually started liking it.

And also, as you all might know, if you're born in North Korea, you're brainwashed until you die.

Among the subjects we study in school, the most important one is ‘The Revolutionary History of the Great Kim Family.' Memorizing things like when and where they were born, what army units they formed during the period of the Japanese Occupation, and so on, is fundamental history we must know. So even now, there are times when I can't remember my own parents' birthdays, but I can still recite the birthdays of the Kim Family in my sleep. (If someone really wants to see if I'm telling the truth, you can raise your hand and ask me their birthdays). When Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il died, and I saw the North Korean citizens crying, I knew that we were being brainwashed.

The other question that I get asked is what do most people do for a living?

Today, most North Koreans earn money and make a living at the markets. We don't have convenience stores. During the North Korean famine, around 3million people starved to death.

The North Koreans who faced these horrors learned a lesson to not rely on the government alone, and out of this need for survival the markets grew. As the market grew, Not only did people earn money, they also started exchanging secret information. For example, South Korean dramas and U.S. movies are being sold on USB drives and CDs, so North Korean citizens are gaining more information about the outside world.

There's a saying in North Korea: "You make more money at the barrel of a gun." This means that the more you do something illegal, the more money you can make. A few North Koreans started building business with Chinese people, and as a result imported CDs and USBs containing South Korean media and U.S. movies from China were distributed in the markets. It didn't matter how expensive this content was; those who were curious about the new things rented or bought it and watched it at home secretly.

When I was in North Korea, I was told that South Korea was a world where people didn't have money and couldn't afford to study, and the streets were filled with beggars.

And I learned that Americans were savages that killed other people.

But through this secret media, I started to question what I had learned. Because the Americans I saw in the movies were not savages but were romantic people capable of loving one another.

I also started to compare my life with what I was watching. When I was in North Korea, I would get in trouble by the North Korean police for doing something as simple as wearing earnings or clothes that stood out. As a punishment, I was forced to stand in the police station for 6 or 7 hours with no food or water. I thought these punishments were normal until I illegally watched South Korean dramas and American movies.

So how does a country like North Korea exist? The reason is because North Korean authorities made all of the citizens their own political slaves, by blocking their access to external information. North korea is an isolated country. North Korean people have the ability to maintain basic survival, but not the information or wisdom to challenge the regime.

Today, with the inter-Korean summit and the North Korea-United States summit, denuclearization and unification have become important issues. Based on my experience, instead of providing financial aid to the North Korean government, I believe that helping the private organizations who are promoting south korean culture and U.S. media within North Korea is a better way to help 25 million people living in North Korea.

There's a saying, "You can only understand what you see, and you can only speak about what you know." If North Koreans can learn more about the outside world from this secret information, I believe that they will find their identity and have the power to fight for that freedom they deserve.

Casey Lartigue Jr., co-founder of the Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center, is the 2017 winner of the "Social Contribution" Prize from the Hansarang Rural Cultural Foundation and the 2017 winner of the Global Award from Challenge Korea.