The 29-year-old defected from North Korea as a young teen, only to be human-trafficked in China. In 2014, she became one of just 200 North Koreans to live in the United States — and, as of last year, is an American citizen.

Now, three years after she graduated from Columbia with a degree in human rights, Park is raising alarm bells about America’s cancel culture and woke ideology.

In her book “While Time Remains,” out February 14, Park writes how she made it all the way to the United States only to find some of the same encroachments on freedom that she thought she left behind in North Korea — from identity politics and victim mentality to elite hypocrisy.

“I escaped hell on earth and walked across the desert in search of freedom, and found it,” she writes. “I don’t want anything bad ever to happen to my new home … I want us — need us — to keep the darkness at bay.”

She implores readers: “I need your help to save our country, while time remains.” //

In the first five years of her life, an estimated 3.5 million North Koreans died of starvation. Park recalls hunting for cockroaches on the way to school to quell her hunger — even as the Kim’s regime banned the words “famine” and “hunger.”

The end of the Korean War and peace on the peninsula are no more likely to occur as the result of a peace agreement than has North Korean denuclearization occurred as the result of multiple denuclearization agreements. Ultimately, North Korean objectives matter, and real peace does not appear to be part of those objectives.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that North Korea has blown up an inter-Korean liaison office building in Kaesong, a town located just north of the South Korean border. Due to the coronavirus, the office had been closed since January.

South Korean surveillance video appears to show that an adjacent building, used to house South Korean officials who staffed the liaison office, had partially collapsed during the explosion.

North Korean state media outlet KCNA reported, “The north-south joint liaison office was completely ruined on Tuesday. The relevant field of the DPRK put into practice the measure of completely destroying the north-south joint liaison office in the Kaesong Industrial zone in the wake of cutting off all communication ties between the north and the south, corresponding to the mindset of the enraged people to surely force human scum and those, who have sheltered the scum, to pay dearly for their crimes.” North Korea refers to defectors as “human scum”. //

Deputy National Security Advisor Kim You-geun told reporters [...]
the action “broke the expectations of all people who hope for the development of inter-Korean relations and lasting peace on the peninsula. We’re making clear that the North is entirely responsible for all the consequences this might cause.”

South Korean vice unification minister Suh Ho, who co-headed the liaison office, said this move was “unprecedented in inter-Korean relations” and a “nonsensical act that should have not happened”.

Ahead of the explosion, the situation had been tense for several days. Kim Yo Jong (sister of Kim Jong Un), a senior official of the ruling Workers’ Party, appears to be playing a larger role in the government’s affairs. On Saturday, state media reported that Kim “had ordered the department in charge of inter-Korean affairs to “decisively carry out the next action”. According to the report, she said, “Before long, a tragic scene of the useless north-south joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen”.