Park Yeon-mi

“There is a holocaust going on in my country, the world needs to acknowledge that and do something to help the people of North Korea.”

“South Koreans often don't think of North Korean defectors as Korean. While we have been granted citizenship, the locals don't consider us as South Korean citizens. We are often treated differently and viewed differently, even by people who care for us the most.”

“I was born at the end of the 1993. The regime stopped giving food to the people. Three million people died from 1995 to 1998. It's one of the world's worst man-made famines in history.”

“I just never learned to think critically.”

“They said if you are in China you have to be sold, you have to get married. And something that still saddens me is that I actually didn't care, I was so hungry.”

“I never used a translator, never thought that the journalists might not understand.”

“My father died without knowing even this kind of democracy exists in the world. He didn't even know this much food was available in the world.”

“Family are everything; everyone understands the strength of family. For me, they were the reason that I managed to get by while I was in captivity and now they are the reason to live in freedom.”

“People would ask me about my hobbies and what I liked. I had never been asked those questions because what I thought didn't matter. I didn't know what a hobby was. In North Korea we used 'we,' and to say - 'I like this,' - was the worst thing you could say.”

“I didn't know it was even possible to sell humans. I thought people can only sell animals, chickens. But I didn't even know that kind of concept - human traffic - can be exist in the world. So I just couldn't process it when I heard it.”

“North Korea is an unimaginable country. We aren't free to sing, say, wear or think what we want.”

“Because I have seen oppression, I know what it looks like.”

“I didn't know who Bob Geldof or Richard Branson were and I thought Dublin was part of England.”

“I wanted to show North Korean people that they have hope, and they can be free someday, like myself.”

“I literally crossed through the middle of the Gobi Desert to be free. But what I did was nothing, so many people fought harder than me and didn't make it.”

“I know the truth of North Korea. The oppression and their tragedy. It cannot be silenced.”

“North Korea cannot change because its people don't realize that there is an alternative to their suffering.”

“I have visited slums in Mumbai, I have visited slums in other countries, but nothing is like North Korea because North Korean starvation, it's a systematic starvation by a country that chose to starve us.”

“Kim Jong-un and the regime don't just oppress - they play with human lives.”

“Nothing is forever, and I believe that North Korea will change in my lifetime.”